man writing true poetry come to pass.

For poetry is, after all, nothing but the reflex of the spiritual nature of a man. And I feel sure of this, that Shakspere's vast superiority over his fellow-dramatists sprang not so much from his intellect as from his higher moral power.

Even Ulrici and the best German critics fall into this common error of Shakspere living on bad terms with his wife, perhaps not knowing, as Mr. Knight first showed, that she was already provided for by her dowry, and there was therefore no occasion for her to be mentioned in his will. There is, however, direct testimony of at least her love for her husband, which has been previously quoted, in her affecting and touching wish to be buried with him in his grave.

To suppose that Shakspere and his wife had no griefs, no embitterments, is to suppose what never happened to two people on this earth. But griefs, if wisely taken, only the more endear affection; and that was, no doubt, the use to which Shakspere turned his trials and afflictions. Life, whether wedded or unwedded, is action springing from suffering; and the greater the man, and the finer and tenderer his conscience, the more he realizes this truth.

WE must wait till midsummer to go by the side of the Avon, for then it is in its greatest beauty. So, on some

There is a path on both

pass over the foot-bridge

warm day in June will we go. sides of the river, but we will at the mill, and ascend "the cross of the Hill," for here we shall find a spot curiously connected with Shakspere.

6 to

"I beseech you, sir," says Davy to Justice Shallow, in the second part of King Henry IV. (act v. scene 1), countenance William Visor of Wincot against Clement Perkes of the Hill; " to whom the Justice replies: "There are many complaints, Davy, against that Visor; that Visor is an arrant knave on my knowledge." Now the CherryOrchard Farm, close to which we are, is still called the Hill Farm; and whoever lives there is to this day spoken of as Mr. A., or Mr. B., of the Hill, and is so named from time immemorial in the Weston parish register. Whilst Wincot is still the name of a farm some three miles to the left, where, probably, there was once a village, the same Wincot where Christopher Sly runs fourteenpence in debt with Marian Hacket for "sheer ale," or rather "Warwickshire ale," as Mr. Collier's corrector proposes, and of which reading I suppose all Warwickshire people will approve.* Depend upon it all these

* In Cokain's Small Poems, published in 1658, may be found a curious epigram, addressed to Mr. Clement Fisher, of Wincot, referring to Christopher Sly:

Shakspere your Wincot ale hath much renown'd,
That fox'd a beggar so (by chance was found
Sleeping), that there needed not many a word
To make him believe he was a lord:

But you affirm, and in it seem most eager,
"Twill make a lord as drunk as any beggar.

people really existed-good Justice Shallow, and Davy his servant, and Marian Hacket and her daughter Cicely, at Wincot ale-house, and Clement Perkes of the Hill, and many a laugh would they and Shakspere have at these

scenes.

I know how dangerous it is to theorise on such points as these, and that Shakspere never drew mere individuals but always types of men. Still I cannot help thinking that good, gossiping Aubrey might have hit upon the truth when he tells us that Shakspere drew his characters from the different persons that he met; and adds that the Constable in the Midsummer Night's Dream (he probably meant either Dogberry or Verges in Much Ado about Nothing) was drawn from a certain constable at Grendon, in Buckinghamshire, where Shakspere stayed one Midsummer night on his road from London to Stratford. We have already seen that he drew his Justice Shallow

Did Norton brew such ale as Shakspere fancies

Did put Kit Sly into such lordly trances?
And let us meet there for a fit of gladness,

And drink ourselves merry in sober sadness.

Norton is said to have been the landlord of the Falcon Inn, at Bidford, famous for being the scene of Shakspere's well-known drinking bout, where Sir Aston Cokain and his friends used also to meet. It may have been from some confusion about this sonnet and the Falcon Inn, that the popular tradition, mentioned a little further on in the text about the Induction to the Taming of the Shrew, had its origin.

from the old knight at Charlecote, and in the Oldys MSS. it is said that the character of Falstaff was drawn from a fellow-townsman of Shakspere's; and popular tradition in Warwickshire asserts that the Induction to the Taming of the Shrew had its origin in a joke played off by some member of Sir Aston Cokain's family upon a tinker in Shakspere's time. This may have been the case, but the joke is an old one, and to be found in literature long before. But it is worth while noting, with Mr. Halliwell, that many of the names in Shakspere's plays, such as Bardolf, Fluellin, Sly, Herne (or as it stood in the first draft of the Merry Wives of Windsor, Horne), Page, Ford, &c., may all be found in the corporation books of Stratford, and were the names of people living there in Shakspere's day.

Perhaps, though, this mention of the "Hill Farm" and Wincot so 'close together, and the satire upon Justice Shallow, is the most marked instance of Shakspere alluding to matters which may be supposed to be generally known at the time. But in his plays there are other places in the neighbourhood of Stratford mentioned. I have alluded to Master Slender's speaking of "Cotsall," the pronunciation still in vogue by the peasantry for the Cotswold hills. So, too, when mentioning Kenilworth, in the Second Part of King Henry VI. (act iv. scene 4), we find Shakspere