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THE earliest, and the most permanent, of poetical associations are those which are impressed upon the mind by localities which have a deep historical interest. It would be difficult to find a district possessing more striking remains of a past time than the neighbourhood in which William Shakspere spent his youth. The poetical feeling which the battle-fields, and castles, and monastic ruins of mid England would excite in him, may be reasonably considered to have derived an intensity through the real history of these celebrated spots being vague, and for the most part traditional. The age of local historians had not yet arrived. The monuments of the past were indeed themselves much more fresh and perfect than in the subsequent days, when every tomb inscription was copied, and every mouldering document set forth. But in the year 1580, if William Shakspere desired to know, for example, with some precision, the history which belonged to those noble towers of Warwick upon which he had often gazed

with a delight that scarcely required to be based upon knowledge, he would look in vain for any guide to his inquiries. Some old people might tell him that they remembered their fathers to have spoken of one John Rous, the son of Geffrey Rous of Warwick, who, having diligently studied at Oxford, and obtained a reputation for uncommon learning, rejected all ambitious thoughts, shut himself up with his books in the solitude of Guy's Cliff, and was engaged to the last in writing the Chronicles of his country, and especially the history of his native County and its famous Earls: and there, in the quiet of that pleasant place, performing his daily offices of devotion as a chantry priest in the little chapel, did John Rous live a life of happy industry till 1491. But the world in general derived little advantage from his labours. Another came after him, commissioned by royal authority to search into all the archives of the kingdom, and to rescue from damp and dust all ancient manuscripts, civil and ecclesiastical. The commission of Leland was well performed; but his 'Itinerary' was also to be of little use to his own generation. William Shakspere knew not what Leland had written about Warwickshire; how the enthusiastic and half-poetical antiquary had described, in elegant Latinity, the beauties of woodland and river; and had even given the characteristics of such a place as Guy's Cliff in a few happy words, that would still be an accurate description of its natural features, even after the lapse of three centuries. Caves hewn in the living rock, a thick overshadowing wood, sparkling springs, flowery meadows, mossy grottos, the river rolling over the stones with a gentle noise, solitude and the quiet most friendly to the Muses, these are the enduring features of the place

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as painted by the fine old topographer.* But his manuscripts were as sealed to the young Shakspere as those of John Rous. Yet if the future Poet sustained some disadvantage by living before the days of antiquarian minuteness, he could still dwell in the past, and people it with the beings of his own imagination. The chroniclers who had as yet attempted to collect and systematize the records of their country did not aim at any very great exactness either of time or place. When they dealt with a remote antiquity they were as fabulous as the poets themselves; and it was easy to see that they most assumed the appearance of exactness when they wrote of times which have left not a single monumental record. Very diffuse were they when they had to talk of the days of Brute. Intimately could they decipher the private history of Albanact and Humber. The fatal passion of Locrine for Elstride was more familiar to them than that of Henry for Rosamond Clifford, or Edward for Elizabeth Woodville. Of the cities and the gates of King Lud they could present a most accurate description. Of King Leir very exact was their narration: how he, the son of Baldud, “was made ruler over the Britons the year of the world 4338; was noble of conditions, and guided his land and subjects in great wealth." Minutely thus does Fabyan, a chronicler whose volume was open to William Shakspere's boyhood, describe how the King, "fallen into impotent age," believed in the professions of his two elder daughters, and divided with them his kingdom, leaving his younger daughter, who really loved him, to be married without dower to the King of France; and then how his unkind daughters and their husbands "bereft him the governance of the land," and he fled to Gallia, "for to be comforted of his daughter Cordeilla, whereof she having knowledge, of natural kindness comforted him." This in some sort was a story of William Shakspere's locality; for, according to the Chronicle, Leir" made the town of Caerleir, now called Leiceter or Leicester;" and after he was "restored again to his lordship he died, and was buried at his town of Caerleir." The local association may have helped to fix the story in that mind, which in its maturity was to perceive its wondrous poctical capabilities. The early legends of the chroniclers are not to be despised, even in an age which in many historical things justly requires evidence; for they were compiled in good faith from the histories which had been compiled before them by the monkish writers, who handed down from generation to generation a narrative which hung together with singular consistency. They were compiled, too, by the later chroniclers, with a zealous patriotism. Fabyan, in his Prologue, exclaims, with a poetical spirit which is more commendable even than the poetical form which he adopts,— "Not for any pomp, nor yet for great meed,

This work have I taken on hand to compile,
But only because that I would spread
The famous honour of this fertile isle,

That hath continued, by many a long while,
In excellent honour, with many a royal guide,

Of whom the deeds have sprong to the world wide."

* "Antra in vivo saxo, nemusculum ibidem opacum, fontes liquidæ et gemmei; prata florida, antra muscosa, rivi levis et per saxa discursus; necnon solitudo et quies Musis amicissima.”— Leland's MS. Itinerary,' as quoted by Dugdale.

Lines such as these, homely though they are, were as seeds sown upon a goodly soil, when they were read by William Shakspere. His patriotism was almost

instinct.

In the immediate neighbourhood of Stratford there are two remarkable monuments of ancient civilization, the great roads of the Ichnield-way and the Foss-way. Upon these roads, which two centuries and a half ago would present a singular contrast in the strength of their construction to the miry lanes of a later period, would the young Shakspere often walk; and he would naturally regard these ways with reverence as well as curiosity, for his chroniclers would tell him that they were the work of the Britons before the invasion of the Romans. Fabyan would tell him, in express words, that they were the work of the Britons; and Camden and Dugdale were not as yet to tell him. otherwise. Robert of Gloucester says

"Faire weyes many on ther ben in Englonde;
But four most of all ther ben I understonde,
That thurgh an old kynge were made ere this,
As men schal in this boke aftir here tell I wis.
Fram the South into the North takith Erminge-strete.
Fram the East into the West goeth Ikeneld-strete.
Fram South-est to North-west, that is sum del grete

Fram Dover into Chestre goth Watlyng-strete.

The ferth of thise is most of alle that tilleth fram Tateneys.

Fram the South-west to North-est into Englondes ende

Fosse men callith thilke wey that by mony town doth wende.
Thise foure weyes on this londe kyng Belin the wise

Made and ordeined hem with gret fraunchise."

His notion, therefore, of the people of the days of Lud and Cymbeline would be that they were a powerful and a refined people; excelling in many of the arts of life; formidable in courage and military discipline; enjoying free institutions. When the matured dramatist had to touch upon this period, he would paint the Britons boldly refusing the Roman yoke, but yet partakers of the Roman civilization. The English king who defies Augustus says

"Thy Cæsar knighted me; my youth I spent
Much under him; of him I gather'd honour;
Which he to seek of me again, perforce,
Behoves me keep at utterance."

This is an intelligent courage, and not the courage of a king of painted savages. In the depths of the remarkable intrenchments which surround the hill of Welcombe, hearing only the noise of the sheep-bell in the uplands, or the evening chime from the distant church-tower, would William Shakspere think much of the mysterious past. No one could tell him who made these intrenchments, or for what purpose they were made. Certainly they were produced by the hand of man; but were they for defence or for religious ceremonial? Was the lofty mound, itself probably artificial, which looked down upon them, a fort

*Cymbeline, Act II., Scene 1.

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or a temple? Man, who would know everything and explain everything, assuredly knows little, when he cannot demand of the past an answer to such inquiries. But does he know much more of things which are nearer to his own days? Is the annalist to be trusted when he undertakes not only to describe the actions and to repeat the words, but to explain the thoughts and the motives which prompted the deeds that to a certain extent fixed the destiny of an age? There was a truth, however, which was to be found amidst all the mistakes and contradictions of the annalists-the great poetical truth, that the devices of men are insufficient to establish any permanent command over events; that crime would be followed by retribution; that evil passions would become their own tormentors; that injustice could not be successful to the end; that, although dimly seen and unwillingly acknowledged, the great presiding power of the world could make evil work for good, and advance the general happiness out of the particular misery. This was the mode, we believe, in which that thoughtful youth read the Chronicles of his country, whether brief or elaborate. Looking at them by the strong light of local association, there would be local tradition at hand to enforce that universal belief in the justice of God's providence which is in itself alone one of the many proofs of that justice. It is this religious aspect of human affairs which that young man cultivated when he cherished the poetical aspect. His books have taught him to study history through the medium of poetry. The Mirror for Magistrates' is a truer book for him than Fabyan's Chronicle.' He can understand the beauty and the power of his beloved Froissart, who described with incomparable clearness the events which he saw with his own eyes. To do this, as Froissart has done it, requires a gift of imagination as well as of faithfulness; of that imagination which, grouping and concentrating things apparently discordant, produces the highest faithfulness, because it sees and exhibits all the facts. But the prosaic digest of what others had seen and written about, disproportionate in its estimate of the importance of events, dwelling little upon the influences of individual character, picturing everything in the same monotonous light, and of the same height and breadth; this, which was called history, was to him a tedious fable. He stands by the side of the tomb of King John at Worcester. There, with little monumental pomp, lies the faithless King, poisoned, as he has read, by a monk. The poetical aspect of that man's history lies within a narrow compass. He was intriguing, treacherous, bloody, an oppressor of his people, a persecutor of the unprotected. His life is one of contest and misery; he loses his foreign possessions; his own land is invaded. But he stands up against foreign domination, and that a priestly domination. According to the tradition, he falls by private murder, as a consequence, not of his crimes, but of his resistance to external oppression. The prosaic view of this man's history separates the two things, his crimes and their retribution. The poetical view connects them. Arthur is avenged when the poisoned king, hated and unlamented, finds a resting-place from his own passions and their consequences in the earth beneath the paving-stones of the cathedral of Worcester. But there was a tear even for that man's grave, when his last sufferings were shadowed out in the young poet's mind::

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