THE

LIFE AND POETRY

OF

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

How strange it is that on the two greatest of all poets the most mystery hangs-Homer and Shakspeare! Even as Mounts Everest and Dhawalagiri, towering far above the Himalayan summits, attract the thickest mantles of mist, are clad in the deepest piles of snow, and are for ever inaccessible; so it is with these surpassing poets. Homer-who and what was he? Was he an Ionian, or did he on

"The Chian strand

Behold the Iliad and the Odyssey

Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea"?

Which of the seven cities that contended for the honour of his birthplace deserved to succeed in the strife? Was he or was he not a blind beggar? Was he one, or was the "Iliad" the product of many minds, all inspired by the spirit of those

"Heroic rays,

Such as lit onward to the Golden Fleece,
And fired their fathers in the Colchian days"?

Was he author of the "Iliad" only, or also of the marvellous "Odyssey." How lived he—where died he—and where was he buried? Such questions, often asked, as if at the cloudy Ida, where his spirit may be figured as dwelling, have received no satisfactory reply, and still Stat nominis Umbra.

C

Of Shakspeare we know a little, and only a little, more. George Steevens has said, "All that is known with any degree of certainty concerning Shakspeare is—that he was born at Stratford-upon-Avon-married and had children there -went to London, where he commenced actor, and wrote poems and plays-returned to Stratford, made his will, died, and was buried." This is certainly but a meagre skeleton of such a wonderful man, and is calculated to excite regret and disappointment. We become angry on account of our ignorance, although angry we cannot tell rightly with whom or what. Was Shakspeare bound to write an autobiography for our information? Or was nature bound to rear a Boswell to preserve, in a kind of dripping-pan, the exhaustless exuberance of his conversational genius? Or could his contemporaries be expected to appreciate a man who was "before all ages?" Besides, how do we know that his life, were it fully detailed, would be so interesting, or that his conversation, had it been recorded, would have been so extraordinary? Was he not perhaps a quiet, silent, brooding man-no great talker-none of those who "set the table in a roar," but rather

"A great observer, and who look'd

Quite through the deeds of men,"

none the less keenly that he looked through them in silence? And does not, besides, a kind of ghost-like awe and mystery thus gather round that humble player, with the greatest mind on earth concealed now under his plain daily dress, and now under his tinsel nightly robes, and you feel as if Apollo or Mercury had disguised himself as a tapster or a sceneshifter? Perhaps, instead of vainly mourning that we know so little of him, we should rather cry out, as we have cried out before, "Munificent and modest benefactor, it was thine to knock at the door of the human family by night, to throw in inestimable wealth, and then, as if thou hadst done a guilty thing, to fly, leaving the sound of thy feet dying away in the distance as all the tidings thou hast given of thyself!"

Often when we contemplate the mind and history of

Edmund Burke-the plenitude of his knowledge, the profound wisdom of his intellect, the vast ken of his imaginative vision, the disinterestedness of his purpose, and the wide and watchful eye he kept on the progress of the human race everywhere, as well as the righteous and terrible anger which he felt at its oppressors—we are reminded less of a man, than of some benevolent angel or genie, incarnate in human flesh, for the purpose of furthering the great designs of God, and counteracting the machinations or the infuriated madness of infernal beings. In Shakspeare we do not see so clearly any definite moral purpose, but we see still greater prodigality of intellect and genius, and an attitude of thought and a relation to the world still more wonderful, and almost unearthly. He is among men, but not of them, although in a sense very different from that in which the impatient, reckless, and unhappy spirit of Byron was. Shakspeare stands above all men, but still close to them; knows all of them thoroughly, yet pities and loves them intensely; and is neither an accusing spirit nor a protecting genie, but simply a recorder of what he sees, an echo-cliff of what he hears, and is both upon a scale of stupendous magnitude. It follows, that his own personal character and history are of less importance. A Milton or a Burke striving to overrule public opinion, on political, moral, or religious themes, subjects himself to severe scrutiny. But not so a mirror-like mind such as that of Shakspeare. If mirrors are clear broad reflectors, it becomes of little moment whether their frame be covered with "dust o'ergilded," or be of pure and massive gold.

These remarks may tend somewhat to soothe the disappointment so generally felt by readers in reference to the little that centuries of inquiry have been able to collect about the life of the "myriad-minded;" for what proportion could be expected between one short life and a myriad minds? The one, however interesting, could be no measure to, or exponent of, the multiplicity of the other.

William Shakspeare, " man's miracle," was born in Stratford-on-Avon in April 1564. As his baptism took place on the 26th, and as one Joseph Green, a clergyman, and master

of the grammar school at Stratford, in an extract which he made from the register of Shakspeare's baptism, wrote on the margin, "Born on the 23rd," that is suspected to have been the actual date. His father, John Shakspeare, was a burgess of the corporation of Stratford. John's great-grandfather is supposed to have done good service to Richmond at Bosworth field, for which his descendant received two royal grants of lands and tenements in Warwickshire. Hence, perhaps, the strong Lancastrian bias to be found in the writings of the great dramatist. In 1559, John wedded Mary Arden, the descendant of an ancient family in Warwickshire, and who had been left by her father an estate of about sixty acres, and a house called Asbies. They were married at AstonCantlow, and John, taking possession of the estate in right of his wife, proceeded to fix his residence in the town of Stratford.

Much dubiety has rested on the occupation of the poet's father. Aubrey declares that he was a butcher, and that William in his boyhood practised the same occupation; but adds (as Brummell's valet declared that his master "always snored like a gentleman!") that the boy when he "killed a calf, did it in a high style, and made a speech." Another account, transmitted through an old parish-clerk, says nothing of the "speech" or of the father's trade, but insists that the gentle Willy" was an apprentice to a butcher, till, disgusted at the occupation, he ran off to London. Both these accounts seem apocryphal ; nor does Rowe's story, that John Shakspeare was a dealer in wool, and taught his son the same trade, rest on any sure foundation. The probability, founded on various entries in old registers, is that the father of the poet partly lived on his own land, and partly rented ground from otherswas certainly the proprietor of Asbies-and held, from one William Clopton, a piece of meadow-ground of fourteen acres, called Ingon, rented at eight pounds, equivalent to forty pounds of our present money-was, in short, what we would now call in Scotland a farmer and small laird.

To John Shakspeare and Mary Arden were born in succession, first, Joan, and then Margaret, both of whom died in