here are his horns, master Brook: And, master Brook, he hath enjoyed nothing of Ford's but his buck-basket, his cudgel, and twenty pounds of money, which must be paid to master Brook; his horses are arrested for it, master Brook.

Mrs. Ford. Sir John, we have had ill luck; we could never meet. I will never take you for my love again, but I will always count you my deer. Fal. I do begin to perceive that I am made

an ass.

Ford. Ay, and an ox too; both the proofs are

extant.

:

Fal. And these are not fairies? I was three or four times in the thought they were not fairies and yet the guiltiness of my mind, the sudden surprize of my powers, drove the grossness of the foppery into a received belief, in despite of the teeth of all rhyme and reason, that they were fairies. See now, how wit may be made a Jack-a-lent, when 't is upon ill employment.

Eva. Sir John Falstaff, serve Got, and leave your desires, and fairies will not pinse you.

Ford. Well said, fairy Hugh.

Eva. And leave you your jealousies too, I

pray you.

Ford. I will never mistrust my wife again, till thou art able to woo her in good English.

Fal. Have I laid my brain in the sun, and dried it, that it wants matter to prevent so gross o'er-reaching as this? Am I ridden with a Welch goat too? Shall I have a coxcomb of frize? 'Tis time I were choked with a piece of toasted cheese.

Eva. Seese is not good to give putter; your pelly is all putter.

Fal. Seese and putter! have I lived to stand at the taunts of one that makes fritters of English? This is enough to be the decay of lust and latewalking through the realm.

Mrs. Page. Why, sir John, do you think, though we would have thrust virtue out of our hearts by the head and shoulders, and have given ourselves without scruple to hell, that ever the devil could have made you our delight?

Ford. What, a hodge-pudding? a bag of flax?
Mrs. Page. A puffed man?

Page. Old, cold, withered, and of intolerable entrails?

Ford. And one that is as slanderous as Satan?
Page. And as poor as Job?

Ford. And as wicked as his wife?

Eva. And given to fornications, and to taverns, and sack, and wine, and metheglins, and to drinkings, and swearings, and starings, pribbles and prabbles?

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Fal. Well, I am your theme: you have the start of me; I am dejected; I am not able to answer the Welch flannel: ignorance itself is a plummet o'er me; use me as you will.

Ford. Marry, sir, we'll bring you to Windsor, to one master Brook, that you have cozened of money, to whom you should have been a pander: over and above that you have suffered, I think, to repay that money will be a biting affliction."

Page. Yet be cheerful, knight: thou shalt eat a posset to-night at my house; where I will desire thee to laugh at my wife that now laughs at thee: Tell her master Slender hath married her daughter.

Mrs. Page. Doctors doubt that; if Anne Page be my daughter, she is, by this, doctor Caius' wife. [Aside.

Slen. I went to her in white, and cry'd mum, and she cry'd budget, as Anne and I had appointed; and yet it was not Anne, but a postmaster's boy.c

Mrs. Page. Good George, be not angry: I knew of your purpose; turned my daughter into green; and, indeed, she is now with the doctor at the deanery, and there married.

a The whole scene being changed, three lines are here often foisted in from the quarto:

"Mrs. Ford. Nay, husband, let that go to make amends: Forgive that sum, and so we'll all be friends.

Ford. Well, here's my hand; all's forgiven at last." b The folio has green, which Pope changed to white, also changing, in the next speech, white to green.

c Two other lines are here introduced in the same way: "Eva. Jeshu! Master Slender, cannot you see but marry

Enter CAIUS.

Caius. Vere is mistress Page? By gar, I am cozened; I ha' inarried un garçon, a boy; un paisan, by gar, a boy; it is not Anne Page: by gar, I am cozened.

Mrs. Page. Why, did you take her in green? Caius. Ay, be gar, and 'tis a boy; be gar, I'll raise all Windsor. [Exit CAIUS. Ford. This is strange: Who hath got the right Anne?

Page. My heart misgives me: Here comes master Fenton.

Enter FENTON and ANNE PAGE.

How now, master Fenton ?

Anne. Pardon, good father! good, my mother, pardon !

Page. Now, mistress? how chance you went not with master Slender?

Mrs. Page. Why went you not with master doctor, maid?

Fent. You do amaze her: Hear the truth of it.

You would have married her most shamefully, Where there was no proportion held in love. The truth is, she and I, long since contracted, Are now so sure that nothing can dissolve us. The offence is holy that she hath committed : And this deceit loses the name of craft,

Of disobedience, or unduteous title;
Since therein she doth evitate and shun
A thousand irreligious cursed hours,
Which forced marriage would have brought upon
her.

Ford. Stand not amaz'd: here is no remedy: In love, the heavens themselves do guide the state;

Money buys lands, and wives are sold by fate.

Fal. I am glad, though you have ta'en a special stand to strike at me, that your arrow hath glanced.

Page. Well, what remedy? Fenton, heaven give thee joy!

What cannot be eschew'd must be embrac❜d. Ful. When night-dogs run all sorts of deer are chas'd.

Mrs. Page. Well, I will muse no further master Fenton,

Heaven give you many, many merry days!
Good husband, let us every one go home,
And laugh this sport o'er by a country fire;
Sir John and all.

Ford. Let it be so:-
:-Sir John,

To master Brook you yet shall hold your word;
For he, to-night, shall lie with mistress Ford.

[Exeunt.

a We have also another line restored-rescued, as the editors say good in itself, but out of place: "Eva I will dance and eat plums at your wedding."

It was suggested to us by Dr. Maginn, for our 'Library Edition,' that these poetical speeches belong to Anne, as the Fairy Queen. In all previous modern editions they are all very inappropriately given to Quickly. We have traced the origin of this mistake, which is perfectly evident. In the original quarto we have not a word of the arrangement for Anne to present the Fairy Queen." These lines are only found in the folio.

"To-night, at Herne's oak, just 'twixt twelve and one, Must my sweet Nan present the fairy queen." But in the quarto edition, in the stage-direction of this scene, we have, "Enter Sir Hugh like a satyr, and boys dressed like fairies." What the Queen had to say was greatly elaborated in the folio; and there the stage-direction is for the entrance, without any designation of "Anne Page, Fairies, Page, Ford, Quickly," &c. We have no doubt that the poet having determined that Anne should "present the

fairy queen," these speeches unquestionably belong to her, and we have made the change accordingly. Mr. Dyce and Mr. Staunton adopt the change; Mr. White, in his edition of the Plays, contends that Quickly is right, but he says it has been the "invariable custom since Malone's time," to substitute "Anne Page as the Fairy Queen" when the characters enter, while the speeches were given to Quickly. "The inconsistency was avoided by Mr. Collier at the suggestion of Mr. Harness." He goes on to say that Qui. and Quic. could not have been invariably misprinted for Qu.; that the speeches of Pistol and Sir Hugh are as much inconsistent with the characters as those of Mrs. Quickly; that they were all assuming parts, and were lightly masked; and that Anne Page did not play the Fairy Queen, for, as she assured her lover, she intended to deceive her father and mother, "and she did so."

THE question whether the Herne's Oak of Shakspere is at present existing, or whether it was cut down some sixty years before, had become, at the time of the publication of our first edition, a subject of much controversy. Mr. Jesse, the author of those very agreeable volumes, 'Gleanings in Natural History,' maintained that the identical tree was still standing. The Quarterly Review, on the contrary, asserted that the tree had been cut down. At Windsor there were many believers in the present Herne's Oak, and many non-believers. We have bestowed some care in the investigation of the question; and we shall endeavour to present to our readers the result of our inquiries in connexion with our own early recollections.*

The memory of the editor carries him back to Windsor as it was forty years ago. The castle was then almost uninhabited. The king and his family lived in an ugly barrack-looking building called the Queen's Lodge, which stood opposite the south front of the castle. The great quadrangle, the

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terrace, and every part of the Home Park, was a free playground for the boys of Windsor. The path to Datchet passed immediately under the south terrace, direct from west to east, and it abruptly descended into the Lower Park, at a place called Dodd's Hill. From this path several paths diverged in a south-easterly direction towards the dairy at Frogmore; and one of these went close by a little dell, in which long rank grass, and fern, and low thorns grew in profusion. Near this dell stood several venerable oaks. Our earliest recollections associate this place with birds'-nests and mushrooms; but some five or six years later we came to look here for the "oak with great ragg'd horns," to which we had been introduced in the newly discovered world of Shakspere. There was an oak, whose upper branches were much decayed, standing some thirty or forty yards from the deep side of the dell; and there was another oak with fewer branches. whose top was

* We had better keep the dates as they stand in this Illustration, as published in 1839, in the first edition of the Pictorial Shakspere.'

also bare, standing in the line of the avenue near the park wall. We have heard each of these oaks called Herne's Oak; but the application of the name to the oak in the avenue is certainly more recent. That tree, as we first recollect it, had not its trunk bare. Its dimensions were comparatively small, and it seemed to us to have no pretensions to the honour which it occasionally received. The old people, however, used to say that Herne's Oak was cut down or blown down, and certainly our own impressions were that Herne's Oak was gone. One thing however consoled us. The little dell was assuredly the "pit hard by Herne's Oak" in which Anne Page and her troop of fairies "couched with obscured lights." And so we for ever associated this dell with Shakspere.

Years passed on-Windsor ceased to be familiar to us. When Mr. Jesse, however, published his second series of Gleanings in 1834, we were pleased to find this passage: "The most interesting tree, at Windsor, for there can be little doubt of its identity, is the celebrated Herne's Oak. There is indeed a story prevalent in the neighbourhood respecting its destruction. It was stated to have been felled by command of his late Majesty George III. about fifty years ago, under peculiar circumstances. The whole story, the details of which it is unnecessary to enter upon, appeared so improbable, that I have taken some pains to ascertain the inaccuracy of it, and have now every reason to believe that it is perfectly unfounded." But we were not quite satisfied with Mr. Jesse's description of this oak. In his Gleanings' he says, "In following the footpath which leads from the Windsor-road to Queen Adelaide's Lodge, in the Little Park, about half way on the right, a dead tree may be seen close to an avenue of elms. This is what is pointed out as Herne's Oak." Now we distinctly recollected that one of the trees, which some persons said was Herne's Oak, was not only close to an avenue of elms but formed part of the avenue; the other oak which pretended to the name was some distance from the avenue. Mr. Jesse goes on to say :

"The footpath which leads across the park is stated to have passed, in former times, close to Herne's Oak. The path is now at a little distance from it, and was, probably, altered, in order to protect the tree from injury.'

Here again was the manifestation of some imperfect local knowledge, which led us to doubt Mr. Jesse's strong assertion of the tree's identity. The footpath, so far from being altered to protect the tree from injury, was actually made, for the first time, some five-and-twenty years ago, when the ancient footpath to Datchet, which crossed the upper part of the park, passing, as we have mentioned, under the south terrace, was diverted by order of the magistrates, in order to give a greater privacy to the castle. The present pathway to Datchet was then first made, and a causeway was carried across the little dell. One of the paths from the castle to the dairy went near this dell, but it was on the more northern side, and not far from the other tree which some persons called Herne's Oak. Indeed, we were by no means sure that Mr. Jesse's description did not apply to this other tree. The expression "close to the avenue" might include it. Certainly his engraving was

much more like that tree, as we recollect it, than the tree in the avenue.

Towards the end of 1838, the following passage in The Quarterly Review,' came to destroy the little hope which we had indulged that Mr. Jesse had restored to us Herne's Oak:

Among his anecdotes of celebrated English oaks, we were surprised to find Mr. Loudon adopting (at least so we understand him) an apocryphal story about Herne's Oak, given in the lively pages of Mr. Jesse's Gleanings. That gentleman, if he had taken any trouble, might have ascertained that the tree in question was cut down one morning, by order of King George III., when in a state of great, but transient, excitement; the circumstance caused much regret and astonishment at the time."

Mr. Jesse replied to this statement, in a letter addressed to the editor of the Times,' dated Nov. 28, 1838. Mr. Jesse says that the story thus given was often repeated by George IV., who, however, always added that tree was supposed to have been Herne's Oak, but it was not.' Mr. Jesse adds, that the tree thus cut down, which stood near the castle, was an elm. We may take the liberty of mentioning that George IV. did not always add that the tree cut down was not Herne's Oak; and this we know from the very best authority-the King's own statement to Mr. Croker, who furnished the information to us. We have a letter in which that gentleman says that the cutting down of Herne's Oak was mentioned by George IV., as one of the results of his father's mental indisposition. Mr. Jesse goes on to say, that soon after the circumstance referred to, three large old oak trees were blown down in a gale of wind in the Little Park; and one of them, supposed to be Herne's Oak, was cut up and made into boxes and other Shaksperian relics. Mr Jesse, however, conceives that the matter is put beyond doubt by the following statement:

"To set the matter at rest, however, I will now repeat the substance of some information given to me relative to Herne's Oak, by Mr. Ingalt, the present respectable bailiff and manager of Windsor Home Park. He states that he was appointed to that situation by George III., about forty years ago. On receiving his appointment he was directed to attend upon the King at the Castle, and on arriving there he found His Majesty with the old Lord Winchilsea.' After a little delay, the King set off to walk in the park, attended by Lord Winchilsea, and Mr Ingalt was desired to follow them. Nothing was said to him until the King stopped opposite an oak tree. He then turned to Mr. Ingalt and said, 'I brought you here to point out this tree to you. I commit it to your especial charge, and take care that no damage is ever done to it. I had rather that every tree in the park should be cut down than that this tree should be hurt. This is Herne's Oak.' Mr. Ingalt added, that this was the tree still standing near Queen Elizabeth's Walk, and is the samne tree which I have mentioned and given a sketch of in my Gleanings in Natural History. Sapless and leafless it certainly is, and its rugged bark has all disappeared.

'Its boughs are moss'd with age,
And high top bald with gray antiquity;'-

but there it stands, and long may it do so, an object of interest to every admirer of our immortal bard. In this state it has been, probably, long before the recollection of the oldest person living. Its trunk appears, however, sound, like a piece of ship-timber, and it has always been protected by a strong fence round it-a proof of the care which has been taken of the tree, and of the interest which is attached to it."

Mr. Engall (not Ingalt), "the present respectable bailiff and manager of Windsor Home Park," certainly did not reside at Windsor forty years ago. He is not now what may be called an old man; and he was originally about the person of George III. at one of those seasons of affliction which were so distressing to his Majesty's family, and to his subjects. The conversation thus reported by Mr. Jesse, is entirely at variance with much earlier recollections of George III., which we shall presently shew.

We are here relieved from the doubt as to which tree Mr. Jesse originally intended to describe as Herne's Oak, by the following passage of his letter to the Times.' "King William III. was a great planter of avenues, and to him we are indebted for those in Hampton Court and Bushy Park, and also those at Windsor. All these have been made in a straight line, with the exception of one in the Home Park, which diverges a little, so as to take in Herne's Oak as a part of the avenue-a proof, at least, that Wiliam III. preferred distorting his avenue to cutting down the tree in order to make way for it in a direct line, affording another instance of the care taken of this tree 150 years ago."

With our own recollections of the localities still vivid, we have recently visited the favourite haunts of our boyhood in the Little Park. Our sensations were not pleasurable. The spot is so changed, that we could scarcely recognise it. We lamented twenty-five years ago that the common footpath to Datchet should have been carried through the picturesque dell, near which all tradition agreed that Herne's Oak stood; but we were not prepared to find that, during the alterations of the castle, the most extensive and deepest part of the dell, all on the north of the path, had been filled up and made perfectly level. Our old favourite thorns are now all buried, and the antique roots of the old trees that stood in and about the dell are covered up. Surely the rubbish of the castle might have been conveyed to a less interesting place of deposit. The smaller and shallower part of the dell, that on the south of the path, has been half filled up, and what remains is of a formal and artificial character. Mr. Jesse seems quite unaware of the change that has taken place in the locality, for in his Gleanings he says: "I was glad to find a pit hard by, where Nan and her troop of fairies, and the Welsh Devil Evans, might all have couch'd, without being perceived by the 'fat Windsor stag' when he spake like Herne the hunter. The pit above alluded to has recently had a few thorns planted in it; and the circumstance of its being near the oak, with the diversion of the footpath, seem to prove the identity of the tree, in addition to the traditions respecting it." The divergence of the avenue which Mr. Jesse, somewhat enthusiastically, attributes to the respect of William III. for Herne's Oak, must, we fear, be assigned to less poetical

motives. The avenue, we understand, formed the original boundary of the Park in that direction. It diverges at least 120 yards before it reaches Mr. Jesse's Herne's Oak; and there is little doubt that the meadow on the south of the avenue after it diverges, which in our remembrance was a separate enclosure, was formerly a common field. The engraving at the head of this Illustration is a most faithful delineation of the oak which Mr. Jesse calls Herne's. It is now perfectly bare down to the very roots. "In this state," says Mr. Jesse, "it has been, probably, long before the recollection of the oldest person living." He adds, "it has always been protected by a strong fence round it." In our own recollection this tree was unprotected by any fence, and its upper part only was withered and without bark. So far from Herne the hunter having blasted it, it appears to have suffered a premature decay, and it fell down in 1863. This tree was of small girth compared with other trees about it. It was not more than fifteen feet in circumference at the largest part, while there is a magnificent oak at about 200 yards' distance whose girth is nearly thirty feet. The engraving at the end of this notice is a representation of that beautiful tree.

The subject, after the publication of our first edition, was investigated with great acuteness by Dr. Bromet, and his conclusions are given in a very interesting letter in the 'Gentleman's Magazine,' for April, 1841. He collected a variety of testimony from various persons, which went to prove that a tree called Herne's Oak was cut down some sixty years before, and that the tree which now pretends to the honour-" this oak"-had acquired the name in very modern times :-"Its present name was not conferred upon it until some time after the demolition of another old tree, formerly possessing that title." This entirely agrees with our own personal recollections of the talk of Windsor about Herne's Oak. Dr. Bromet justly observes that the "strongest proof" against the claims of Mr. Jesse's oak, is "Collier's map of 1742," which actually points out 'Sir John Falstaff's oak' as being, not in the present avenue, but outside it, near the edge of the pit.

But

The engraving of an oak at the head of Act V. is copied without alteration from a drawing made in the year 1800, by Mr. W. Delamotte, the Professor of Landscape Drawing at Sandhurst, who was a pupil of Benjamin West, under whose care he was placed in 1792. Mr. Delamotte has often heard his master lament that Herne's Oak had been cut down, to the great annoyance, as Mr. West stated, of the King and the royal family. According to Mr. West's account of the circumstance, the King had directed all the trees in the park to be numbered; and upon the representation of the bailiff, whose name was Robinson, that certain trees encumbered the ground, directions were given to fell those trees, and Herne's Oak was amongst the condemned. Mr. West, who was residing at Windsor at the time, traced this oak to the spot where it was conveyed, and obtained a large piece of one of its knotty arms, which Mr. Delamotte has often seen. Mr. Ralph West, however, the eldest son of the President, who, as a youth, was distinguished for his love of art, and his great skill as a draftsman, made a drawing