It is commonly said that Shakespeare was arrested for poaching in this very park, but the antiquaries have decided that it was the old park of Fulbrook on the Warwick road, where Fulbrook Castle once stood. But it makes little difference where the precise place was. That is of interest only to the Dryasdusts. All we care to know is that Shakespeare wanted a taste of venison which was denied him, and took it without leave or license. The descendant of that squire, my gentle Shakespeare, would give you the entire herd for another speech to "the poor sequestered stag," which you could dash off—no, you never dashed off anything; create? no; evolved? that's nearer it; distilled—there we have it—distilled as the pearls of dew are distilled by nature's sweet influences unknown to man. He would exchange Charlecote estate, man, for another Hamlet or Macbeth, or Lear or Othello, and the world would buy it from him for double the cost of all his broad acres, and esteem itself indebted to him forever. The really precious things of this world are its books.
To do things is not one-half the battle. Carlyle is all wrong about this. To be able to tell the world what you have done, that is the greater accomplishment! Cæsar is the greatest man of the sword because he was in his day the greatest man of the pen. Had he known how to fight only, tradition would have handed down his name for a few generations with a tolerably correct account of his achievements; but now every school-boy fights over again his battles and surmounts the difficulties he surmounted, and so his fame goes on increasing forever.
What a man says too often outlives what he does, even when he does great things. General Grant's fame is not to rest upon the fact that he was successful in killing his fellow-citizens in a civil war, all traces of which America wishes to obliterate, but upon the words he said now and then. His "Push things!" will influence Americans when Vicksburg shall be forgotten. "I propose to fight it out on this line" will be part of the language when few will remember when it was spoken; and "Let us have peace" is Grant's most lasting monument. Truly, both the pen and the tongue are mightier than the sword!
Beautiful Trees.
The drive from Warwick to Leamington is famous, but not comparable to that between Leamington and Coventry. Nowhere else can be found such an avenue of stately trees; for many miles a strip about two hundred feet wide on both sides of the road is wooded. In passing through this plantation many a time did we bless the good, kind, thoughtful soul who generations ago laid posterity under so great an obligation. Dead and gone, his name known to the local antiquary and appreciated by a few of the district, but never heard of beyond it. "So shines a good deed in a naughty world." Receive the warm thanks and God bless you of pilgrims from a land now containing the majority of the English-speaking races, which was not even born when you planted these stately trees. Americans come to bless your memory; for what says Sujata:
"For holy books teach when a man shall plant
Trees for the travellers' shade, and dig a well
For the folks' comfort, and beget a son,
It shall be good for such after their death."