The house, we have said, is situated on the river bank, and has once been occupied by a rich merchant, but is now let out in compartments. You ascend to the chamber which Shakespeare occupies, by a broad carved, oaken staircase, and advance along a vast passage which has rooms on either side.
The autumn wind sighs, and soughs, in this old dwelling, as it rushes through the long passages from the water side. In such room our Shakespeare sits and writes. Sometime he stops and considers for a space—thinks, and thinks deeply. Then again his pen glides swiftly over the paper before him, and he writes like the wind. The table at which he is seated is but little removed from the embayment of the window, and his eye, ever and anon, glances out upon the rushing tide, and wanders over the opposite landscape, then consisting of green meadows and stunted trees.
As he thus looks out upon the river, he sees boats filled with gay parties, cloaked and ruffed, and rapiered, attended by other boats, carrying musicians, who make the air resound with their melody—a gay and gallant sight, for these are courtiers going to Greenwich, or Mortlake, or Chelsea, such excursions being common in Elizabeth's day.
As the poet writes, there seems no effort in the composition. His thoughts flow, for the most part, so easily, that it seems but the careless noting down of whatever comes uppermost. He writes as his own Falstaff speaks—as if almost without the trouble of thought. Anon, he smiles and pauses; then he rises from his high-backed chair, takes a turn through the room, and gives utterance to the conceit which has suddenly struck him. The actor predominates over the author at such a moment, and he recites aloud the recent thought, and which his "often rumination" upon, the extravagance of action, amongst his associates, has conjured up.
CHAPTER LIII.
THE POET AND HIS PATRON.
Whilst he gives his thoughts tongue, the door opens, and a bulky form seems to fill up the entrance—no other, indeed, than our old Stratford acquaintance John Froth.
"Ah! thou mad compound," said Froth, "and is such thy advice to the fraternity of the Blackfriars?"
"It is," returned Shakespeare.