The associations connected with such a scene are indeed peculiar; the beings of a former age in all the panoply of war re-appear, and (as we gaze upon the architectural beauty of the holy edifices they have left behind them) we love to imagine their steel-clad forms,—their deep devotion; whilst remembrance of their heroic acts in the field is mixed up with the superstition and feelings of their day.
Whilst the youthful Shakespeare gazed upon the mounds, and the mossy tombstones, and the soft flowing river; as he listened to the dreary whisper of the breeze through the trees, a feeling of awe crept over him, and his imagination reverted to the world of spirits—
"When churchyards yawned and graves stood tenantless."
The living stood alone amongst the dead. Slowly he took his way, that extraordinary youth: his thoughts and conceptions seemed a wonder to himself; at one moment he gazed upwards at the o'erhanging firmament, "that majestical roof, fretted with golden fire;" then he stood upon the margin of the flowing river, and watched its waves, as they passed onwards and were lost in the distance, like the hours passing into eternity, and mingling with those before the flood. What were those thoughts at that hour and period of his life? who could write them, or could he himself have described them? We think not—perhaps he may have himself given us something nearly akin. He may have then thought with his own Prospero—
"The cloud capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve;
And like this unsubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made of, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."
Man holds strange communion with himself in such a sanctuary. "The present horror of the time suits with it." There is even a sort of fascination to the spot, and a longing, a yearning after something supernatural. Even the hoot of the owl, or the cloistered flight of the bat, hath a charm in character.
Such, perhaps, were the thoughts of this youth, for he lingered long in the churchyard wrapt in his own imaginings. At length, as he heard an approaching footstep along the path, he slowly turned from the sacred edifice, leaped the wall, and sought the woods of Charlecote.
As young Shakespeare left the churchyard, the person whose approach had interrupted his meditations slowly walked up to the porch of the church.
As the new comer turned, on reaching the porch, the clock from the tower sounded the first hour after midnight; a deep and clanking note which swam over the adjoining fields and was lost in fainter replications. "'Tis the hour," said he, "and now for the man."
The midnight visitor was apparently a tall figure, wearing the long riding cloak of the period, and which completely enveloped his form, whilst his broad-brimmed hat, and the sable plumes with which it was ornamented, as effectually shadowed his features.