through the Park; close to the entrance-gate it is crossed by a pretty bridge, which heightens the striking effect of the landscape.
The whole neighbourhood, indeed, between Wellsbourne and Stratford, is full of beauty; the land seems passing rich; while, here and there, distant glances are caught of the Avon, or it accompanies the wayfarer along the road; there are few more delightful walks in England—and none so pregnant with “happy and glorious” associations. Amid these dells and by these hill-sides, was Shakspere taught of Nature.
“Here, as with honey gathered from the rock,
She fed the little prattler, and with songs
Oft sooth’d his wondering ears; with deep delight
On her soft lap he sat and caught the sounds.”
Every step to the pilgrim seems “hallowed ground;” he crosses the bridge, built by Sir Hugh Clopton during the reign of the 7th Harry, and is at once “at home” with Shakspere, who must have trodden upon these stones daily when a boy, and passed them often during his occasional visits to his birth-place, or when—“good easy man”—he retired hither from busy life, to die like the deer where he was roused. The very mystery in which his whole career seems inextricably involved, gives the fancy greater freedom: there is no check upon imagination as we tread the streets of the Avon’s old town of Stratford, muse in the small chamber where he was born, think in the school-house where he was taught, or ponder in the church where his bones have lain for two centuries and a half, “unmoved.”
Yet the often-quoted passage from Steevens is almost as correct to-day as it was when he wrote it—notwithstanding every “hole and corner” in England has been ransacked in the hope to find something that concerns him—“all that is known with any degree of certainty concerning Shakspere 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.”
Of all the poet wrote, during a long and busy life, no scrap remains to our time; and of his autographs but five are known to exist, three of which are affixed to his will in the Prerogative Office, Doctors’ Commons. One of the latter is written in one corner of the three sheets of paper which form that document, and is much injured in consequence, the christian name only being in any degree perfect; the other two are rather cramped in style, and one is much confused in the last letters, as if an error had been made in the spelling. The finest and clearest autograph is that upon the fly-leaf of the Montaigne of Florio, in the British Museum, which has been known but a few years, and was secured to the National Library at the cost of one hundred pounds. The fifth is in the Library of the City of London at Guildhall, affixed to a deed of bargain and sale of a dwelling-house, in the precinct of Blackfriars, to one Henry Walker, dated 11th March 1613; it is written on the slip of parchment inserted to hold the seal, and is therefore cramped; it, however, cost the Corporation of London forty-five pounds more than was paid for that now in the British Museum. There was a sixth known to be in existence to the counterpart of this deed, of which a fac-simile was published by Malone, and which came into the possession of Garrick, at whose death it could not be found.
The small chamber of the humble house in which he was born is still preserved, comparatively unimpaired. It stands in Henley-street, and is kept as “a show house,” by an aged woman who lives in the back apartments. It was some years ago a butcher’s shop, and in possession of Mrs. Hart, a lineal descendant of Shakspere by his sister’s side, who, upon leaving the house, whitewashed the room to obliterate the names which were pencilled over the walls by the many visitors. As this was done “at the last pinch” in the evening before quitting, no size was mixed with the wash, and the next occupant, with great patience, re-washed the walls, took off the coat of white, and the pencilled names became again visible; among them are those of Byron, Scott, the Countess Guccioli, Washington Irving, and a host of others; the effect of the pencilling upon the walls and ceiling, which is very low, is singularly curious: it looks as if they were covered with fine spider-web, so very close is the writing of the various names.
Of Shakspere’s house, “New Place,” where he retired after the turmoil of London life, in the gardens of which he planted the famous mulberry-tree, and from whence he was borne to his last home in the venerable church, was totally destroyed in 1757 by a certain “Rev. Mr. Gastrell,” whose want of reverence to all the world holds dear, will ever deprive his name of any other share of it than the prefix it bears. The whole history of the transaction is disgraceful in the highest degree—the more so as the man was in holy orders. The house was sold to him in 1751, on the death of Sir Hugh Clopton, who had resided in it. Five years afterwards, Gastrell became tired of showing the mulberry-tree, which Sir Hugh delighted in possessing, and by way of saving himself any further trouble, as well as to vex the Stratford people, with whom he was not on good terms, he cut it down, and sold it for firewood. In the year following he rased the house to the ground for the most discreditable of reasons—a refusal to pay poor’s rates.
But the church—the church in which, in 1564, he was baptised, and where in 1616, just 52 years afterwards, he was buried—still exists, not only uninjured but skilfully and judiciously renovated. Here the great object of attraction is the famous bust, “by Gerard Johnson.” It was executed, doubtless, by a literal copyist, who, if he had not the high talent of a great sculptor who endows his work with traces of the mind, will, at least, faithfully preserve all peculiarities of form and feature. The head as here given, if not lit up with the soul of the great Poet, is not unworthy of his calmer moments; the forehead is ample, and the brain large, well-developed, and altogether characteristic of that evenness of temper which, combined with unequalled genius, gave him the title of “the gentle Shakspere.” The great breadth of the upper lip, which might be objected to as unnatural, finds its fellow in that of another genius, the Shakspere of the North—Walter Scott.