Of deer, Shakspere knew much—too much for his own comfort. In his childhood, there were herds at Fulbrooke,—and when he was older, at Charlecote, at Grove Park, and at Warwick. And probably there were a few roe in the wilder parts of the Forest of Arden, which came down within three miles of Stratford, and covered the whole of the country north of the Avon, out to Nuneaton and Birmingham. We can fancy how the boys stole out to watch the Grevilles and Leycesters and Lucys and Verneys on some great hunting party, and whispered to each other,
"Under this thick-grown brake we'll shroud ourselves,
For through this lawnd anon the deer will come."
But the time of all others in the year that we connect most closely with Shakspere is the sweet spring-time, when the long cold winter—very long and very cold among those undrained clay-lands of Warwickshire—had come to an end. How closely little Will watched for
"daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty";
and for
"violets, cowslips, and pale primroses."
We can fancy the little boys hunting in some sheltered nook in the Welcombe woods for the first primroses; and climbing up Borden Hill just beyond Shottery, perhaps with Anne Hathaway from the pretty old house in the orchards below, to the bank—the only one in the neighborhood,—
"where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips, and the nodding violet grows";
or wandering over the flat sunny meadows along the Avon valley, picking cowslips, and looking into each tiny yellow bell for the spots in their gold coats,—
"Those be rubies, fairy favors,
In those freckles live their savors,"—