SHAKSPEARE.

[Illustration]

There are two reasons why I proposed to omit the homes and haunts of

Shakspeare from the present volumes; the first, because I have found it

impossible to include the dramatic poets in the compass of these two,

and must reserve them for a third; and the second, because I have

already, in my Visits to Remarkable Places (vol. i.), devoted a

considerable article to almost the only place where his homes and haunts

still remain, Stratford-upon-Avon. A very little reflection, however,

convinced me that an entire omission of the haunts of this great

national poet from these first two volumes would be received as a

disappointment by a numerous class of readers. Shakspeare is not merely

a dramatic poet. Great and peerless as is his dramatic fame, the very

elements, not of dramatic art and fame alone, but of universal poetry,

and that of the highest order, are so diffused throughout all his works,

that the character of poet soars above the character of dramatist in

him, like some heaven-climbing tower above a glorious church. Every

line, almost every word, is a living mass of poetry; these are scattered

through the works of all authors as such exponents of their deepest

sentiments as they can not command themselves. They are like the

branches, the buds, the flowers and leaves of a great tree of poetry,

making a magnificent whole, and rich and beautiful as nature itself,

down to its minutest portions. To leave out Shakspeare were, indeed, to

play Hamlet with the part of Hamlet himself omitted; it were to invite

guests, and get the host to absent himself. In the Walhalla of British

poetry, the statue of Shakspeare must be first admitted and placed in

the center, before gradations and classifications are thought of. He is

the universal genius, whose presence and spirit must and will pervade

the whole place.

And yet, where are the homes and haunts of Shakspeare in London? Like

those of a thousand other remarkable men, in the accidents and the

growth of this great city they are swept away. Fires and renovation have

carried every thing before them. If the fame of men depended on bricks

and mortar, what reputations would have been extinguished within the

last two centuries in London! In no place in the world have the violent

necessities of a rapid and immense development paid so little respect to

the "local habitations" of great names. The very resting-places and

tombs of many are destroyed, and their bones, like those of Chatterton,

have been scattered by the spades of the unlettered laborer.

We may suppose that Shakspeare, on his coming up to London, would reside

near the theaters where he sought his livelihood. The first appears to

have been that of Blackfriars. It has long been clean gone, and its

locality is now occupied by Play-house-yard, near Apothecaries' Hall,

and the dense buildings around. Play-house-yard derives its name from

the old play-house. In Knight's London, it is suggested that this

theater might be pulled down soon after the permanent close of the

theaters during the Commonwealth, by the Puritans; but the real old

theater of Shakspeare must, had that not been the case, have perished

entirely in the fire of London, which cleared all this ground, from

Tower-street to the Temple. If Shakspeare ever held horses at the

theater door on his first coming to town, it would be here, for here he

seems to have been first engaged. The idea of his holding horses at a

theater door, bold and active fellow as he had shown himself in his

deer-stealing exploits, and with friends and acquaintances in town, has

been scouted, especially as he was then a full-grown man of

twenty-three. The thing, however, is by no means improbable. Shakspeare

was most likely as independent as he was clever and active. On arriving

in town, and seeing an old acquaintance, Thomas Green, at this theater,

he might, like other remarkable men who have made their way to eminence

in London, be ready to turn his hand to any thing till something better

turned up. Green, who was a player, might be quite willing to introduce

Shakspeare into that character and the theater; but it had yet to be

proved that Shakspeare could make an actor of himself, and, till

opportunity offered, what so likely to seize the attention of a hanger

about the theater as the want of a careful horse-holder for those who

came there in such style, which appears was then common enough. We have

the statement from Sir William Davenant, and therefore from a

cotemporary, admirer, and assumed relative. We are told that the

speculation was not a bad one. Shakspeare, by his superior age and

carefulness, soon engrossed all this business, and had to employ those

boys, who had before been acting on their own account, as his

subordinates; whence they acquired and retained, long after he had

mounted into an actor himself, within the theater, the name of

Shakspeare's boys. That he became "an actor at one of the play-houses,

and did act exceedingly well," Aubrey tells us. He is supposed to have

acted Old Knowell in Ben Jonson's "Every Man in his Humor;" and Oldys

tells us that a relative of Shakspeare, then in advanced age, but who in

his youth had been in the habit of visiting London for the purpose of

seeing him act in some of his own plays, told Mr. Jones, of Tarbeck,

that "he had a faint recollection of having once seen him act a part in

one of his own comedies, wherein, being to personate a decrepit old man,

he wore a long beard, and appeared so weak and drooping, and unable to

walk, that he was forced to be supported, and carried by another person

to a table, at which he was seated among some company who were eating,

and one of them sang a song." This is supposed to have been in the

character of Adam, in "As You Like It," and hence it has been inferred,

in connection with his acting the Ghost in Hamlet, and Old Knowell, that

he took chiefly old or elderly characters.

Every glimpse of this extraordinary man, who, however much he might have

been acknowledged and estimated in his own day, certainly lived long

before his time, is deeply interesting. That he was estimated highly we

know from Jonson himself:

"Sweet swan of Avon, what a sight it were

To see thee in our waters yet appear,

And make those flights upon the banks of Thames

That did so take Eliza and our James."

When the two monarchs under whom Shakspeare lived admired and patronized

him, we may be sure that Shakspeare's great merits were perceived, and

that vividly, though the age had not that intellectual expansion which

could enable it to rise above its prejudices against a player, and

comprehend that Shakspeare's dramas were not merely the most wonderful

dramas, but the most wonderful expositions of human life and nature that

had ever appeared. People were too busy enjoying the splendid scenes

presented to them by this great genius, to note down for the

gratification of posterity the dayly doings, connections, and

whereabouts of the man with whom they were so familiar. He grew rich,

however, by their flocking to his theater, and disappeared from among

them.

In this theater of Blackfriars he rose to great popularity both as an

actor and dramatic author, and became a proprietor. It was under the

management of Richard Burbage, who was also a shareholder in the Globe

Theater at Bankside. To the theater at Bankside Shakspeare also

transferred himself, and there he became, in 1603, the lessee. There he

seems to have continued about ten years, or till 1613; having, however,

so early as 1597, purchased one of the best houses in his native town of

Stratford, repaired and improved it, and that so much that he named it

New Place. To this, as his proper home, he yearly retired when the

theatrical season closed; and having made a comfortable fortune, when

the theater was burned down in 1613, retired from public life

altogether.

Bankside is a spot of interest, because Shakspeare lived there many

years during the time he was in London. It is that portion of Southwark

lying on the river side between the bridges of Blackfriars and

Southwark. This ground was then wholly devoted to public amusements,

such as they were. It was a place of public gardens, play-houses, and

worse places. Paris Garden was one of the most famous resorts of the

metropolis. There were the bear-gardens, where Elizabeth, her nobles,

and ladies used to go and solace themselves with that elegant sport,

bear-baiting. There, also, was the Globe Theater, of which Shakspeare

became licensed proprietor, and near which he lived. The theater was an

octagon wooden building, which has been made familiar by many engravings

of it. In Henry the Fifth, Shakspeare alludes to its shape and material:

"Can this cockpit hold

The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram

Within this _wooden_ O the very casques

That did affright the air at Agincourt?"

It was not much to be wondered at that this wooden globe should get

consumed with fire, which it did, as I have already stated, in 1613.

Shakspeare's play of Henry VIII. was acting, a crowded and brilliant

company was present, and among the rest Ben Jonson, when in the very

first act, where, according to the stage directions, "drums and

trumpets, chambers discharged," cannons were fired, the ignited wadding

flew into the thatch of the building, and the whole place was soon in

flames. Sir Henry Wotton thus describes the scene in a letter to his

nephew: "Now, to let matters of state sleep, I will entertain you at

present with what happened this week at the Bankside. The king's players

had a new play, called All is True, representing some principal pieces

from the reign of Henry VIII., which was set forth with many

extraordinary circumstances of pomp and majesty, even to the matting of

the stage; the knights of the order, with their Georges and garters; the

guards, with their embroidered coats, and the like; sufficient, in

truth, within a while, to make greatness very familiar, if not

ridiculous. Now, King Henry making a mask at Cardinal Wolsey's house,

and certain cannons being shot off at his entry, some of the paper or

other stuff wherewith one of them was stopped, did light on the thatch,

where, being thought at first but an idle smoke, and their eyes more

attentive to the show, it kindled inwardly and ran round like a train,

consuming within an hour the whole house to the very ground. This was

the fatal period of that virtuous fabric, wherein yet nothing did perish

but wood and straw and a few forsaken cloaks; only one man had his

breeches set on fire, that perhaps had broiled him, if he had not, by

the benefit of a provident wit, put it out with bottle ale."

Fires seem to have menaced Shakspeare on all sides, and he had narrow

escapes. As there is no mention of his name in the accounts of the Globe

Theater in 1613, nor any in his will, it is pretty clear that he had

retired from the proprietorship of the Globe before, and escaped that

loss; but in the very year after it was burned down, there was a

dreadful fire in Stratford, which consumed a good part of the town, and

put his own house into extreme danger.

These were the scenes where Shakspeare acted, for which he wrote his

dramas, and where, like a careful and thriving man as he was, he made a

fortune before he was forty, calculated to be equal to £1000 a year at

present. He had a brother, also, on the stage at the same time with

himself, who died in 1607, and was buried in St. Savior's Church,

Southwark, where his name is entered in the parish register as "Edmund

Shakspeare, a player."

The place where he was accustomed particularly to resort for social

recreation was the Mermaid Tavern, Friday street, Cheapside. This was

the wits' house for a long period. There a club for _beaux esprits_ was

established by Sir Walter Raleigh, and here came, in their several days

and times, Spenser, Shakspeare, Philip Sidney, Jonson, Beaumont and

Fletcher, Massinger, Marlowe, Selden, Cotton, Carew, Martin, Donne,

Wotton, and all the brave spirits of those ages. Here Jonson and

Shakspeare used to shine out by the brilliancy of their powers, and in

their "wit combats," in which Fuller describes Jonson as a _Spanish

great galleon_, and Shakspeare as the _English man-of-war_. "Master

Jonson, like the former, was built far higher in learning; solid, but

slow in his performances. Shakspeare, with the English man-of-war,

lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack

about, and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and

his invention." Enough has been said of this celebrated club by a

variety of writers. There can be no doubt that there wit and merriment

abounded to that degree, that, as Beaumont has said in his epistle to

Jonson, one of their meetings was enough to make up for all the

stupidity of the city for three days past, and supply it for long to

come; to make the worst companions right witty, and "downright fools

more wise." There is as little doubt, however, that, with Jonson in the

chair, drinking would be as pre-eminent as the wit. The verses which he

had inscribed over the door of the Apollo room, at the Devil Tavern,

another of their resorts, are, spite of all vindications by ingenious

pens, too indicative of that.

"Welcome all who lead or follow

To the oracle of Apollo:

Here he speaks out of his pottle,

Or the tin-pot, his tower bottle:

All his answers are divine;

Truth itself doth flow like wine.

Hang up all the poor hop-drinkers,

Cries old Sam, the king of skinkers.

He the half of life abuses

That sits watering with the Muses,

Those dull gods no good can mean us:

Wine--it is the cream of Venus,

And the poet's horse accounted:

Ply it, and you all are mounted.

'Tis the true Phoebian liquor,

Cheers the brain, makes it the quicker;

Pays all debts, cures all diseases,

And at once the senses pleases.

Welcome all who lead or follow

To the oracle of Apollo."

There is not any reason to believe that Shakspeare, lover of wit and

jollity as he was, was a practical upholder of this pernicious doctrine.

He may often make his characters speak in this manner, but personally he

retired as soon as he could from this bacchanal life to his own quiet

hearth at Stratford; and if we are to believe his sonnets addressed to

his wife, and they possess the tone of a deep and real sentiment, he

seriously rued the orgies in which he had participated.

"O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide,

The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,

That did not better for my life provide

Than public means which public manners breeds:

Hence comes it that my name receives a brand,

And almost thence my nature is subdued

To what it works in, like the dyer's hand;

Pity me, then, and wish I were renewed.

While, like a willing patient, I will drink

Potions of eysell,[1] 'gainst my strong infection.

No bitterness that I will bitter think,

No double penance to correct correction.

Pity me, then, dear friend, and I assure ye

Even that your pity is enough to cure me."

We can not read these and many other portions of his sonnets, we can not

see Shakspeare retiring every year, and as soon as able, altogether from

the bacchanalian and dissipated habits of the literary men of the day,

to the peaceful place of his birth, and the purity of his wedded home,

without respecting his moral character as much as we admire his genius.

The praises and the practice of drunkenness by literary men, and poets

especially, have entailed infinite mischief on themselves and on their

followers. What woes and degradations are connected with the history of

brilliant men about town, which have tended to stamp the general

literary character with the brand of improvidence and disrespect--jails,

deaths, picking out of gutters, sponging-houses, and domestic

misery--how thickly do all these rise on our view as we look back

through the history of men of genius, the direct result of the absurd

rant about drinking and debauch! With what a beautiful purity do the

names of the greatest geniuses of all rise above these details, like the

calm spires of churches through the fogs and smokes of London! How

cheering is it to see the number of these grow with the growth of years!

Shakspeare, Spenser, Sidney, Milton, Cowper, Scott, Wordsworth, Southey,

Shelley, have all been sober and domestic men; and the sanction which

they have given by their practice to the proprieties of life, will

confer on all future ages blessings as ample as the public truths of

their teaching. The Mermaid Tavern, like the other haunts of

Shakspeare, has disappeared. It was swept away by the fire. If any

traces of his haunts remain, they must be in the houses of the great,

where he was accustomed to visit, as those of the Lords Southampton,

Leicester, Pembroke, Montgomery, and others. These are, however, now all

either gone, or so cut up and metamorphosed that it were vain to look

for them as abodes hallowed by the footsteps of Shakspeare. If it be

true that he was commanded to read his play of Falstaff in love--the

Merry Wives of Windsor--to Queen Elizabeth, it would probably be at

Whitehall or St. James's, for Somerset House was comparatively little

occupied by her.

The very places in London more particularly illustrated by his genius

have too much followed the fate of those in which he lived. It is true,

the Tower, Westminster Palace, and some other of those public buildings

and old localities where the scenes of his national dramas are laid,

still remain, spite of time and change; and the sites of others, though

now covered with wildernesses of fresh houses, may be identified. But

The Boar's Head in East Cheap is annihilated; it, too, fell in the great

fire, and the modern improvements thereabout, the erection of new London

Bridge, and the cutting of King William-street, have swept away nearly

all remaining marks of the neighborhood. It is supposed that the present

statue of William IV. stands not very far from the spot where Hal

reveled and Sir John swaggered and drank sack.

Over London, and many a spot in and about it, as well as over a thousand

later towns, forests, and mountains, of this and other countries,

wherever civilized man has played his part, will the genius of

Shakspeare cast an undying glory; but to see the actual traces of his

existence we must resort to the place of his nativity and death. There

still stand the house and the room in which he was born; there stands

the house in which he wooed his Ann Hathaway, and the old garden in

which he walked with her. There stands his tomb, to which the great, and

the wise, and the gifted from all regions of the world have made

pilgrimage, followed by millions of those who would be thought so, the

frivolous and the empty; but all paying homage, by the force of reason,

or the force of fashion, vanity and imitation, to the universal

interpreter of humanity. It is well that the slow change of a country

town has permitted the spirit of veneration to alight there, and cast

its protecting wings over the earthly traces of that existence which

diffused itself as a second life through all the realms of intellect.

There is nothing missing of Shakspeare's there but the house which he

built, and the mulberry-tree which he planted. The tree was hewn down,

the house was pulled down and dispersed piecemeal, by the infamous

parson Gastrell, who thus "damned himself to eternal fame" more

thoroughly than the fool who fired the Temple of Diana. There, only a

few miles distant, is the stately hall of Charlecote, whither the

youthful poacher of Parnassus was carried before the unlucky knight.

There, too, and, oh shame! shame to England, shame to the lovers of

Shakspeare, shame to those who annually turn Stratford and their club

into a regular "Eatanswill," on pretense of honoring Shakspeare; there,

too, live the descendants of the nearest relative of Shakspeare--of his

sister Joan--in unnoticed and unmitigated poverty! Seven years ago, on

my visit to this place, I pointed out this fact; and now, that the

disgraceful fact still remains, I will once more record the words I then

wrote.

"As I went to Shottry, I met with a little incident, which interested me

greatly by its unexpectedness. As I was about to pass over a stile, at

the end of Stratford, into the fields leading to that village, I saw the

master of the national school mustering his scholars to their tasks. I

stopped, being pleased with the look of the old man, and said, 'You

seem to have a considerable number of lads here; shall you raise another

Shakspeare from among them, think you?' 'Why,' replied the master, 'I

have a Shakspeare now in the school.' I knew that Shakspeare had no

descendants beyond the second generation, and I was not aware that there

was any of his family remaining. But it seems that the posterity of his

sister, Joan Hart, who is mentioned in his will, yet exist; part under

her marriage name of Hart, at Tewkesbury, and a family in Stratford, of

the name of Smith.

"'I have a Shakspeare here,' said the master, with evident pride and

pleasure. 'Here, boys, here!' He quickly mustered his laddish troop in a

row, and said to me, 'There now, sir, can you tell which is a

Shakspeare?' I glanced my eye along the line, and instantly fixing it on

one boy, said, 'That is the Shakspeare.' 'You are right,' said the

master, 'that is the Shakspeare; the Shakspeare cast of countenance is

there. That is William Shakspeare Smith, a lineal descendant of the

poet's sister.'

"The lad was a fine lad of, perhaps, ten years of age; and, certainly,

the resemblance to the bust of Shakspeare in the church at Stratford is

wonderful, considering he is not descended from Shakspeare himself, but

from his sister; and that the seventh in descent. What is odd enough is,

whether it be mere accident or not, that the color of the lad's eyes, a

light hazel, is the very same as that given to those of the Shakspeare

bust, which, it is well known, was originally colored, and of which

exact copies remain.

"I gave the boy sixpence, telling him I hoped he would make as great a

man as his ancestor--the best term I could lay hold of for the

relationship, though not the true one. The boy's eyes sparkled at the

sight of the money, and the healthful, joyous color rushed into his

cheeks; his fingers continued making acquaintance with so large a piece

of money in his pocket, and the sensation created by so great an event

in the school was evident. It sounded oddly enough, as I was passing

along the street in the evening, to hear some of the same schoolboys say

one to another, 'That is the gentleman who gave Bill Shakspeare

sixpence.'

"Which of all the host of admirers of Shakspeare, who has plenty of

money, and does not know what to do with it, will think of giving that

lad, one of the nearest representatives of the great poet, an education,

and a fair chance to raise himself in the world? The boy's father is a

poor man; if I be not fanciful, partaking somewhat of the Shakspeare

physiognomy,[2] but also keeps a small shop, and ekes out his profits by

making his house a 'Tom-and-Jerry.' He has other children, and

complained of misfortune. He said that some years ago Sir Richard

Phillips had been there, and promised to interest the public about him,

but that he never heard any more of it. Of the man's merits or demerits

I know nothing: I only know that in the place of Shakspeare's birth, and

where the town is full of the 'signs' of his glory; and where Garrick

made that pompous jubilee, hailing Shakspeare as a demi-god, and calling

him 'the god of our idolatry;' and where thousands, and even millions,

flock to do homage to the shrine of this demi-god, and pour out deluges

of verse, of the most extravagant and sentimental nature, in the public

albums; there, as is usual in such cases, the nearest of blood to the

object of such vast enthusiasm are poor and despised: the flood of

public admiration, at its most towering height, in its most vehement

current, never for a moment winds its course in the slightest degree to

visit them with its refreshment; nor, of the thousands of pounds spent

in the practice of this devotion, does one bodle drop into their

pockets.

"Garrick, as I have observed, once

'Called the world to worship on the banks

Of Avon, famed in song. Ah, pleasant proof

That piety has still in human hearts

Some place--a spark or two not yet extinct.

The mulberry-tree was hung with blooming wreaths,

The mulberry-tree stood center of the dance,

The mulberry-tree was hymn'd with dulcet airs,

And from his touchwood trunk the mulberry-tree

Supplied such relics as devotion holds

Still sacred, and preserves with pious care.

So 'twas an hallowed time. Decorum reign'd,

And mirth without offense. No few return'd

Doubtless much edified, and all refresh'd.'

_Cowper's Task_, b. vi.

"But it does not appear that Garrick and his fellow-worshipers troubled

themselves at all about the descendants of the poet's sister; the

object, in fact, seemed at the moment to be rather to worship Garrick

than Shakspeare; how, then, could any ray of sympathy diverge from two

'demi-gods' to the humble relatives of one of them? And why should it? I

hear honest utilitarians asking, why? What should lead the ragged

descendants of poets and philosophers to forsake self-dependence, and

look to the admirers of their ancestors for benefit? What a shocking

thing, if they should, especially in a nation which ennobles whole lines

forever, and grants immense estates in perpetuity for the exploit of

some man who has won a battle that had better never have been fought!

What! shall such men, and shall troops of lawyers, who have truckled to

the government of the day, and become the tools of despotism in a

country dreaming that it is free--shall men who have merely piled up

heaps of coin, and purchased large tracts of earth, by plodding in the

city dens of gain, or dodging on the Stock Exchange--shall such men be

ennobled, and their line forever, and shall men who have left a legacy

of immortal mind to their country leave also to their families an

exclusive poverty and neglect? Will our very philosophical utilitarian

tell us why this should be?

"It might, also, be whispered, that it would not be much more irrational

to extend some of that enthusiasm and money, which are now wasted on

empty rooms and spurious musty relics, to at least trying to benefit and

raise in the scale of society beings who have the national honor to be

relics and mementos of the person worshiped, as well as to old chairs,

and whitewashed butchers' shops. Does it never occur to the votaries of

Shakspeare, that these are _the only sentient, conscious, and rational

things connected with his memory_ which can feel a living sense of the

honor conferred on him, and possess a grateful knowledge that the mighty

poet of their house has not sung for them in vain, and that they only,

in a world overshadowed with his glory, are not unsoothed by its

visitings?"[3]

Seven years have gone over since this was written, and what has been the

effect? The Shakspeare Club have gone down to Stratford, and feasted and

guzzled _in honor of Shakspeare_, and the _representatives_ of

Shakspeare in the place have been left in their poverty. There seems to

be some odd association of ideas in the minds of Englishmen on the

subject of doing honor to genius. To reward warriors, and lawyers, and

politicians, places, titles, and estates are given. To reward poets and

philosophers, the property which they honestly, and with _the toil of

their whole lives_, create, is taken from them, and that which should

form an estate for their descendants to all posterity, and become a

monument of fame to the nation, is conferred on booksellers. The

copyright of authors, or, in other words, the right to the property

which they made, was taken away in the reign of Queen Anne, "_for the

benefit of literature_;" so says the act. Let the same principle, in

God's name, be carried out into all other professions, and we shall soon

come to an understanding on the subject. Take a lord's or a squire's

land from him and his family forever, after a given number of years,

_for the benefit of aristocracy_; take the farmer's plow and team, his

harrows and his corn, _for the benefit of agriculture_; take the

mill-owner's mills, with all their spinning-jennies, and their cotton,

and their wool, and their silk, and their own new inventions, for the

benefit of manufacturing; take the merchant's ships and their cargoes,

the shopkeeper's shop and his stores, the lawyer's parchment and his

fees, the physician's and surgeon's physic and fees, for the benefit of

commerce, trade, law, and physic: and let the clergy suffer no injury of

neglect in this respect; let their churches, and their glebes, and

tithes, be taken for the benefit of religion; let them all go shares

with the authors in this beautiful system of justice and encouragement,

and then the whole posse will soon put their heads together, and give

back to the author his rights, while they take care of their own.

But till this be done--so long as the children and descendants, and

nearest successors of the author are robbed by the state, while the poet

and philosopher crown their country with glory, and fill it with

happiness, and their country in return brands their children with

disgrace, and fills them with emptiness--while they go in rags, and the

bookseller in broad-cloth--in leanness, and the bookseller, endowed by

the state with the riches of their ancestors, in jollity and fat--so

long let those who are anxious to do honor to the glorious names of our

literature, honor them with some show of common sense and common

feeling. Honor Shakspeare, indeed! Has he not honored himself

sufficiently? What says John Milton, another glorious son of the Muse?

"What needs my Shakspeare for his honor'd bones,

The labor of an age in piled stones?

Or that his hallowed reliques should be hid

Under a star-ypointing pyramid?

Dear son of memory, great heir of fame!

What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name?

Thou in our wonder and astonishment

Hath built thyself a long-lived monument."

But if this honor be not needed, what needs there for our Shakspeare,

the still weaker witness of his name, of guzzling and gormandizing? Is

there any the remotest connection between the achievements of pure

intellect and seven-gallon barrel stomachs of anniversary topers?

Between the still labors of a divine imagination, and the uproarious

riot of a public feed when half-seas over? Let mock turtle do honor to

mock heroes; but what has Shakspeare, and the honor of Shakspeare, to do

with the "hip! hips!" and the swilling of mere herds of literary swine?

To become part and parcel of such a herd, were Dickens and Talfourd

invited down to Stratford this very year. They wisely eschewed the

honor.

Let us suppose, for a moment, that the spirit of Shakspeare could hear

the hiccoughings of the crew assembled in his name, to honor him

forsooth! If he were permitted to descend from the serene glory of his

seventh heaven, and appeared at the door of their dining-room with the

meager descendants of the Shakspeare family crowding sadly behind him,

what are the indignant words that he would address to the flushed and

bloated throng of his _soi-disant_ worshipers? They have been already

addressed to like ears by the great Master of love, and of the

philosophy of true honor. "I was an hungered, and ye gave me no meat; I

was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me

not in; naked, and ye clothed me not; sick, and in prison, and ye

visited me not. * * * _Inasmuch as ye did it not to the least of these,

ye did it not to me._"[4] No, the sycophantic humbugs never did it to

Shakspeare. What cares he, in his seventh heaven of glory and of poetry,

for their guzzlings? What have they to do with him or his honor? Is it

not a precious imposture, to make a feast to a man's honor, and not to

invite to it his nearest relatives, especially when they live at the

next door? In the name of the national reputation, let this wretched

and egotistic farce be put down by the good sense of the British public.

If these people will not honor Shakspeare by honoring his family, let

them at least abstain from insulting their poverty and their neglect by

this public parade, and this devouring of joints.

Hear what Robert Southey says: "The last descendants of Milton died in

poverty. The descendants of Shakspeare[5] are living in poverty, and in

the lowest condition of life. Is this just to these individuals? Is it

grateful to those who are the pride and boast of their country? Is it

honorable or becoming to us as a nation, holding--the better part of us

assuredly, and the majority affecting to hold--the names of Shakspeare

and Milton in veneration? To have placed the descendants of Shakspeare

and Milton in respectability and comfort in that sphere of life where,

with a full provision for our natural wants and social enjoyments, free

scope is given to the growth of our intellectual and immortal part,

simple justice was all that was required--only that they should have

possessed the perpetual copyright of their ancestors' works--only that

they should not have been deprived of their proper inheritance."[6]

The time is evidently not yet come for setting this great matter right;

for doing this great act of justice toward the teachers of the world and

glorifiers of our national name; for executing this due redress. We have

yet much to learn from those divine minds, whom, in Southey's words, we

profess to venerate. But still the public mind is not destitute of its

glimmerings of the truth, and its responsibilities. Since I wrote the

pages quoted, numerous individuals have written to inquire if nothing

can be done to remove the opprobrium of our treatment to the Shakspeare

family. Many visitors have desired to see the boy thus pointed out, and

have made him presents, but he still remains unprovided for. A

clergyman, about two years ago, wrote to me from the west of England,

expressing the interest he felt in this youth, whom he had seen at

Stratford, and his anxious desire to have a subscription raised to

educate him, and put him into some honorable way of life. He begged me

to make a move, in which he would zealously co-operate, to interest a

sufficient number of literary and influential individuals to agitate the

question, and commence the subscription. I made the attempt, but in

vain. Some parties gave professions which ended in nothing, others which

began in nothing; some doubted the chance of success, and some

successfully chanced to doubt. One of the first persons whom I was

naturally induced to write to for advice and co-operation was Mr.

Charles Knight. Mr. Charles Knight had recently published a voluminous

edition of Shakspeare's works, with elaborate criticisms and life; his

apparent enthusiasm about Shakspeare suggested him instantly as a most

likely person to unite in a plan for vindicating the honor of the nation

toward the living representatives of the poet. I begged him to say

whether he would do so, and whether he would be good enough to point out

any means or parties by which this might be prosecuted. This enthusiast

of Shakspearian honors did not even observe the ordinary courtesy of a

reply. On the contrary, the Countess of Lovelace, the worthy

representative of another great bard, expressed the readiest and most

zealous desire to move all those within the reach of her influence in

the matter. But, in a word, it did not succeed. The honor of Shakspeare

lay too much on the national tongue instead of on the heart, yet to

procure justice to the living members of his family.

Let us still trust that that time will come. I will not believe that

this great and intellectual nation, which has given an estate and titles

to the family of Marlborough, and the same to the family of Wellington,

will refuse all such marks of honor to the Shakspeare family. Shall the

heroes of the sword alone be rewarded? Shall the heroes of the pen,

those far nobler and diviner heroes, be treated with a penniless

contempt? In this nation the worship of military honors is fast

subsiding, the perception of the greatness and beneficence of intellect

is fast growing. We are coming to see that it is out of our immortal

minds, and not out of our swords and cannons, that our highest, purest,

and most imperishable glory has grown and will grow. The people every

day are more and more coming to this knowledge, and making it felt by

government and the world. Let the people, then, wait no longer of

Shakspeare clubs; let them leave them to their bottles and their beef;

let them wait of no dilettanti authors, commentators, or scribbling

publishers; let them wait of no governments, but let the people stand

forward, and pay a national honor to Shakspeare, and in Shakspeare to

justice and to intellect. The money, I have said, which is spent in

visiting the trumpery collected as his at Stratford would have purchased

a large estate for the descendants of the Shakspeare family. That has

not been done, and never will be done; but a penny a piece from every

person in this kingdom, who has derived days and months of delight from

the pages of Shakspeare, would purchase an estate equal to that of

Strathfieldsaye, or of Blenheim. What a glorious tribute would this be

from the people of England to their great dramatic poet--the greatest

dramatic poet in the world! How far would it rise above the tributes to

violence and bloodshed! The tribute of a nation's love to pure and

godlike intellect! This estate should not be appropriated on the feudal

principle of primogeniture; should not be the estate of one, but of the

family; should be vested in trustees chosen by the people, to educate,

and honorably settle in the world _every_ son and daughter of the

Shakspearian family; and to support and comfort the old age of the

unfortunate and decrepit of it. That it should not encourage idleness

and a mischievous dependence, all such persons, when educated and

endowed with a sufficient sum to enable them to make their way in the

world, should be left so to make their way. The nation would then have

discharged its parental duties toward them, and they could expect no

more. They should be educated to expect no more, and more should not be

extended to them, except in case of utter misfortune or destitution, and

then only on a scale that should be in itself no temptation.

Such an estate, founded by the people, would be the noblest monument

ever yet erected to any man, or on any occasion. Shakspeare has a decent

monument at Stratford, and an indifferent one in Westminster Abbey; this

would be one worthy of him and of the nation which produced him. It

would take away from us a melancholy opprobrium, and confer on him and

the British people an equal glory.