Visit To Stratford-On-Avon And Its Vicinage.

VISIT TO STRATFORD-ON-AVON AND ITS VICINAGE .

LONDON , SATXFRDAY , 3 TABCS 23 , 1801 .

BY BBO . GEORGE MABKHAM TATEDDEII , Author of "Shakspere : his Times and Contemporaries , "See . ( Continued from page 144 . ' . ) It was with no irreverent tread that I entered the house where "William Shakspere "was horn . I found an orderlymiddle-aged woman in charge of the cottageto

, , whom I paid the visitor ' s fee of sixpence , charged towards defraying the necessary expenses ; and then entered my name in the hook kept for the signatures of those who , like myself , pay their pilgrimage to this poetic spot . For , amongst the shoals of vulgar nobodies who have looked in here , just for the say of the thing ,

the aristocracy of Avealth , rank , heart , and intellect have come from every civilised clime in honour of the gifted bard of the human race . And the man or woman who enters this humble cottage in the ri ght spirit may indeed say , that " It is good to be here ! " I trod not upon a marble pavementhut in its stead was a broken

, floor of humble flags , * which may or may not have been there in the boyhood of the bard ; but here , no doubt , his gentle mother has rocked him in his cradle , and trained him first to walk ; before yon capacious chimney he has many a time and oft climbed upon his father ' s knee , and buried his tiny hands in the capacious pockets

of Maister John Shakspere ' s raiment ; and here , on many a Avinter's night , when icicles hung from the eaves , and the snoAV kept him a prisoner indoors , —or when the hailstones have pattered against the window-panes , and the wind has soughed down the chimney like an unchained fiend , little "Will y has sat at his heWed mother ' s feet , or stood between his father ' s knees , listening with greedy ears to tales of ghosts and grammary , until they would almost

" Harrow his soul ; freeze his young blood ; Make his two eyes , like stars , start from their spheres ; His knotted and combined locks to part , And each particular ham to stand on end , Like quills upon the fretful porcupine . " —Hamlet , act i ., scene 5 . And sometimes they ivould call up elves from fairy-land ,

bidding them ( as his OAVU Titania does her ' s in the Midsummer Night ' s Dream ) to " Be kind and courteous to this gentleman ; Hop in his walks and gambol in his eyes ; Feed him with apricots and dewberries ; With purple grapes , green figs , and mulberries ; The honey-bags steal from the humble bees

, And , for night-tapers , crop their waxen thighs , And light them at the fiery gloiv-worm ' s eyes , To have my love to bed , and to arise ; And pluck the wings from painted butterflies , To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes ; Nod to him , elves , and do him courtesies . "

Or , as Prospero says to his "delicate Ariel , " in The Tempest : — " to tread tho ooze of the salt deep ; To run upon the sharp Avind of the north ; To do me business in the veins o' the earth , AVhen it is baked ivith frost . " And sometimes Maister John Shakspere . would recount

to his Avondering son the Battles of the Eoses , and how his " parent , great-grandfather , and late antecessor , for his faithful and approved service to the late most prudent prince , King Henry VII ., of famous memory , was

advanced and rewarded with lands and tenements , given to him in those parts of Warwickshire . " * Ah ! little thought John and Mary Shakspere then , that , in telling their Avinter ' s tales to their hazel-eyed boy around this hearth , they were fostering a genius better than all " school-cram " could ; that they were developing a mind

Avhich , more than any that had gone before it , or has as yet come after it , was to enlig hten the world ! Doubt it not , reader , that when , in after years , that boy had grown to manhood , and become a player and dramatist , this very fireside was vividly in his memory when he made his King Eichard the Second to say to his good Queen ( Anne of Bohemia ) : —

" Iu Avinter ' s tedious nights , sit hy the fire , With good old folks , and let them tell thee tales Of Avoful ages long ago betid : And ere thou bid good night , to quit their grief , Tell thou the lamentable fall of me , And send the hearers weeping to their beds . "

T 7 U 11 of these thoughts , I eat me down upon a chair , in front of the capacious ingle ; stretched out my legs , Avith my dusty boots towards Avhere the fire Avould have been had there been one lit ; folded my arms as serenely as though I was monarch of the world , and gave up my body to repose , and my soul to a perfect revelry of

reverie . I must not here enter on any description of that glorious day dream ; how fervid fancy repeopled forme that humble tenement with the gentle Willy , and all his kith and ¦ kin ; nor how . all vanished on the coarse interruption of a Stratford savage , who had been born in the same toAvn as Shakspere ; like him , too , lived for

some time in London , but ivho resembled the great poet of humanity iu so few other things , that he had never seen one of his plays performed , nor read one single scene of those inimitable productions . Poor felloAV ! he little knew from what Elysian Fields the gates of " Ignorance shut him out . One would think that every house in Stratford Avonld possess a copy of Shakspere ' s

works , and that every man and woman in the place would be Avell up in them ; knowing , as every lad and lass in the neighbourhood must , that folks of all ranks , and almost all nations , visit Stratford principally on the bard ' s account . I would like to knOAv the exact number of copies of Shakspere ' s works there are in use within ., say , ten or a dozen miles of the poet's grave .

Whether the Stratford-Londoner had been keeping Whitsuntide at the ale-bench or not , I cannot say ; but he soon waxed so warm and abusive , that I was glad to escajie from his noise by Avithdraiving upstairs into the room where the bard is said to have been horn , and for some time the poor fellow's ribaldry from below

disturbed me even there , so that the enchantment was broken . I found the wall of tlie room , as I had expected , covered over with autographs ; some modestly Avritten , as if reverently doubting their ri ght to appearthere ; others scrawled in so large and impudent a style , that one can at once feel the force of the remark of the poet , that

" Fools rush in where angels fear to tread . ''" When one sees hoiv empt y blockheads have chared to scrawl their own vile signatures , places of birth , dates , & c , 0 A er the top of nobler names , it is scarcely possible to help Avishing that the old ivoman who , some years agothreatened thatif they discharged hershe would

, , , Avhitewash the room before she left , had really , done so . Tet , maugre the annoyance ivhieh bloated Self-conceit has caused in polluting this chamber with its presence , one feels that the wise and good of every land have naturally