tality of the race rather than solitary death or individual loss; the level common across the river, which nightingales love when the bloom of May is on the hedges; the deep shadows in which the river loses itself as one looks toward the mill, and the dark outlines and twinkling lights as one turns toward the village all these aspects of the place, under the spell of one great memory, touch the imagination and make it aware of a brooding presence which, although withdrawn from sight, still loves and haunts this place of quiet meditation and of a beauty in which joy and pathos are deeply harmonized. Apart from the sentiment which the place of Shakespeare's burial must inevitably evoke, there is that in the scene itself which interprets Shakespeare's spirit and makes his genius more near and companionable.

On such a night one turns instinctively toward Shottery with the feeling that the poet must have taken the same course on many another night as silent and fragrant. The old foot-path is readily found, and the meadows on either side are sleeping as gently in the soft, diffused light of the mid-summer night as when the poet saw them in his youth. The little hamlet, a mile to the eastward, is soon reached, and the cottage in which Anne Hathaway spent her girlhood is so well impressed on the memory of the English-reading world that it is recognizable at a glance. The elms rise over it as if to protect it from the harsh approaches of wind and storm; it is so embosomed in vines that it seems to be part of the old-time garden whose flowers bloom to the very

stepping-stones of entrance. Its thatched roof, timbered walls, and projecting eaves have preserved its ancient aspect; and the story of its age is told still more distinctly in its low and blackened ceilings, its stone floors, its broad hearth and capacious chimney

seats.

To the west and north of Stratford the Forest of Arden once covered a great stretch of territory, and traces of its noble beauty are still to be discerned in the trees which spread a deep shade over hollow and hillside as one rambles across the Welcombe hills. In the distance the clustered chimneys of Charlecote are seen, and the ridge where the battle of Edge Hill was fought. The Forest of Arden has been a place of refuge for the imagination ever since the time when, by the alembic of Shakespeare's genius, it was transferred from Warwickshire to that world in which time does not run nor age wither; enough remains of ancient tree and shadowy silence to make its noble beauty credible. The foot-path brings one past the gates of Clopton-a spacious and dignified house, with a charming outlook, fine old gardens, some very interesting pictures, a rich heritage of ghost stories, and a generous host. The stone effigies of the Cloptons now fill the ancient pew in Holy Trinity, but they were long the foremost family at Stratford, men of force and benefactors of the town. Sir Hugh Clopton, who built the bridge over the Avon, and rebuilt the Guild Chapel, became Lord Mayor of London; and others who bore the name honoured it. In the tower of the Guild Chapel there is a quaint recital

of the virtues and generosity of Sir Hugh: "This monumental table was erected A.D.1708, at the request of the Corporation (by Sir John Clopton, of Clopton, Knt., their Recorder), in memory of Sir Hugh Clopton, Knt. (a younger branch of yt ancient family), whose pious works were so many and great, they ought to be had in everlasting remembrance, especially by this town and parish, to which he was a particular benefactor, where he gave £100 to poor housekeepers and 100 marks to twenty poor maidens of good name and fame, to be paid at their marriages. He built ye stone bridge over Avon, with ye causey at ye west end; farther manifesting his piety to God, and love to this place of his nativity, as ye centurion in ye Gospel did to ye Jewish Nation and Religion, by building them a Synagogue; for at his sole charge, this beautiful Chappel of ye Holy Trinity was rebuilt, temp H. VII, and ye Cross Ile of ye parish Church. He gave £50 to ye repairing bridges and highways within 10 miles of this town." Then follows a recital of a number of benefactions to London and other parts of the country, closing with the words: "This charatable Gent died a Bachelr 15 Sept. 1496, and was buried in Saint Margaret's Church, Lothbury, London."

In this country Shakespeare's young imagination was unfolded; against this background of tender and pervasive beauty he came to consciousness, not, perhaps, of the quality and range of his genius, but of the nobility of form and loveliness of colour against which the comedy and tragedy of human life are set as upon a divinely ordered stage.

CHAPTER IV

MARRIAGE AND LONDON

THERE are traditions but no records of the period between 1577, when Shakespeare's school life ended, and the year 1586, when he left Stratford. In this age, when all events, significant and insignificant, are reported; when biography has assumed proportions which are often out of all relation to the importance or interest of those whose careers are described with microscopic detail; when men of letters, especially, are urged to produce and publish with the greatest rapidity, are photographed, studied, described, and characterized with journalistic energy and industry, and often with journalistic indifference to perspective; and when every paragraph from the pen of a successful writer is guarded from the purloiner and protected from plagiarist by laws and penalties, it seems incredible that so little, relatively, should be known about the daily life, the working relations, the intimate associations, the habits and artistic training, of the greatest of English poets.

And this absence of biographic material on a scale which would seem adequate from the modern point of view has furnished, not the ground-for the word ground implies a certain solidity or basis of fact

but the occasion, of many curious speculations and of some radical scepticism. Absence of the historical sense has often led the rash and uncritical to read into past times the spirit and thought of the present, and to interpret the conditions of an earlier age in the light of existing conditions. Taking into account the habits of Shakespeare's time; the condition of life into which he was born; the fact that he was not a writer of dramas to be read, but of plays to be acted, and that, in his own thought and in the thought of his contemporaries, he was a playwright who lived by writing for the stage and not a poet who appealed to a reading public and was eager for literary reputation; recalling the inferior position which actors occupied in society, and the bohemian atmosphere in which all men who were connected with the stage lived, it is surprising, not that we know so little, but that we know so much, about Shakespeare.

Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps has covered this ground with admirable clearness and precision: "In this aspect the great dramatist participates in the fate of most of his literary contemporaries, for if a collection of the known facts relating to all of them were tabularly arranged, it would be found that the number of the ascertained particulars of his life reached at least the average. At the present day, with biography carried to a wasteful and ridiculous excess, and Shakespeare the idol not merely of a nation but of the educated world, it is difficult to realize a period when no interest was taken in the events in the lives of authors, and when the great poet himself, notwithstanding the im