An error. The House of Commons has had three maces. The first one disappeared after the judicial slaughter of Charles the First. The Cromwell mace was carried to the island of Jamaica, and is there preserved in a museum at Kingston. The third is the one now in use.
Ill.u.s.tration: "The Mace."
I saw it one day, on its pa.s.sage to the table of the Commons, and was glad to remove the hat of respect to what it signifies--the power and majesty of the free people of England. The Speaker of the House was walking behind it, very grand in his wig and gown, and the members trooped in at his heels to secure their places by being present at the opening prayer. A little later I was provided with a seat, in a dim corner, in that august a.s.semblage of British senators, and could observe at ease their management of the public business. The Speaker was on his throne; the mace was on its table; the hats of the Commons were on their heads; and over this singular, animated, impressive scene the waning light of a summer afternoon poured softly down, through the high, stained, and pictured windows of one of the most symmetrical halls in the world. It did not happen to be a day of excitement. The Irish members had not then begun to impede the transaction of business, for the sake of drawing attention to the everlasting wrongs of Ireland. Yet it was a lively day. Curiosity on the part of the Opposition and a respectful incert.i.tude on the part of Her Majesty"s ministers were the prevailing conditions. I had never before heard so many questions asked--outside of the French grammar--and asked to so little purpose.
Everybody wanted to know, and n.o.body wanted to tell. Each inquirer took off his hat when he rose to ask, and put it on again when he sat down to be answered. Each governmental sphinx bared his brow when he emerged to divulge, and covered it again when he subsided without divulging. The superficial respect of these interlocutors for each other steadily remained, however, of the most deferential and considerate description; so that--without discourtesy--it was impossible not to think of Byron"s "mildest mannered man that ever scuttled ship or cut a throat."
Underneath this velvety, purring, conventional manner the observer could readily discern the fires of pa.s.sion, prejudice, and strong antagonism.
They make no parade in the House of Commons. They attend to their business. And upon every topic that is brought before their notice they have definite ideas, strong convictions, and settled purposes. The topic of Army Estimates upon this day seemed especially to arouse their ardour. Discussion of this was continually diversified by cries of "Oh!"
and of "Hear!" and of "Order!" and sometimes those cries savoured more of derision than of compliment. Many persons spoke, but no person spoke well. An off-hand, matter-of-fact, shambling method of speech would seem to be the fashion in the British House of Commons. I remembered the anecdote that De Quincey tells, about Sheridan and the young member who quoted Greek. It was easy to perceive how completely out of place the soph.o.m.ore orator would be, in that a.s.semblage. Britons like better to make speeches than to hear them, and they will never be slaves to bad oratory. The moment a windy gentleman got the floor, and began to read a ma.n.u.script respecting the Indian Government, as many as forty Commons arose and noisily walked out of the House. Your pilgrim likewise hailed the moment of his deliverance and was glad to escape to the open air.
Books have been written to describe the Palace of Westminster; but it is observable that this structure, however much its magnificence deserves commemorative applause, is deficient, as yet, in the charm of a.s.sociation. The old Palace of St. James, with its low, dusky walls, its round turrets, and its fretted battlements, is more impressive, because history has freighted it with meaning and time has made it beautiful.
But the Palace of Westminster is a splendid structure. It covers eight acres of ground, on the bank of the Thames; it contains eleven quadrangles and five hundred rooms; and when its niches for statuary have been filled it will contain two hundred and twenty-six statues. The monuments in St. Stephen"s Hall--into which you pa.s.s from Westminster Hall, which has been incorporated into the Palace and is its only ancient and therefore its most interesting feature--indicate, very eloquently, what a superb art gallery this will one day become. The statues are the images of Selden, Hampden, Falkland, Clarendon, Somers, Walpole, Chatham, Mansfield, Burke, Fox, Pitt, and Grattan. Those of Mansfield and Grattan present, perhaps, the most of character and power, making you feel that they are indubitably accurate portraits, and winning you by the charm of personality. There are statues, also, in Westminster Hall, commemorative of the Georges, William and Mary, and Anne; but it is not of these you think, nor of any local and everyday object, when you stand beneath the wonderful roof of Richard the Second.
Nearly eight hundred years "their cloudy wings expand" above that fabric, and copiously shed upon it the fragrance of old renown. Richard the Second was deposed there: Cromwell was there installed Lord Protector of England: John Fisher, Sir Thomas More, and Strafford were there condemned: and it was there that the possible, if not usual, devotion of woman"s heart was so touchingly displayed by her
"Whose faith drew strength from death, And prayed her Russell up to G.o.d."
No one can realise, without personal experience, the number and variety of pleasures accessible to the resident of London. These may not be piquant to him who has them always within his reach. I met with several residents of the British capital who had always intended to visit the Tower but had never done so. But to the stranger they possess a constant and keen fascination. The Derby this year [1877] was thought to be comparatively a tame race; but I know of one spectator who saw it from the top of the grand stand and who thought that the scene it presented was wonderfully brilliant. The sky had been overcast with dull clouds till the moment when the race was won; but just as Archer, rising in his saddle, lifted his horse forward and gained the goal alone, the sun burst forth and shed upon the downs a sheen of gold, and lit up all the distant hills, and all the far-stretching roads that wind away from the region of Epsom like threads of silver through the green.
Carrier-pigeons were instantly launched off to London, with the news of the victory of Silvio. There was one winner on the grand stand who had laid bets on Silvio, for no other reason than because that horse bore the prettiest name in the list. The Derby, like Christmas, comes but once a year; but other allurements are almost perennial.
Ill.u.s.tration: "Greenwich Hospital."
Greenwich, for instance, with its white-bait dinner, invites the epicure during the best part of the London season. A favourite tavern is the Trafalgar--in which each room is named after some magnate of the old British navy; and Nelson, Hardy, and Rodney are household words. Another cheery place of resort is The Ship. The Hospitals are at Greenwich that Dr. Johnson thought to be too fine for a charity; and back of these--which are ordinary enough now, in comparison with modern structures erected for a kindred purpose--stands the famous Observatory that keeps time for Europe. This place is hallowed also by the grave of Clive and by that of Wolfe--to the latter of whom, however, there is a monument in Westminster Abbey. Greenwich makes one think of Queen Elizabeth, who was born there, who often held her court there, and who often sailed thence, in her barge, up the river to Richmond--her favourite retreat and the scene of her last days and her pathetic death.
Few spots can compare with Richmond, in brilliancy of landscape. That place--the Shene of old times--was long a royal residence. The woods and meadows that you see from the terrace of the Star and Garter tavern--spread upon a rolling plain as far as the eye can reach--sparkle like emeralds; and the Thames, dotted with little toy-like boats, shines with all the deep l.u.s.tre of the blackest onyx. Richmond, for those who honour genius and who love to walk in the footsteps of renown, is full of interest. Dean Swift once had a house there, the site of which is still indicated. Pope"s rural home was in the adjacent village of Twickenham,--where it may still be seen. Horace Walpole"s stately mansion of Strawberry Hill is not far off. The poet Thomson long resided at Richmond, in a house now used as an hospital, and there he died.
Edmund Kean and the once famous Mrs. Yates rest beneath Richmond church, and there also are the ashes of Thomson. As I drove through the sweetly sylvan Park of Richmond, in the late afternoon of a breezy summer day, and heard the whispering of the great elms, and saw the gentle, trustful deer couched at ease in the golden glades, I heard all the while, in the still chambers of thought, the tender lament of Collins--which is now a prophecy fulfilled:
"Remembrance oft shall haunt the sh.o.r.e, When Thames in summer wreaths is drest; And oft suspend the dashing oar, To bid his gentle spirit rest."
Ill.u.s.tration: "Queen Elizabeth"s Cradle."
CHAPTER VII
WARWICK AND KENILWORTH
All the way from London to Warwick it rained; not heavily, but with a gentle fall. The gray clouds hung low over the landscape and softly darkened it; so that meadows of scarlet and emerald, the shining foliage of elms, gray turret, nestled cottage and limpid river were as mysterious and evanescent as pictures seen in dreams. At Warwick the rain had fallen and ceased, and the walk from the station to the inn was on a road--or on a footpath by the roadside--still hard and damp with the water it had absorbed. A fresh wind blew from the fields, sweet with the rain and fragrant with the odour of leaves and flowers. The streets of the ancient town--entered through an old Norman arch--were deserted and silent. It was Sunday when I first came to the country of Shakespeare; and over all the region there brooded a sacred stillness peculiar to the time and harmonious beyond utterance with the sanct.i.ty of the place. As I strive, after many days, to call back and to fix in words the impressions of that sublime experience, the same awe falls upon me now that fell upon me then. Nothing else upon earth--no natural scene, no relic of the past, no pageantry of the present--can vie with the shrine of Shakespeare, in power to impress, to humble, and to exalt the devout spirit that has been nurtured at the fountain of his transcendent genius.
A fortunate way to approach Stratford-on-Avon is by Warwick and Kenilworth. Those places are not on a direct line of travel; but the scenes and a.s.sociations that they successively present are such as a.s.sume a symmetrical order, increase in interest, and grow to a delightful culmination. Objects that Shakespeare himself must have seen are still visible there; and little by little, in contact with these, the pilgrim through this haunted region is mentally saturated with that atmosphere of serenity and romance in which the youth of Shakespeare was pa.s.sed, and by which his works and his memory are embalmed. No one should come abruptly upon the poet"s home. The mind needs to be prepared for the impression that awaits it; and in this gradual approach it finds preparation, both suitable and delicious. The luxuriance of the country, its fertile fields, its brilliant foliage, its myriads of wild-flowers, its pomp of colour and of physical vigour and bloom, do not fail to announce, to every mind, howsoever heedless, that this is a fit place for the birth and nurture of a great man. But this is not all. As you stroll in the quaint streets of Warwick, as you drive to Kenilworth, as you muse in that poetic ruin, as you pause in the old graveyard in the valley below, as you meditate over the crumbling fragments of the ancient abbey, at every step of the way you are haunted by a vague sense of an impending grandeur; you are aware of a presence that fills and sanctifies the scene. The emotion that is thus inspired is very glorious; never to be elsewhere felt; and never to be forgotten.
Ill.u.s.tration: "Warwick Castle."
The cyclopaedias and the guide-books dilate, with much particularity and characteristic eloquence, upon Warwick Castle and other great features of Warwickshire, but the attribute that all such records omit is the atmosphere; and this, perhaps, is rather to be indicated than described.
The prevailing quality of it is a certain high and sweet solemnity--a feeling kindred with the placid, happy melancholy that steals over the mind, when, on a sombre afternoon in autumn, you stand in the churchyard, and listen, amid rustling branches and sighing gra.s.s, to the low music of distant organ and chanting choir. Peace, haunted by romance, dwells here, in reverie. The great tower of Warwick, based in silver Avon and pictured in its slumbering waters, seems musing upon the centuries over which it has watched, and full of unspeakable knowledge and thought. The dark and ma.s.sive gateways of the town and the timber-crossed fronts of its antique houses live on in the same strange dream and perfect repose; and all along the drive to Kenilworth are equal images of rest--of a rest in which there is nothing supine or sluggish, no element of death or decay, but in which pa.s.sion, imagination, beauty, and sorrow, seized at their topmost poise, seem crystallised in eternal calm. What opulence of splendid life is vital for ever in Kenilworth"s crumbling ruin there are no words to say. What pomp of royal banners! what dignity of radiant cavaliers! what loveliness of stately and exquisite ladies! what magnificence of banquets! what wealth of pageantry! what l.u.s.tre of illumination! The same festal music that the poet Gascoigne heard there, three hundred years ago, is still sounding on, to-day. The proud and cruel Leicester still walks in his vaulted hall. The imperious face of the Virgin Queen still from her dais looks down on plumed courtiers and jewelled dames; and still the moonlight, streaming through the turret-window, falls on the white bosom and the great, startled, black eyes of Amy Robsart, waiting for her lover. The gaze of the pilgrim, indeed, rests only upon old, gray, broken walls, overgrown with green moss and ivy, and pierced by irregular cas.e.m.e.nts through which the sun shines, and the winds blow, and the rains drive, and the birds fly, amid utter desolation. But silence and ruin are here alike eloquent and awful; and, much as the place impresses you by what remains, it impresses you far more by what has vanished. Ambition, love, pleasure, power, misery, tragedy--these are gone; and being gone they are immortal. I plucked, in the garden of Kenilworth, one of the most brilliant red roses that ever grew; and as I pressed it to my lips I seemed to touch the lips of that superb, bewildering beauty who outweighed England"s crown (at least in story), and whose spirit is the everlasting genius of the place.
There is a row of cottages opposite to the ruins of the castle, in which contentment seems to have made her home. The ivy embowers them. The roses cl.u.s.ter around their little windows. The greensward slopes away, in front, from big, flat stones that are embedded in the mossy sod before their doors. Down in the valley, hard by, your steps stray through an ancient graveyard--in which stands the parish church, a carefully restored building of the eleventh century, with tower, and clock, and bell--and past a few fragments of the Abbey and Monastery of St. Mary, destroyed in 1538. At many another point, on the roads betwixt Warwick and Kenilworth and Stratford, I came upon such nests of cosy, rustic quiet and seeming happiness. They build their country houses low, in England, so that the trees overhang them, and the cool, friendly, flower-gemmed earth--parent, and stay, and bourne of mortal life--is tenderly taken into their companionship. Here, at Kenilworth, as elsewhere, at such places as Marlowe, Henley, Richmond, Maidenhead, Cookham, and the region round about Windsor, I saw many a sweet nook where tired life might be content to lay down its burden and enter into its rest. In all true love of country--a pa.s.sion that seems to be more deeply felt in England than anywhere else upon the globe--there is love for the literal soil itself: and surely that sentiment in the human heart is equally natural and pious which inspires and perpetuates man"s desire that where he found his cradle he may also find his grave.
Ill.u.s.tration: "Old Inn."
Under a cloudy sky and through a landscape still wet and shining with recent rain the drive to Stratford was a pleasure so exquisite that at last it became a pain. Just as the carriage reached the junction of the Warwick and Snitterfield roads a ray of sunshine, streaming through a rift in the clouds, fell upon the neighbouring hillside, scarlet with poppies, and lit the scene as with the glory of a celestial benediction.
This sunburst, neither growing larger nor coming nearer, followed all the way to Stratford; and there, on a sudden, the clouds were lifted and dispersed, and "fair daylight" flooded the whole green countryside. The afternoon sun was still high in heaven when I alighted at the Red Horse and entered the little parlour of Washington Irving. They keep the room much as it was when he left it; for they are proud of his gentle genius and grateful for his commemorative words. In a corner stands [1877] the small, old-fashioned haircloth arm-chair in which he sat, on that night of memory and of musing which he has described in _The Sketch-Book. _A bra.s.s plate is affixed to it, bearing his name; and the visitor observes, in token of its age and service, that the hair-cloth of its seat is considerably worn and frayed. Every American pilgrim to Stratford sits in that chair; and looks with tender interest on the old fireplace; and reads the memorials of Irving that are hung upon the walls: and it is no small comfort there to reflect that our ill.u.s.trious countryman--whose name will be remembered with honour, as long as literature is prized among men--was the first, in modern days, to discover the beauties and to interpret the poetry of the birthplace of Shakespeare.
Ill.u.s.tration: "Washington Irving"s Parlour."
Ill.u.s.tration: "From the Warwick Shield."
CHAPTER VIII
FIRST VIEW OF STRATFORD-ON-AVON
Once again, as it did on that delicious summer afternoon which is for ever memorable in my life, the golden glory of the westering sun burns on the gray spire of Stratford church, and on the ancient graveyard below,--wherein the mossy stones lean this way and that, in sweet and orderly confusion,--and on the peaceful avenue of limes, and on the burnished water of silver Avon. The tall, pointed, many-coloured windows of the church glint in the evening light. A cool and fragrant wind is stirring the branches and the gra.s.s. The small birds, calling to their mates or sporting in the wanton pleasure of their airy life, are circling over the church roof or hiding in little crevices of its walls.
On the vacant meadows across the river stretch away the long and level shadows of the pompous elms. Here and there, upon the river"s brink, are pairs of what seem lovers, strolling by the reedy marge, or sitting upon the low tombs, in the Sabbath quiet. As the sun sinks and the dusk deepens, two figures of infirm old women, clad in black, pa.s.s with slow and feeble steps through the avenue of limes, and vanish around an angle of the church--that now stands all in shadow: and no sound is heard but the faint rustling of the leaves.
Ill.u.s.tration: "Holy Trinity Church."
Once again, as on that sacred night, the streets of Stratford are deserted and silent under the star-lit sky, and I am standing, in the dim darkness, at the door of the cottage in which Shakespeare was born.
It is empty, dark, and still; and in all the neighbourhood there is no stir nor sign of life; but the quaint cas.e.m.e.nts and gables of this haunted house, its antique porch, and the great timbers that cross its front are luminous as with a light of their own, so that I see them with perfect vision. I stand there a long time, and I know that I am to remember these sights for ever, as I see them now. After a while, with lingering reluctance, I turn away from this marvellous spot, and, presently pa.s.sing through a little, winding lane, I walk in the High Street of the town, and mark, at the end of the prospect, the illuminated clock in the tower of the chapel of the Holy Cross. A few chance-directed steps bring me to what was New Place once, where Shakespeare died; and there again I pause, and long remain in meditation, gazing into the enclosed garden, where, under screens of wire, are certain strange fragments of lime and stone. These--which I do not then know--are the remains of the foundation of Shakespeare"s house.
The night wanes; and still I walk in Stratford streets; and by and by I am standing on the bridge that spans the Avon, and looking down at the thick-cl.u.s.tering stars reflected in its black and silent stream. At last, under the roof of the Red Horse, I sink into a troubled slumber, from which soon a strain of celestial music--strong, sweet, jubilant, and splendid--awakens me in an instant; and I start up in my bed--to find that all around me is still as death; and then, drowsily, far-off, the bell strikes three, in its weird and lonesome tower.
Every pilgrim to Stratford knows, in a general way, what he will there behold. Copious and frequent description of its Shakespearean a.s.sociations has made the place familiar to all the world. Yet these Shakespearean a.s.sociations keep a perennial freshness, and are equally a surprise to the sight and a wonder to the soul. Though three centuries old they are not stricken with age or decay. The house in Henley Street, in which, according to accepted tradition, Shakespeare was born, has been from time to time repaired; and so it has been kept sound, without having been materially changed from what it was in Shakespeare"s youth.
The kind ladies, Miss Maria and Miss Caroline Chataway, who take care of it [1877], and with so much pride and courtesy show it to the visitor, called my attention to a bit of the ceiling of the upper chamber--the room of Shakespeare"s birth--which had begun to droop, and had been skilfully secured with little iron laths. It is in this room that the numerous autographs are scrawled over the ceiling and walls. One side of the chimneypiece here is called "The Actor"s Pillar," so richly is it adorned with the names of actors; Edmund Kean"s signature being among them, and still legible. On one of the window-panes, cut with a diamond, is the name of "W. Scott"; and all the panes are scratched with signatures--making you think of Douglas Jerrold"s remark on bad Shakespearean commentators, that they resemble persons who write on gla.s.s with diamonds, and obscure the light with a mult.i.tude of scratches. The floor of this room, uncarpeted and almost snow-white with much washing, seems still as hard as iron; yet its boards have been hollowed by wear, and the heads of the old nails that fasten it down gleam like polished silver.
Ill.u.s.tration: "The Inglenook."
You can sit in an antique chair, in a corner of this room, and think unutterable things. There is, certainly, no word that can even remotely suggest the feeling with which you are then overwhelmed. You can sit also in the room below, in the seat, in the corner of the wide fireplace, that Shakespeare himself must often have occupied. They keep but a few sticks of furniture in any part of the cottage. One room is devoted to Shakespearean relics--more or less authentic; one of which is a schoolboy"s desk that was obtained from the old grammar-school in Church Street in which Shakespeare was once a pupil. At the back of the cottage, now isolated from contiguous structures, is a pleasant garden, and at one side is a cosy, luxurious little cabin--the home of order and of pious decorum--for the ladies who are custodians of the Shakespeare House. If you are a favoured visitor, you may receive from that garden, at parting, all the flowers, prettily mounted upon a sheet of paper, that poor Ophelia names, in the scene of her madness. "There"s rosemary, that"s for remembrance: and there is pansies, that"s for thoughts: there"s fennel for you, and columbines: there"s rue for you: there"s a daisy:--I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died."
The minute knowledge that Shakespeare had of plants and flowers, and the loving appreciation with which he describes pastoral scenery, are explained to the rambler in Stratford, by all that he sees and hears.
There is a walk across the fields to Shottery that the poet must often have taken, in the days of his courtship of Anne Hathaway. The path to this hamlet pa.s.ses through pastures and gardens, necked everywhere with those brilliant scarlet poppies that are so radiant and so bewitching in the English landscape. To have grown up amid such surroundings, and, above all, to have experienced amid them the pa.s.sion of love, must have been, for Shakespeare, the intuitive acquirement of ample and specific knowledge of their manifold beauties. It would be hard to find a sweeter rustic retreat than Anne Hathaway"s cottage is, even now. Tall trees embower it; and over its porches, and all along its picturesque, irregular front, and on its thatched roof, the woodbine and the ivy climb, and there are wild roses and the maiden"s blush. For the young poet"s wooing no place could be fitter than this. He would always remember it with tender-joy.
Ill.u.s.tration: "Approach to Shottery."
They show you, in that cottage, an old settle, by the fireside, whereon the lovers may have sat together: it formerly stood outside the door: and in the rude little chamber next the roof an antique, carved bedstead, that Anne Hathaway once owned. This, it is thought, continued to be Anne"s home for several years of her married life--her husband being absent in London, and sometimes coming down to visit her, at Shottery. "He was wont," says John Aubrey, the antiquary, writing in 1680, "to go to his native country once a year." The last surviving descendant of the Hathaway family--Mrs. Baker--lives in the house now, and welcomes with homely hospitality the wanderers, from all lands, who seek--in a sympathy and reverence most honourable to human nature--the shrine of Shakespeare"s love. There is one such wanderer who will never forget the farewell clasp of that kind woman"s hand, and who has never parted with her gift of woodbine and roses from the porch of Anne Hathaway"s cottage.
In England it is living, more than writing about it, that is esteemed by the best persons. They prize good writing, but they prize n.o.ble living far more. This is an ingrained principle, and not an artificial habit, and this principle doubtless was as potent in Shakespeare"s age as it is to-day. Nothing could be more natural than that this great writer should think less of his works than of the establishment of his home. He would desire, having won a fortune, to dwell in his native place, to enjoy the companionship and esteem of his neighbours, to partic.i.p.ate in their pleasures, to help them in their troubles, to aid in the improvement and embellishment of the town, to deepen his hold upon the affections of all around him, and to feel that, at last, honoured and lamented, his ashes would be laid in the village church where he had worshipped--
"Among familiar names to rest, And in the places of his youth."
It was in 1597, twelve years after he went to London, that the poet began to buy property in Stratford, and it was about eight years after his first purchase that he finally settled there, at New Place. [J. O.
Halliwell-Phillips says that it was in 1609: There is a record alleging that as late as that year Shakespeare still retained a residence in Clink Street, Southwark.] This mansion was altered by Sir Hugh Clopton, who owned it toward the middle of the eighteenth century, and it was destroyed by the Rev. Francis Gastrell, in 1759. The grounds, which have been reclaimed,--chiefly through the zeal of J. O.
Halliwell-Phillips,--are laid out according to the model they are supposed to have presented when Shakespeare owned them. His lawn, his orchard, and his garden are indicated; and a scion of his mulberry is growing on the spot where that famous tree once flourished. You can see a part of the foundation of the old house. It was made of brick and timber, it seems to have had gables, and no doubt it was fashioned with the beautiful curves and broken lines of the Tudor architecture. They show, upon the lawn, a stone of considerable size, that surmounted its door. The site--still a central and commodious one--is on the corner of Chapel Street and Chapel Lane; and on the opposite corner stands now, as it has stood for eight hundred years, the chapel of the Holy Cross, with square, dark tower, fretted parapet, pointed cas.e.m.e.nts, and Norman porch--one of the most romantic and picturesque little churches in England. It was easy, when musing on that storied spot, to fancy Shakespeare, in the gloaming of a summer day, strolling on the lawn, beneath his elms, and listening to the soft and solemn music of the chapel organ; or to think of him as stepping forth from his study, in the late and lonesome hours of the night, and pausing to "count the clock," or note the "exhalations whizzing in the air."
The funeral train of Shakespeare, on that dark day when it moved from New Place to Stratford Church, had but a little way to go. The river, surely, must have seemed to hush its murmurs, the trees to droop their branches, the sunshine to grow dim--as that sad procession pa.s.sed! His grave is under the gray pavement of the chancel, near the altar, and his wife and one of his daughters are buried beside him. The pilgrim who reads upon the gravestone those rugged lines of grievous entreaty and awful imprecation that guard the poet"s rest feels no doubt that he is listening to his living voice--for he has now seen the enchanting beauty of the place, and he has now felt what pa.s.sionate affection it can inspire. Feeling and not manner would naturally have prompted that abrupt, agonised supplication and threat. Nor does such a pilgrim doubt, when gazing on the painted bust, above the grave,--made by Gerard Jonson, stonecutter,--that he beholds the authentic face of Shakespeare.
It is not the heavy face of the portraits that represent it. There is a rapt, transfigured quality in it, that those copies do not convey. It is thoughtful, austere, and yet benign. Shakespeare was a hazel-eyed man, with auburn hair, and the colours that he wore were scarlet and black.
Being painted, and also being set up at a considerable height on the church wall, the bust does not disclose what is sufficiently perceptible in a cast from it--that it is the copy of a mask from the dead face. One of the cheeks is a little swollen and the tongue, slightly protruded, is caught between the lips. The idle theory that the poet was not a gentleman of consideration in his own time and place falls utterly and for ever from the mind when you stand at his grave. No man could have a more honourable or sacred place of sepulture; and while it ill.u.s.trates the profound esteem of the community in which he lived it testifies to the religious character by which that esteem was confirmed. "I commend my soul into the hands of G.o.d, my Creator, hoping, and a.s.suredly believing, through the only merits of Jesus Christ, my Saviour, to be made partaker of life everlasting." So said Shakespeare, in his last Will, bowing in humble reverence the mightiest mind--as vast and limitless in the power to comprehend as to express!--that ever wore the garments of mortality.
It ought perhaps to be remarked that this prelude to Shakespeare"s Will may not have been intended by him as a profession of faith, but may have been signed simply as a legal formula. His works denote a mind of high and broad spiritual convictions, untrammelled by creed or doctrine.