The walk, he said, was beautiful; the cottage damp, musty, and fusty; and a supposit.i.tious old bedstead, of the age of Queen Elizabeth, which had been obtruded upon his notice because it _might_ have belonged to Ann Hathaway"s mother, received a special malediction. For my part, my relic-hunting propensities were not in the slightest degree appeased, but rather stimulated, by the investigations of the day before.
It seemed to me so singular that of such a man there should not remain one accredited relic! Of Martin Luther, though he lived much earlier, how many things remain! Of almost any distinguished character how much more is known than of Shakspeare! There is not, so far as I can discover, an authentic relic of any thing belonging to him. There are very few anecdotes of his sayings or doings; no letters, no private memoranda, that should let us into the secret of what he was personally who has in turns personated all minds. The very perfection of his dramatic talent has become an impenetrable veil: we can no more tell from his writings what were his predominant tastes and habits than we can discriminate among the variety of melodies what are the native notes of the mocking bird. The only means left us for forming an opinion of what he was personally are inferences of the most delicate nature from, the slightest premises.
The common idea which has pervaded the world, of a joyous, roving, somewhat unsettled, and dissipated character, would seem, from many well-authenticated facts, to be incorrect. The gayeties and dissipations of his life seem to have been confined to his very earliest days, and to have been the exuberance of a most extraordinary vitality, bursting into existence with such force and vivacity that it had not had time to collect itself, and so come to self-knowledge and control. By many accounts it would appear that the character he sustained in the last years of his life was that of a judicious, common-sense sort of man; a discreet, reputable, and religious householder.
The inscription on his tomb is worthy of remark, as indicating the reputation he bore at the time: "_Judicio Pylium, genio Socratem, arte Maronem_" (In judgment a Nestor, in genius a Socrates, in art a Virgil.)
The comparison of him in the first place to Nestor, proverbially famous for practical judgment and virtue of life, next to Socrates, who was a kind of Greek combination of Dr. Paley and Dr. Franklin, indicates a very different impression of him from what would generally be expressed of a poet, certainly what would not have been placed on the grave of an eccentric, erratic will-o"-the-wisp genius, however distinguished.
Moreover, the pious author of good Mistress Hall"s epitaph records the fact of her being "wise to salvation," as a more especial point of resemblance to her father than even her being "witty above her s.e.x," and expresses most confident hope of her being with him in bliss. The Puritan tone of the epitaph, as well as the quality of the verse, gives reason to suppose that it was not written by one who was seduced into a tombstone lie by any superfluity of poetic sympathy.
The last will of Shakspeare, written by his own hand and still preserved, shows several things of the man.
The introduction is as follows:--
"In the name of G.o.d. Amen. I, William Shakspeare, at Stratford-upon-Avon, in the county of Warwick, gentleman, in perfect health and memory, (G.o.d be praised,) do make and ordain this my last will and testament in manner and form following; that is to say,--
"First, 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 Savior, to be made partaker of life everlasting; and my body to the earth, whereof it is made."
The will then goes on to dispose of an amount of houses, lands, plate, money, jewels, &c., which showed certainly that the poet had possessed some worldly skill and thrift in acc.u.mulation, and to divide them with a care and accuracy which would indicate that he was by no means of that dreamy and unpractical habit of mind which cares not what becomes of worldly goods.
We may also infer something of a man"s character from the tone and sentiments of others towards him. Gla.s.s of a certain color casts on surrounding objects a reflection of its own hue, and so the tint of a man"s character returns upon us in the habitual manner in which he is spoken of by those around him. The common mode of speaking of Shakspeare always savored of endearment. "Gentle Will" is an expression that seemed oftenest repeated. Ben Jonson inscribed his funeral verses "To the Memory of _my beloved_ Mr. William Shakspeare;" he calls him the "sweet swan of Avon." Again, in his lines under a bust of Shakspeare, he says,--
"The figure that thou seest put, It was for gentle Shakspeare cut."
In later times Milton, who could have known him only by tradition, calls him "my Shakspeare," "dear son of memory," and "sweetest Shakspeare."
Now, n.o.body ever wrote of sweet John Milton, or gentle John Milton, or gentle Martin Luther, or even sweet Ben Jonson.
Rowe says of Shakspeare, "The latter part of his life was spent, as all men of good sense would wish theirs may be, in ease, retirement, and the conversation of his friends. His pleasurable wit and good nature engaged him in the acquaintance, and ent.i.tled him to the friendship, of the gentlemen of the neighborhood." And Dr. Drake says, "He was high in reputation as a poet, favored by the great and the accomplished, and beloved by all who knew him."
That Shakspeare had religious principle, I infer not merely from the indications of his will and tombstone, but from those strong evidences of the working of the religious element which are scattered through his plays. No man could have a clearer perception of G.o.d"s authority and man"s duty; no one has expressed more forcibly the strength of G.o.d"s government, the spirituality of his requirements, or shown with more fearful power the struggles of the "law in the members warring against the law of the mind."
These evidences, scattered through his plays, of deep religious struggles, make probable the idea that, in the latter, thoughtful, and tranquil years of his life, devotional impulses might have settled into habits, and that the solemn language of his will, in which he professes his faith, in Christ, was not a mere form. Probably he had all his life, even in his gayest hours, more real religious principle than the hilarity of his manner would give reason to suppose. I always fancy he was thinking of himself when he wrote this character: "For the man doth fear G.o.d, howsoever it seem not in him by reason of some large jests he doth make."
Neither is there any foundation for the impression that he was undervalued in his own times. No literary man of his day had more success, more flattering attentions from the great, or reaped more of the substantial fruits of popularity, in the form of worldly goods.
While his contemporary, Ben Jonson, sick in a miserable alley, is forced to beg, and receives but a wretched pittance from Charles I., Shakspeare"s fortune steadily increases from year to year. He buys the best place in his native town, and fits it up with great taste; he offered to lend, on proper security, a sum of money for the use of the town of Stratford; he added to his estate in Stratford a hundred and seventy acres of land; he bought half the great and small t.i.thes of Stratford; and his annual income is estimated to have been what would at the present time be nearly four thousand dollars.
Queen Elizabeth also patronized him after her ordinary fashion of patronizing literary men,--that is to say, she expressed her gracious pleasure that he should burn incense to her, and pay his own bills: economy was not one of the least of the royal graces. The Earl of Southampton patronized him in a more material fashion.
Queen Elizabeth even so far condescended to the poet as to perform certain hoidenish tricks while he was playing on the stage, to see if she could not disconcert his speaking by the majesty of her royal presence. The poet, who was performing the part of King Henry IV., took no notice of her motions, till, in order to bring him to a crisis, she dropped her glove at his feet; whereat he picked it up, and presented it her, improvising these two lines, as if they had been a part of the play:--
"And though, now bent on this high emba.s.sy, Yet stoop we to take up our cousin"s glove."
I think this anecdote very characteristic of them both; it seems to me it shows that the poet did not so absolutely crawl in the dust before her, as did almost all the so called men of her court; though he did certainly flatter her after a fashion in which few queens can be flattered. His description of the belligerent old Gorgon as the "Fair Vestal throned by the West" seems like the poetry and fancy of the beautiful Fairy Queen wasted upon the half-brute clown:--
"Come, sit thee down upon this flowery bed, While I thy amiable cheeks do coy, And stick musk roses in thy sleek, smooth, head, And kiss thy fair, large ears, my gentle joy."
Elizabeth"s understanding and appreciation of Shakspeare was much after the fashion of Nick Bottom"s of the Fairy Queen. I cannot but believe that the men of genius who employed their powers in celebrating this most repulsive and disagreeable woman must sometimes have comforted themselves by a good laugh in private.
In order to appreciate Shakspeare"s mind from his plays, we must discriminate what expressed the gross tastes of his age, and what he wrote to please himself. The Merry Wives of Windsor was a specimen of what he wrote for the "Fair Vestal;" a commentary on the delicacy of her maiden meditations. The Midsummer Night"s Dream he wrote from his own inner dream world.
In the morning we took leave of our hotel. In leaving we were much touched with the simple kindliness of the people of the house. The landlady and her daughters came to bid us farewell, with much feeling; and the former begged my acceptance of a bead purse, knit by one of her daughters, she said, during the winter evenings while they were reading Uncle Tom. In this town one finds the simple-hearted, kindly English people corresponding to the same cla.s.s which we see in our retired New England towns. We received many marks of kindness from different residents in Stratford; in the expression of them, they appreciated and entered into our desire for privacy with a delicacy which touched us sensibly.
We had little time to look about us to see Stratford in the sunshine. So we went over to a place on the banks of the Avon, where, it was said, we could gain a very perfect view of the church. The remembrance of this spot is to me like a very pleasant dream. The day was bright, the air was soft and still, as we walked up and down the alleys of a beautiful garden that extended quite to the church; the rooks were dreamily cawing, and wheeling in dark, airy circles round the old b.u.t.tresses and spire. A funeral train had come into the graveyard, and the pa.s.sing bell was tolling. A thousand undefined emotions struggled in my mind.
That loving heart, that active fancy, that subtile, elastic power of appreciating and expressing all phases, all pa.s.sions of humanity, are they breathed out on the wind? are they spent like the lightning? are they exhaled like the breath of flowers? or are they still living, still active? and if so, where and how? Is it reserved for us, in that "undiscovered country" which he spoke of, ever to meet the great souls whose breath has kindled our souls?
I think we forget the consequences of our own belief in immortality, and look on the ranks of prostrate dead as a mower on fields of prostrate flowers, forgetting that activity is an essential of souls, and that every soul which has pa.s.sed away from this world must ever since have been actively developing those habits of mind and modes of feeling which it began here.
The haughty, cruel, selfish Elizabeth, and all the great men of her court, are still living and acting somewhere; but where? For my part I am often reminded, when dwelling on departed genius, of Luther"s e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n for his favorite cla.s.sic poet: "I hope G.o.d will have mercy on such."
We speak of the glory of G.o.d as exhibited in natural landscape making; what is it, compared with the glory of G.o.d as shown in the making of souls, especially those souls which seem to be endowed with a creative power like his own?
There seems, strictly speaking, to be only two cla.s.ses of souls--the creative and the receptive. Now, these creators seem to me to have a beauty and a worth about them entirely independent of their moral character. That ethereal power which shows itself in Greek sculpture and Gothic architecture, in Rubens, Shakspeare, and Mozart, has a quality to me inexpressibly admirable and lovable. We may say, it is true, that there is no moral excellence in it; but none the less do we admire it.
G.o.d has made us so that we cannot help loving it; our souls go forth to it with an infinite longing, nor can that longing be condemned. That mystic quality that exists in these souls is a glimpse and intimation of what exists in Him in full perfection. If we remember this we shall not lose ourselves in admiration of worldly genius, but be led by it to a better understanding of what He is, of whom all the glories of poetry and art are but symbols and shadows.
LETTER XI.
DEAR H.:--
From Stratford we drove to Warwick, (or "Warrick," as they call it here.) This town stands on a rocky hill on the banks of the Avon, and is quite a considerable place, for it returns two members to Parliament, and has upwards of ten thousand inhabitants; and also has some famous manufactories of wool combing and spinning. But what we came to see was the castle. We drove up to the Warwick Arms, which is the princ.i.p.al hotel in the place; and, finding that we were within the hours appointed for exhibition, we went immediately.
With my head in a kind of historical mist, full of images of York and Lancaster, and Red and White Roses, and Warwick the king maker, I looked up to the towers and battlements of the old castle. We went in through a pa.s.sage way cut in solid rock, about twenty feet deep, and I should think fifty long. These walls were entirely covered with ivy, hanging down like green streamers; gentle and peaceable pennons these are, waving and whispering that the old war times are gone.
At the end of this pa.s.sage there is a drawbridge over what was formerly the moat, but which is now gra.s.sed and planted with shrubbery. Up over our heads we saw the great iron teeth of the portcullis. A rusty old giant it seemed up there, like Pope and Pagan in Pilgrim"s Progress, finding no scope for himself in these peaceable times.
When we came fairly into the court yard of the castle, a scene of magnificent beauty opened before us. I cannot describe it minutely. The princ.i.p.al features are the battlements, towers, and turrets of the old feudal castle, encompa.s.sed by grounds on which has been expended all that princely art of landscape gardening for which England is famous--leafy thickets, magnificent trees, openings, and vistas of verdure, and wide sweeps of gra.s.s, short, thick, and vividly green, as the velvet moss we sometimes see growing on rocks in New England. Gra.s.s is an art and a science in England--it is an inst.i.tution. The pains that are taken in sowing, tending, cutting, clipping, rolling, and otherwise nursing and coaxing it, being seconded by the misty breath and often falling tears of the climate, produce results which must be seen to be appreciated.
So again of trees in England. Trees here are an order of n.o.bility; and they wear their crowns right kingly. A few years ago, when Miss Sedgwick was in this country, while admiring some splendid trees in a n.o.bleman"s park, a lady standing by said to her encouragingly, "O, well, I suppose your trees in America will be grown up after a while!" Since that time another style of thinking of America has come up, and the remark that I most generally hear made is, "O, I suppose we cannot think of showing you any thing in the way of trees, coming as you do from America!"
Throwing out of account, however, the gigantic growth of our western river bottoms, where I have seen sycamore trunks twenty feet in diameter--leaving out of account, I say, all this mammoth arboria, these English parks have trees as fine and as effective, of their kind, as any of ours; and when I say their trees are an order of n.o.bility, I mean that they pay a reverence to them such as their magnificence deserves.
Such elms as adorn the streets of New Haven, or overarch the meadows of Andover, would in England be considered as of a value which no money could represent; no pains, no expense would be spared to preserve their life and health; they would never be shot dead by having gas pipes laid under them, as they have been in some of our New England towns; or suffered to be devoured by canker worms for want of any amount of money spent in their defence.
Some of the finest trees in this place are magnificent cedars of Lebanon, which bring to mind the expression in Psalms, "Excellent as the cedars." They are the very impersonation of kingly majesty, and are fitted to grace the old feudal stronghold of Warwick the king maker.
These trees, standing as they do amid magnificent sweeps and undulations of lawn, throwing out their mighty arms with such majestic breadth and freedom of outline, are themselves a living, growing, historical epic.
Their seed was brought from Holy Land in the old days of the crusades; and a hundred legends might be made up of the time, date, and occasion of their planting. These crusades have left their mark every where through Europe, from the cross panel on the doors of common houses to the oriental touches and arabesques of castles and cathedrals.
In the reign of Stephen there was a certain Roger de Newburg, second Earl of Warwick, who appears to have been an exceedingly active and public-spirited character; and, besides conquering part of Wales, founded in this neighborhood various priories and hospitals, among which was the house of the Templars, and a hospital for lepers. He made several pilgrimages to Holy Land; and so I think it as likely as most theories that he ought to have the credit of these cedars.
These Earls of Warwick appear always to have been remarkably stirring men in their day and generation, and foremost in whatever was going on in the world, whether political or religious. To begin, there was Guy, Earl of Warwick, who lived somewhere in the times of the old dispensation, before King Arthur, and who distinguished himself, according to the fashion of those days, by killing giants and various colored dragons, among which a green one especially figures. It appears that he slew also a notable dun cow, of a kind of mastodon breed, which prevailed in those early days, which was making great havoc in the neighborhood. In later times, when the giants, dragons, and other animals of that sort were somewhat brought under, we find the Earls of Warwick equally busy burning and slaying to the right and left; now crusading into Palestine, and now fighting the French, who were a standing resort for activity when nothing else was to be done; with great versatility diversifying these affairs with pilgrimages to the holy sepulchre, and founding monasteries and hospitals. One stout earl, after going to Palestine and laying about him like a very dragon for some years, brought home a live Saracen king to London, and had him baptized and made a Christian of, _vi et armis_.
During the scuffle of the Roses, it was a Warwick, of course, who was uppermost. Stout old Richard, the king maker, set up first one party and then the other, according to his own sovereign pleasure, and showed as much talent at fighting on both sides, and keeping the country in an uproar, as the modern politicians of America.
When the times of the Long Parliament and the Commonwealth came, an Earl of Warwick was high admiral of England, and fought valiantly for the Commonwealth, using the navy on the popular side; and his grandson married the youngest daughter of Oliver Cromwell. When the royal family was to be restored, an Earl of Warwick was one of the six lords who were sent to Holland for Charles II. The earls of this family have been no less distinguished for movements which have favored the advance of civilization and letters than for energy in the battle field. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth an Earl of Warwick founded the History Lecture at Cambridge, and left a salary for the professor. This same earl was general patron of letters and arts, a.s.sisting many men of talents, and was a particular and intimate friend of Sir Philip Sidney.
What more especially concerns us as New Englanders is, that an earl of this house was the powerful patron and protector of New England during the earlier years of our country. This was Robert Greville, the high admiral of England before alluded to, and ever looked upon as a protector of the Puritans. Frequent allusion is made to him in Winthrop"s Journal as performing various good offices for them.