of commentators, first printed it from the Oldys' MSS. from among the collections which Oldys is said to have left for a life of Shakspeare. "I may add," says Steevens, "that the veracity of the late Mr. Oldys has never yet been impeached; and it is not very probable that a ballad should be forged from which an undiscovered wag could derive no triumph over antiquarian credulity." Oldys was then dead, his veracity was unquestionable, and this was, as we conceive, one of those tricks upon the world in which Steevens delighted to indulge. There is no such verse preserved in Oldys' own annotated Langbaine in the British Museum, and there he has preserved much odd minutiæ of one kind and another about Shakspeare and his writings. The hall at Charlecote is well worth seeing; the library is large, and the pictures curious. "How odd," says Sir Walter Scott, "if a folio Shakspeare should be found amongst the books!" In the chancel of the church at Charlecote, a very little church on the skirts of the park, are three very interesting monuments of the Lucys of Shakspeare's time three successive Sir Thomas's, the father, the son, and the grandson. Old Sir Thomas, who is said to have put Shakspeare in the stocks, lies by the side of his wife Joyce, to whose memory he had erected the tomb in which they both lie, and to whose many virtues he has left the touching tribute of affection which still dignifies her tomb. The second Sir Thomas Lucy, the son, lies in armour by himself, his wife and children kneeling on the plinth beneath him;* and the third Sir Thomas, who died in 1640, is represented in a kind of half-raised posture by the side of a most beautiful, elaborate, recumbent figure of his wife. These three monuments are the only objects of interest in the church at Charlecote, but they will well repay a visit. Here we must conclude. Our visit to Stratford-upon-Avon and its neighbourhood was one of the utmost interest to ourselves; and, if we have not proved over-dull or tedious to our readers, we have met with more than our reward. A LETTER FROM RICHARD GREENE, ESQ. TO OLIVER YORKE, "TOUCHING SIR,-The perusal of the article in your November number, entitled " A Fine Day at Stratford-upon-Avon," induces me to offer to the writer some facts and observations relating to the Shakspeare monument, which, from the interesting nature of your contributor's inquiries, it would be unpardonable for me to withhold. Mr. Wheler, in his History and Antiquities of Stratford-upon-Avon, concludes the preface to bis work with the following acknowledgement : "In this compilation much assistance has been derived from the MS. collections of the late learned and Reverend Joseph Greene, formerly master of the Free Grammar-School at Stratford, and rector of Welford in Gloucestershire, which were obligingly communicated by his relative, Mr. Wright, of Lichfield, to whom many thanks are thus returned for his so generously promoting the work." This Mr. Greene (my great-uncle) was formerly vicar of Weston-super-Avon, and of Preston-super-Stour, afterwards rector of Welford and Miserden, in Glouces tershire, and received the appointment of master of the Free Grammar-School at Stratford in 1735. He had a brother (Richard Greene, my grandfather), who was a surgeon at Lichfield, and who was the collator and proprietor of a museum of natural and artificial curiosities, well known to the readers of Boswell as Mr. Greene's Museum. The two brothers corresponded very often upon antiquarian matters, and, from the letters of Joseph Greene, now in my possession, I am enabled to elucidate several interesting points relating to the Stratford monument. I also possess, through the same channel, an original painting of the monument, executed, as I have every reason to believe (both from its general character and from circumstances which I shall presently mention), before the year 1748, when the monument was repaired and beautified by Mr. John Hall, the limner." I have also a cast of the face, certainly taken before this period, as will be proved by the letters I shall quote. The painting 1 Mr. Knight has engraved, p. 486, the second Sir Thomas for the first; and at p. 514, John Heywood for Thomas Heywood. But these are small blemi in a beautifully illustrated work. been handed down from descendant to descendant as an heir-loom." * Shakspeare would appear to have had a hankering after Shottery when a man in years. "It seemeth," says Abraham Sturley, of Stratford, writing to Richard Quyney, then in London, "that our countryman, Mr. Shakspeare, is willing to disburse some money upon some odd yardland or other at Shottery." The road from Stratford to Charlecote, a distance of four miles, lies over Clopton's bridge, and up the left bank of the Avon-a lovely river at this part, in spite of the willow mops which skirt its course, within a mile and a half of Charlecote. The road to Loxley branches off upon your right; on your left, in the distance, are the woods of Welcombe, and, immediately before you, the new church of Alveston. Three short miles well by, and Charlecote Hall, the seat of the Lucys for four centuries, if not longer, lies prettily before you. Run, as we did, great with expectations already realised, and you are soon at Charlecote. You lose the house, however, amid the trees for some short time before you diverge to the left by the footway which leads to the mansion of the descendant of Shakspeare's Sir Thomas Lucy. We were still uncertain at every step we took of the right of foot-way we had chosen through the park of Charlecote. The wide-spreading arms of an ancestral elm moaned heavily over-head-the woods grew thicker and thicker before us. "Anon, a careless herd, Full of the pasture, jumps along by him." "Come, shall we go and kill us venison?" was our first exclamation from As You Like It, when a voice was heard, sounding in our ears, "Which is he that killed the deer ?" We stood still for a time, till we remembered that the words were the words of Jacques, and we had courage to go on. The old house has been enlarged considerably, and its old features Somewhat improved, since the time Sir Thomas Lucy; but it is essenally the same with the Charlecote of Shakspeare. It is built of brick, with a sunk fence, and a gate-house in advance. Rich, verdant pastures extend on every side, and herds of deer are seen wherever the eye can reach. If Sir Thomas Lucy, with his two parks, had no deer, his descendant has evidently more than enough for one. He would seem to have stocked his park to countenance the deer - stealing story of Shakspeare's youth, and to remove the base stigma of Malone, that Sir Thomas Lucy had no park for deer, and could, therefore, have made no complaint against Shakspeare, as Justice Shallow did against Falstaff, that he had killed his deer. He Mr. Hunter thinks, and we agree with him, that it is immaterial to the truth of the story whether the Lucys had or had not what was technically termed a park. Sir Thomas Lucy, the son, sent a present of a buck to Lord Ellesmere, at Harefield. had, therefore, deer of his own, or he bought the buck for the occasion. This one fact proves or disproves very little. It is more to the purpose what we learn from D'Ewes, that Sir Thomas Lucy, in 1584, was joined with four others in bringing in a bill for the preservation of grain and game. This, as Malone admits, gives some colour to the story; nor is the period unimportant.-Shakspeare was then in his twentieth year. When Sir Walter Scott was at Charlecote in the year 1828, Mr. Lucy told him that " the park from which Shakspeare stole the buck was not that which surrounds Charlecote, but belonged to a mansion at some distance, where Sir Thomas Lucy resided at the time of the trespass. The tradition went," he adds, "that they hid the buck in a barn, part of which was standing a few years ago, but now totally decayed." Mr. Lucy referred to the park at Fulbrook now no longer the property of his family. For our own parts, we put great faith in the deer-stealing story, and very little faith, indeed, in the one verse of the ballad on Sir Thomas Lucy generally received as genuine. It comes into the world from a suspicious quarter. Steevens, the Puck * William Shaksperc, a Biography, p. 265. of commentators, first printed it from the Oldys' MSS. from among the collections which Oldys is said to have left for a life of Shakspeare. "I may add," says Steevens, "that the veracity of the late Mr. Oldys has never yet been impeached; and it is not very probable that a ballad should be forged from which an undiscovered wag could derive no triumph over antiquarian credulity." Oldys was then dead, his veracity was unquestionable, and this was, as we conceive, one of those tricks upon the world in which Steevens delighted to indulge. There is no such verse preserved in Oldys' own annotated Langbaine in the British Museum, and there he has preserved much odd minutiæ of one kind and another about Shakspeare and his writings. The hall at Charlecote is well worth seeing; the library is large, and the pictures curious. "How odd," says Sir Walter Scott, "if a folio Shakspeare should be found amongst the books!" In the chancel of the church at Charlecote, a very little church on the skirts of the park, are three very interesting monuments of the Lucys of Shakspeare's time three successive Sir Thomas's, the father, the son, and the grandson. Old Sir Thomas, who is said to have put Shakspeare in the stocks, lies by the side of his wife Joyce, to whose memory he had erected the tomb in which they both lie, and to whose many virtues he has left the touching tribute of affection which still dignifies her tomb. The second Sir Thomas Lucy, the son, lies in armour by himself, his wife and children kneeling on the plinth beneath him ;* and the third Sir Thomas, who died in 1640, is represented in a kind of half-raised posture by the side of a most beautiful, elaborate, recumbent figure of his wife. These three monuments are the only objects of interest in the church at Charlecote, but they will well repay a visit. Here we must conclude. Our visit to Stratford-upon-Avon and its neighbourhood was one of the utmost interest to ourselves; and, if we have not proved over- dull or tedious to our readers, we have met with more than our reward. "TOUCHING" A LETTER FROM RICHARD GREENE, ESQ. TO OLIVER YORKE, "A Fine SIR,-The perusal of the article in your November number, entitled Day at Stratford-upon-Avon," induces me to offer to the writer some facts and observations relating to the Shakspeare monument, which, from the interesting nature of your contributor's inquiries, it would be unpardonable for me to withhold. Mr. Wheler, in his History and Antiquities of Stratford-upon-Avon, concludes the preface to bis work with the following acknowledgement : "In this compilation much assistance has been derived from the MS. collections of the late learned and Reverend Joseph Greene, formerly master of the Free Grammar-School at Stratford, and rector of Welford in Gloucestershire, which were obligingly communicated by his relative, Mr. Wright, of Lichfield, to whom many thanks are thus returned for his so generously promoting the work." This Mr. Greene (my great-uncle) was formerly vicar of Weston-super-Avon, and of Preston-super-Stour, afterwards rector of Welford and Miserden, in Glouces tershire, and received the appointment of master of the Free Grammar-School at Stratford in 1735. He had a brother (Richard Greene, my grandfather), who was a surgeon at Lichfield, and who was the collator and proprietor of a museum of natural and artificial curiosities, well known to the readers of Boswell as Mr. Greene's Museum. The two brothers corresponded very often upon antiquarian matters, and, from the letters of Joseph Greene, now in my possession, I am enabled to elucidate several interesting points relating to the Stratford monument. I also possess, through the same channel, an original painting of the monument, executed, as I have every reason to believe (both from its general character and from circumstances which I shall presently mention), before the year 1748, when the monument was repaired and beautified by Mr. John Hall, the limner." I have also a cast of the face, certainly taken before this period, as will be proved by the letters I shall quote. The Mr. Knight has engraved, p. 486, the second Sir T p. 514, John Heywood for Thomas Heywood. But beautifully illustrated work. being taken before the repairs of the monument in 1748, I extract the following passages from letters of Mr. Joseph Greene to his brother : "Welford, near Stratford-upon-Avon, October 30, 1773. "Dear Brother,-In the year 1748, the original monument of Shakespear in the chancel of Stratford church was repaired and beautified. As I previously considered, that when that work should be finished no money or favour would procure what I wanted, namely a mould from ye carv'd face of the poet, I therefore, with a confederate, about a month before the intended reparation, took a good mould in plaister of Paris from the carving, which I now have by me, and if you will promise I shall have one plaister cast from it (for the materials and trouble of procuring which I will most willingly pay), the mould shall become yours, and upon your mentioning in what manner it may be safely conveyed, shall with the first convenience be sent to you." On the 9th of October, 1777, he thus acknowledges the receipt of a cast :— "I beg you will accept my sincere thanks for ye cast of Shakespear's face, which is very neat and perfect, and seems to have been carefully taken. I question whether there is another mould of the same in being. I know there were two more taken from the monument at the same time with mine; yet, as thirty years are now past since the operation, and I have not heard a syllable of any other mould or cast of the kind since ye period mentioned, I believe ours may pass for a unique, as the virtuosi term it, and consequently be of no small estimation. Immediately after ye formation of this mould, the face of our bard was new painted; so that, till about an hundred years to come, an attempt for another resemblance will be quash'd with a noli me tangere, and the taking a fresh mask from the figure will not be allowed upon any consideration." My cast is one taken by my grandfather from the mould spoken of in the foregoing extracts; it is in plaister of Paris, and the nose has been damaged. It has also been unfortunately twice painted; the last time a bad imitation of the natural colours, as described by Wheler and others. I trust you will consider the interesting nature of this subject a sufficient apology for troubling you with this communication; and am, sir, your obedient servant, RICHARD GREENE, F.A.S. Lichfield, November 14, 1844. EDWARD MURRAY. THE evening sun shone freely into the room where Edward Murray sat by the bedside of his dying child. Her sufferings had been long and severe; but now she slept calmly as an infant, one hand clasped in her father's, while her pale cheek rested on the other, half hidden by the long soft hair that floated over the pillow. God only could know the bitterness of anguish that wrung the father's heart, as he looked upon that beloved face, and felt it would soon be hidden from him for ever. He was a man of reserved manners, and few knew the story of his life. It was whispered that a wife, whom he adored, had left him years before, and was worse than dead; and it was well known that he seemed to care for nothing in the wide world, save the daughter over whose infancy and youth he had watched with ten derness like a mother's. He had never left her even for a day; he had renounced intercourse with friends and relations to live only for her; and, now, there lay his idol, dying : he knew it, he felt it, and yet his eyes were dry, and his lips did not tremble as he murmured slowly, "God bless her! she is my all, she has been my good angel: God bless her!" He rejoiced in her calm sleep, and yet he longed for the time when she should wake and speak to him, for he felt her delirium was past. Oh! how cruelly the wandering of her pure and innocent mind had opened afresh the secret sorrows of her father! It was ever of her early childhood that she spoke, of the first home she remembered, of her long-lost mother. Often would she start from her pillow, exclaiming that her mother was come, and mingling words of welcome and endearment with reproaches for her having delayed her coming so long. Little had Mr. Murray dreamed of the fondness with which his Helen had clung to that name so long unspoken; little recked he till then of the deep and passionate affection that made her unconscious tongue eloquent in addressing the vision of her fancy. Hour by hour he sat listening to her fond details of long past events; how she sat with her mother in the shadow of the old lime-tree watching for him; and again her joyous laugh rang out as she told of his coming, and of all he said as he clasped them both to his bosom; she told how she had knelt between them to pray, and again she uttered the very words of the first simple prayer her mother had taught her. It was nearly sunset when Helen woke. Her eyes rested long and sadly on her father's altered face; and, at last, drawing him towards her, she laid her head on his bosom, and wept silently. "What ails you, darling?" he said; "you are better, surely." "Yes, yes, I am better; but I see it all. I have almost broken your heart." "No, Helen, it is not you, dear child; you have been my comfort and my joy," he exclaimed; "you are so still." "I have been delirious, I know," said Helen," and have spoken of things that must have tortured you." "It matters not, dear child. Do you think a day passes wherein I do not think of those things? What else has made me what I am? I have been a sad companion for you, Helen; but God knows I have loved you well." It was after a long silence that Helen spoke again. "Let me," said she, "once, only once more speak of her. A day may come when, in bitter sorrow, she may ask your forgiveness. Sometimes I think of her, pale, dying, broken-hearted, -praying you to say one kind word to her before she dies. Oh, father, dearest father! if that time should ever come, promise, for the sake of your child, who will then be in her cold grave, promise to forgive her!" His voice was hoarse, but he replied calmly, "Helen, I have long since forgiven her; but I promise you, by all I hold most sacred, if ever I hear of her in trouble or sorrow, I will do all she has left me the power to do, to comfort and relieve her." "God bless you for those words! I have prayed for her all my life, and now in my death, my last thoughts are for you and for her. Father, will you not pray with me?" He knelt down and covered his face, while his child, calling up all her dying strength, poured forth a fervent prayer for the erring wifethe lost mother. To Edward Murray her voice was as the voice of an angel pleading for the fallen one in whom his heart had once delighted. His frame shook with the violence of his emotion, as that young voice, strong in the energy of faith and love, breathed its last prayer, uniting once more names that had long been sundered, and asking blessings on both. Helen's prayer was done, her spirit lingered awhile, and then fled for ever. At midnight, when the servants ventured to enter the room, the father still held the fair young head on his bosom; but he knew she was dead, and, after he had laid her tenderly on the pillow, and kissed her cheek, he suffered them to lead him away without a murmur. His was a grief of which the world could know nothing. None heard him complain, none saw him weep; and yet there was that in his face, betraying more grief than tears or words could have expressed. He did all that he was asked to do; but it seemed that, if left alone, he would have mused on for ever, unconscious of all that passed around him. He did not see the dead again; but he followed her to the grave, and returned with a firm step to his solitary home. A week-two-three weeks, passed away, and still Mr. Murray remained in the same stupor of unspoken grief Iwith which he had seen his last earthly hope fade from his arms for ever. He had no friends, and his servants, who had all loved poor Helen, though they pitied him, dared not speak of comfort. Once the nurse, who had tended Helen from her birth, came to beg he would rouse himself, but when he raised his calm, hopeless eyes, the words died |