sentment, under conditions of special insult or oppression, is not incompatible with the possession of an essentially gentle nature, it is not at all necessary to fancy that Shakespeare was here acting in the mere irrational spirit of retaliation. The owner of New Place had a social position to consolidate in his native town, and he took the best means of neutralizing a vexatious piece of scandal by holding up to local ridicule the individual whose line of treatment had attached to him whatever there was in the matter of personal degradation. And he would have been encouraged by the sympathy of the many who detested Sir Thomas's fanatical policy, even if the quarrel with him had not been in itself a passport to their favor. The news of the performance would somehow or other reach the ears of that potentate, who would naturally have been highly incensed at the unpardonable liberty that had been taken; the more so if, as it would appear, he was peculiarly sensitive to the opinion of his neighbors. The flight to London is an incontestable evidence that Shakespeare had no dread at that time of a metropolitan prosecution, and it was probably now, if ever, that Sir Thomas threatened to make his conduct, even at that late day, the subject of an appeal to the Star Chamber. Then would have followed the more pointed attack in the opening scene at Windsor, that in which his judicial dignities and his coat-armor, as well as the poaching adventure itself, are so mercilessly caricatured. It is not probable, however, that the entire significance of that dialogue will ever be ascertained. Much that is now obscure was no doubt immensely relished by the contemporary Stratfordians. It is easy to imagine, for example, the roars of laughter that might have greeted the

poet's declaration made through Falstaff, that he had never kissed the keeper's daughter, if so be that the lady in question had chanced to have been one of nature's scarecrows; and who will venture to be confident that there is no quaint hidden meanings in the references to the salt fish and the old coat? And again, as the assiduous knight never appears to have declined an invitation to take a glass of wine, it is very likely that the bacchanalian tournament with Silence is no overdrawn picture, one, moreover, that would have been thoroughly enjoyed in a neighborhood in which the jovial host had taken an active part in a commission for the reformation of tipplers.

Exaggeration is one of the legitimate resources of satirical art, and that it has largely affected the dramatic portraiture of Sir Thomas Lucy cannot admit of a reasonable doubt. A tolerable degree of business and even of administrative capacity is, indeed, sometimes to be observed in men of no great wisdom, but there are substantial reasons for believing that Sir Thomas could not have been the precise intellectual counterpart of Justice Shallow. This may be gathered from a perusal of his correspondence, from the notices of his parliamentary doings, and, so far as marble can be a faithful guide in such matters, from the expression of his features in the Charlecote effigy, the only authentic likeness of him known to exist. Neither would it be inferred from that memorial that he could have been correctly represented as a starveling, but here allowance must be made for Falstaff's imagery having been in a great measure dependent upon his relative estimate of the standard of personal expanse. That there was much, however, of existing personation in the dramatic character and sur

roundings of the Gloucestershire justice that would have been readily interpreted by the Stratford audience is unquestionable. Although our supplies of information on this point are very defective, there are still contemporary records which tell us of the special interest taken by Sir Thomas in the details of archery, of the hospitality that was the order of his mansion, of his familiarity with recruits and the muster-roll, of the antiquity of his family, and, above all, of that appreciation of "friends at court" through whose influence he contrived to bask in the divergent sunshines of Mary and Elizabeth. Nor is there the least reason for suspecting that his violent Protestantism, so convenient in the latter reign, was in any way connected with an asceticism that would have decried the stage or excluded a festive evening with a brother magistrate. We know, on the contrary, that he was the patron of a company of itinerant actors, and that he had an intelligent estimate of the virtues of sack. Much, indeed, has been said of his dislike to the Shakespeares on religious grounds, but there is really nothing to warrant such an assumption beyond the bare and inadequate fact that he served on a commission under which the poet's father was named in a list of suspected recusants.

Two plays, the titles of which have not been recorded, were acted by Shakespeare's company in the early part of the year 1598, the poet being then in London. It is certain, however, that his thoughts were not at this time absorbed by literature or the stage. So far from this being the case there are good reasons for concluding that they were largely occupied with matters relating to pecuniary affairs, and to the progress of his influence at Stratford-on-Avon. He was then considering the advisa

bility of purchasing an "odd yard land or other" in the neighborhood, and this circumstance, indicating the possession of redundant means, becoming known, his friend, Richard Quiney, who was in the metropolis, was strongly urged both in English and Latin to suggest to him the policy of trying to obtain one of the valuable tithe-leases, and to name, among other inducements,— "by the friends he can make therefore, we think it a fair mark for him to shoot at;-it obtained would advance him in deed and would do us much good," letter of Abraham Sturley dated from Stratford-on-Avon, January 24, 1598. These expressions indicate that Shakespeare's desire to establish a good position for himself in his native town was well known to his provincial friends.

When Shakespeare was meditating the purchase of the "odd yard," that is to say, most likely rather more than forty acres of land or thereabouts, he appears to have had a predilection in favor of Shottery, a hamlet in the immediate neighborhood of Stratford. It was in this village that he is generally believed, but on somewhat inconclusive grounds, to have met with his future wife, and hence has arisen the inevitable surmise that the inclination in favor of the particular investment emanated from recollections of the days of courtship. Some of those days may, indeed, have been passed in that locality, but whether this be the case or no, it is obvious, from the terms in which the contemplated acquisition is introduced that he was desirous of becoming one of the proprietors of its open fields. These latter, which were very extensive, comprising altogether about sixteen hundred acres, have long been enclosed, while there is nothing on their site, and little in their vicinity, to recall

the Shottery that was now in the poet's thoughts. Most of its numerous ancient footpaths have been suppressed; its mud-walls have disappeared; very few of its dwellings exhibit outward traces of genuine Elizabethan work, and a hideous culvert is the modern substitute for what was once a stepping-stone passage across a gurgling brook. It may be confidently stated that there is only one of its buildings that can be thought to have retained an approach to a complete preservation of its original external features, a farm-house that belonged to a family of the name of Hathaway, and one that is usually considered to be the birth-place of Shakespeare's own Anne. But although it cannot be said that "the report of her is extended more than can be thought to begin from such a cottage," the truthful biographer is compelled to admit, in my case more than reluctantly, that the balance of evidence is hardly in favor of the attribution.

It was natural that the poet, having not only himself bitterly felt the want of resources not so many years previously, but seen so much inconvenience arising from a similar deficiency in his father's household, should now be determining to avoid the chance of a recurrence of the infliction. That he did not love money for its own sake, or for more than its relative advantages, may be gathered from his liberal expenditure in after life; but that he had the wisdom to make other tastes subservient to its acquisition, so long as that course was suggested by prudence, is a fact that cannot fairly be questioned. However repugnant it may be to the flowery sentiments of the æsthetic critics, no doubt can arise, in the minds of those who will listen to evidence, that when Pope asserted that—