possession of any cultivated flower, while it is certain that Stratford had not the monopoly of every wild one. It should be recollected that the line of demarcation between country and town life was not strongly marked in Shakespeare's day. The great dramatist may be practically considered never to have relinquished a country life during any part of his career, for even when in the metropolis he must always have been within a walk of green fields, woods and plant-bordered streams, and within a few steps of some of the gardens which were then to be found in all parts of London, not even excepting the limited area of the city. Wild plants, as has been previously observed, were to be seen in the immediate vicinity of the Shoreditch theaters, and there is perhaps no specimen mentioned by Shakespeare which was not to be met with in or near the metropolis; but even were this not the case, surely the fact of his having resided in Warwickshire during at least the first eighteen years of his life is sufficient to account for his knowledge of them. Then again at a later period he must, in those days of slow and leisurely travel, have been well acquainted with the rural life and natural objects of many other parts of the country which were traversed by him when the members of his company made their professional tours, and with the district between London and Stratford-on-Avon he must of course have been specially familiar.

The metropolis in those days was the main abode of English letters and refined culture, but in other respects there could have been very few experiences that were absolutely restricted to its limits. If this is carefully borne in mind, it will save us from falling into numerous delusions, and, among others, into the common one of

fancying that Shakespeare must have drawn his tavernlife from an acquaintance with its character as it was exhibited on the banks of the Thames. There was no more necessity for him to have traveled from London in search of flowers than there was to have gone there for the,-"anon, anon, sir; score a pint of bastard in the Half Moon." We have, indeed, the direct testimony of Harrison, in 1586, to the effect that the metropolitan were then inferior to many of the provincial hotels. There was certainly at least one inn at Stratford-on-Avon which could bear comparison in essential respects with any to be found elsewhere in England. The Bear near the foot of the bridge possessed its large hall, its nominated rooms such as the Lion and Talbot chambers, an enormous quantity of house linen, a whole pipe of claret, two butts of sack, plenty of beer, upwards of forty tankards of different sizes, and, among its plate, "one goblet of silver, parcel-gilt." The last-named vessel need not be converted into the prototype of the one used by Mrs. Quickly in the Dolphin, nor, as a rule, in the absence of palpable evidence to the contrary, are there grounds for believing that the great dramatist was thinking of special localities when he was penning his various allusions or characterizations.

When the amazing number of different characters in the plays of Shakespeare is borne in mind, it is curious that he should have left so few traces in them of what is exclusively provincial. There are yet fewer, if any, of language or customs that can be thought to be absolutely peculiar to Stratford-upon-Avon, but examples of both are frequently to be met with that may fairly be supposed to have been primarily derived from the poet's local experiences. Among these is the expression,-aroint thee,

witch!—one that is so rare in our literature, either in print or manuscript, that the combined labors of philologists have failed to produce a single early instance of its use in the works of other authors. That it was, however, a familiar phrase in Shakespeare's time with the lower classes of his native place, is apparent from one of the town records. It is there narrated how one Goodie Bromlie, in an altercation with a woman named Holder, was so exceedingly free-spoken that she had the audacity to wind up a torrent of abuse with the unseemly execration,—arent the, wich! There is no doubt that Stratford yielded many another unusual expression,-many a quaint observation,―to the recollection of the great dramatist, and it is just possible that an occasional specimen may yet be met with in the locality. One of the inhabitants, so recently as the year 1843, was put into stocks for intoxication, and a passer-by, asking the captive how he liked the discipline, was met with the reply,—“I beant the first mon as ever were in the stocks, so I don't care a farden about it." If it were not an impossible view of the case, it might be fancied that the jovial delinquent had been travestying one of the reflections that Richard II is made to utter in the dungeon of Pomfret Castle.

Those who would desire to realize the general appearance of the Stratford-on-Avon of the poet's days must deplore the absence, not merely of a genuine sketch of New Place, but of any kind of view or engraving of the town as it appeared in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries. Its aspect must then have been essentially different from that exhibited at a subsequent period. Relatively to ourselves, Shakespeare may practically be considered to have existed in a different land, not more than glimpses of

the real nature of which are now to be obtained by the most careful study of existing documents and material remains. Many enthusiasts of these times who visit Stratford-onAvon are under the delusion that they behold a locality which recalls the days of the great dramatist, but, with the exception of a few diffused buildings, scarcely one of which is precisely in its original condition, there is no resemblance between the present town and the Shakespearean borough, the latter with its medieval and Elizabethan buildings, its crosses, its numerous barns and thatched hovels, its water-mills, its street bridges and rivulets, its mud walls, its dunghills and fetid ditches, its unpaved walks and its wooden-spired church, with the common fields reaching nearly to the gardens of the Birth-Place. Neither can there be a much greater resemblance between the ancient and modern general views of the town from any of the neighboring elevations. The tower and lower part of the church, the top of the Guild Chapel, a few old tall chimneys, the course of the river, the mill-dam, and the outlines of the surrounding hills, would be nearly all that would be common to both prospects. There were, however, until the last few years, the old mill-bridge, which, excepting that rails had been added, preserved its Elizabethan form, the Cross-on-the-Hill, and the Wier Brake, the two latter fully retaining their original character. Now, alas, a hideous railway has obliterated all trace of the picturesque from what was one of the most interesting and charming spots in Warwickshire.

A former inhabitant of Stratford-on-Avon, writing in the year 1759, asserts that "the unanimous tradition of this neighborhood is that, by the uncommon bounty of the Earl of Southampton, he was enabled to purchase

houses and land at Stratford." According to Rowe,"there is one instance so singular in the magnificence of this patron of Shakespeare's that, if I had not been assured that the story was handed down by Sir William D'Avenant, who was probably very well acquainted with his affairs, I should not have ventured to have inserted; that my Lord Southampton at one time gave him a thousand pounds to enable him to go through with a purchase which he heard he had a mind to." A comparison of these versions would indicate that, if the anecdote is based on truth, the gift was made on the occasion of the purchase of New Place in 1597; and it is probable that it was larger than the sum required for that object, although the amount named by Rowe must be an exaggeration. Unless the general truth of the story be accepted, it is difficult to believe that Shakespeare could have obtained, so early in his career, the ample means he certainly possessed in that and the following year. The largest emoluments that could have been derived from his professional avocations would hardly have sufficed to have accomplished such a result, and the necessity of forwarding continual remittances to Stratford-on-Avon must not be overlooked.

It was not until the year 1597 that Shakespeare's public reputation as a dramatist was sufficiently established for the booksellers to be anxious to secure the copyright of his plays. The first of his dramas so honored was the successful and popular one of King Richard II, which was entered as a tragedy on the books of the Stationers' Company by Andrew Wise, a publisher in St. Paul's Churchyard, on August 29, 1597. In the impression heralded by this entry the deposition scene was omitted for political reasons, objections having been made to its