those strong lines in King John against the "Italian priest,” and against those who

"Purchase corrupted pardon of a man"?\

Was it "Roman Catholic zeal" which made him introduce these words into the famous prophecy of the glory and happiness of the reign of Elizabeth—

"God shall be truly known"?

He was brought up, without doubt, in the opinions which his father publicly professed, in holding office subject to his most solemn affirmation of those opinions. The transition from the old worship to the new was not an ungentle one for the laity. The early reformers were too wise to attempt to root up habits-those deep-sunk foundations of the past which break the ploughshares of legislation when it strives to work an inch below the earth's surface.

To the grammar-school, then, with some preparation, we hold that William Shakspere goes, about the year 1571. His father is at this time, as we have said, chief alderman of his town; he is a gentleman, now, of repute and authority, he is Master John Shakspere; and assuredly the worthy curate of the neighbouring village of Luddington, Thomas Hunt, who was also the school-master, would have received his new scholar with some kindness. As his "shining morning face" first passed out of the main street into that old court through which the upper room of learning was to be reached, a new life would be opening upon him. The humble minister of religion who was his first instructor has left no memorials of his talents or his acquirements; and in a few years another master came after him, Thomas Jenkins, also unknown to fame. All praise and honour be to them; for it is impossible to imagine that the teachers of William Shakspere were evil instructorsgiving the boy husks instead of wholesome aliment. They could not have been harsh and perverse instructors, for such spoil the gentlest natures, and his was always gentle:"My gentle Shakspere" is he called by a rough but noble spirit-one in whom was all honesty and genial friendship under a rude exterior. His wondrous abilities could not be spoiled even by ignorant instructors.

There were other agencies than the grammar-school at work in the direction of Shakspere's inquiring boyhood. There are local associations connected with Stratford which could not be without their influence in the formation of his mind. Within the range of such a boy's curiosity were the fine old historic towns of Warwick and Coventry, the sumptuous palace of Kenilworth, the grand monastic remains of Evesham. His own Avon abounded with spots of singular beauty, quiet hamlets, solitary woods. Nor was Stratford shut out from the general world, as many country towns are. It was a great highway; and dealers with every variety of merchandise resorted to its fairs. The eyes of Shakspere must always have been open for observation.

When he was twelve years old Elizabeth made her celebrated progress to Lord Leicester's castle of Kenilworth. Was William Shakspere at Kenilworth in that summer of 1575, when the great Dudley entertained Elizabeth with a splendour which annalists have delighted to record, and upon which one of our own days has bestowed a fame more imperishable than that of any annals? Percy, speaking of the old Coventry Hock-play, says, "Whatever this old play or storial show was at the time it was exhibited to Queen Elizabeth, it had probably our young Shakspere for a spectator, who was then in his twelfth year, and doubtless attended with all the inhabitants of the surrounding country at these 'princely pleasures of Kenilworth,' whence Stratford is only a few miles distant." a The preparations for this celebrated entertainment were on so magnificent a scale, the purveyings must have been so enormous, the posts so unintermitting, that there had needed not the flourishings of paragraphs (for the age of paragraphs was not as yet) to have roused the curiosity of all mid-England. Elizabeth had visited Kenilworth on two previous occasions,—in 1565, and in 1572.

Whether the boy Shakspere was at Kenilworth in 1575, when Robert Dudley welcomed his sovereign with a more than regal magnificence, is not necessary to be affirmed or denied. It is tolerably clear that the exquisite speech of

a 'On the Origin of the English Stage:'-Reliques, vol. i.

Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream' is associated with some of the poetical devices which he might have there beheld, or have heard described :

"Obe. My gentle Puck, come hither: Thou remember'st
Since once I sat upon a promontory,

And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back,
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
That the rude sea grew civil at her song;

And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,
To hear the sea-maid's music.

Obe. That very time I saw, (but thou couldst not,)
Flying between the cold moon and the earth,
Cupid all arm'd; a certain aim he took

At a fair vestal throned by the west;

And loos'd his love-shaft smartly from his bow,

As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts:

But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft

Quench'd in the chaste beams of the watery moon
And the imperial votaress passed on,

In maiden meditation fancy-free."

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The most remarkable of the shows of Kenilworth were associated with the mythology and the romance of lakes and seas. Triton, in likeness of a mermaid, came towards the Queen's Majesty." "Arion appeared sitting on a dolphin's back." So the quaint and really poetical George Gascoigne, in his ‘Brief Rehearsal, or rather a true Copy of as much as was presented before her Majesty at Kenilworth.' But the diffuse and most entertaining coxcomb Laneham describes a song of Arion, with an ecstacy which may justify the belief that the "dulcet and harmonious breath" of "the seamaid's music" might be the echo of the melodies heard by the young poet as he stood beside the lake at Kenilworth :"Now, Sir, the ditty in metre so aptly endited to the matter, and after by voice deliciously delivered; the song, by a skilful artist into his parts so sweetly sorted; each part in his instrument so clean and sharply touched; every instrument again in his kind so excellently tunable; and this in the evening of the day, resounding from the calm waters, where the presence of her Majesty, and longing to listen, had utterly damped all noise and din, the whole harmony conveyed in time, tune, and temper thus incomparably melodious; with what pleasure (Master Martin), with what

sharpness of conceit, with what lively delight this might pierce into the hearers' hearts, I pray ye imagine yourself as ye may." If Elizabeth be the "fair vestal throned by the west," of which there can be no reasonable doubt, the most appropriate scene of the mermaid's song would be Kenilworth, and "that very time" the summer of 1575.

,, а

Percy, believing that the boy Shakspere was at Kenilworth, has remarked, with his usual taste and judgment, that "the dramatic cast of many parts of that superb entertainment must have had a very great effect upon a young imagination, whose dramatic powers were hereafter to astonish the world." Without assuming with Percy that " our young bard gained admittance into the castle on the evening when *after supper was there a play of a very good theme presented; but so set forth, by the actors' well handling, that pleasure and mirth made it seem very short, though it lasted two good hours and more;' yielding not our consent to 'Tieck's fiction, that the boy performed the part of "Echo in Gascoigne's address to the Queen, and was allowed to see the whole of the performances by the especial favour of her Majesty, we may believe there were parts of that entertainment, which, without being a favoured spectator, William Shakspere with his friends might have beheld; and which "must have had a very great effect upon a young imagination," assisting, too, in giving it that dramatic tendency, which was a peculiar characteristic of the simplest and the commonest festivals of his age.

And yet it is difficult to imagine anything more tedious than the fulsome praise, the mythological pedantries, the obscure allusions to Constancy and Deep-Desire, which were poured into the ears of Elizabeth during the nineteen days of Kenilworth. There was not, according to the historians of this visit, one fragment of our real old poetry produced, to gratify the Queen of a nation that had the songs and ballads of the chivalrous times still fresh upon its lips. There were no Minstrels at Kenilworth; the Harper was unbidden to its halls. The old English spirit of poetry was dead in a scheming court. It was something higher that in

a Laneham.

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a few years called up Spenser and Shakspere. Yet there was one sport, emanating from the people, which had heart and reality in it. Laneham describes this as a "good sport presented in an historical cue by certain good-hearted men of Coventry, my lord's neighbours there." The description by Laneham is the only precise account which remains to us of the "old storial show." It was a show not to be despised; for it told the people how their Saxon ancestors had arisen to free themselves from " outrage and unsupportable insolency," and "how valiantly our Englishwomen, for love of their country, behaved themselves." It is difficult to arrive at any other conclusion than that of Percy, that the play, as originally performed by the men of Coventry, expressed in action and rhymes after their manner,”—representing a complicated historical event,-the insolence of tyranny, the indignation of the oppressed, the grievous complaint of one injured chieftain, the secret counsels, the plots, the conflicts, the triumph,-must have offered us a regular model of a complete drama." If the young Shakspere were a witness to the performance of this drama, his imagination would have been more highly and more worthily excited than if he had been the favoured spectator of all the shows of Tritons, and Dianas, and Ladies of the Lake that proceeded from "the conceit so deep in casting the plot of his lordship of Leicester. It would be not too much to believe that this storial show might first suggest to him how English history might be dramatised; how a series of events, termininating in some remarkable catastrophe, might be presented to the eye; how fighting-men might be marshalled on a mimic field; how individual heroism might stand out from amongst the mass, having its own fit expression of thought and passion; how the wife or the mother, the sister or the mistress, might be there to uphold the hero, even as the Englishwomen assisted their warriors; and how all this might be made to move the hearts of the people, as the old ballads had once moved them. Such a result would have repaid a visit to Kenilworth by William Shakspere. Without this, he, his father, and their friends, might have retired from the scene of Dudley's magnificence, as most thinking persons in all probability retired, with little satisfaction.