that Shakspere should take the same view of the matter as themselves. His friend William Combe, then high sheriff of the county, was a principal person engaged in forwarding the inclosure. The Corporation sent their common clerk, Thomas Greene, to London, to oppose the project; and a memorandum in his hand-writing, which still remains, exhibits the business-like manner in which Shakspere informed himself of the details of the plan. The first memorandum is dated the 17th of November, 1614, and is as follows:-"My Cosen Shakspeare comyng yesterday to town, I went to see how he did. He told me that they assured him they ment to inclose no further than to Gospel Bush, and so upp straight (leaving out pt. of the Dyngles to the field) to the gate in Clopton hedg, and take in Salisbury's peece; and that they mean in April to svey. the land and then to gyve satisfaccion, and not before: and he and Mr. Hall say they think yr. will be nothyng done at all." Mr. Greene appears to have returned to Stratford in about a fortnight after the date of this memorandum, and Shakspere seems to have remained in London; for according to a second memorandum, which is damaged and partly illegible, an official letter was written to Shakspere by the Corporation, accompanied by a private letter from Mr. Greene, moving him to exert his influence against this plan of the inclosure:-" 23 Dec. A. Hall, Lres. wrytten, one to Mr. Manyring-another to Mr. Shakspeare, with almost all the company's hands to eyther. I also wrytte myself to my Csn. Shakspear, the coppyes of all our . . . . . then also a note of the inconvenyences wold . . . by the inclosure." Arthur Mannering, to whom one of these letters was written by the Corporation, was officially connected with the Lord Chancellor, and then residing at his house; and from the letter to him, which has been preserved, "it appears that he was apprized of the injury to be expected from the intended inclosure; reminded of the damage that Stratford, then lying in the ashes of desolation,' had sustained from recent fires; and entreated to forbear the inclosure."* The letter to Shakspere has not been discovered. The fact of its having been written leaves no doubt of the importance which was attached to his opinion by his neighbours. Truly in his later years he had "Honour, love, obedience, troops of friends." John Combe, the old companion of Shakspere, died at the very hour that the great fire was raging at Stratford. According to the inscription on his monument, he died on the 10th of July, 1614. Upon his tomb is a fine recumbent figure executed by the same sculptor who, a few years later, set up in the same Chancel a monument to one who, "when that stone is rent," shall still be "fresh to all ages." Shakspere was at this period fifty years old. He was in all probability healthful and vigorous. His life was a pure and simple one; and its chances of endurance were the greater, that high intellectual occupation, not forced upon him by necessity, varied the even course of his tranquil existHis retrospections of the past would, we believe, be eminently happy. His high talents had been employed not only profitably to himself, but for the ence. LIFE. 2 M Wheler's Guide to Stratford.' 529 advantage of his fellow-creatures. He had begun life obscurely, the mernber of a profession which was scarcely more than tolerated. He had found the stage brutal and licentious. There were worse faults belonging to the early drama than its ignorant coarseness. It was adapted only for a rude audience in its strong excitement and its low ribaldry. He saw that the drama was to be made a great teacher. He saw that the highest things in the region of poetry were akin to the natural feelings in the commonest natures. He would make the noblest dramatic creations the most popular. He knew that the wit that was unintelligible to the multitude was not true wit, that the passion which did not move them to tears or anger was not real passion. He had raised a despised branch of literature into the highest He must have felt that he had produced works which could never die. It was not the applause of princes, or even the breath of admiring crowds, that told him this. He would look upon his own great creations as works of art, no matter by whom produced, to be compared with the performances of other men,-to be measured by that high ideal standard which was a better test than any such comparisons. Shakspere could not have mistaken his own intellectual position; for if ever there was a mind perfectly free from that self-consciousness which substitutes individual feelings for general truths, it was Shakspere's mind. To one who is perfectly familiar with his works, they come more and more to appear as emanations of the pure intellect, totally disconnected from art. the personal relations of the being which has produced them. Whatever might have been the worldly trials of such a mind, it had within itself the power of rising superior to every calamity. Although the career of Shakspere was prosperous, he may have felt "the proud man's contumely," if not "the oppressor's wrong." If we are to trust his Sonnets, he did feel these things. But he dwelt habitually in a region above these clouds of common life. He suffered family bereavements; yet he chronicled not his sorrows with that false sentimentality which calls upon the world to see how graceful it is to weep. In his impersonations of feeling, he has looked at death under every aspect with which the human mind views the last great change. To the thoughtless and selfish Claudio, "The weariest and most loathed worldly life That age, ach, penury, and imprisonment To what we fear of death." To the philosophical Duke life is a thing "That none but fools would keep." To Hamlet, whose conscience [consciousness] "puzzles the will," "The dread.of something after death" makes cowards of us all." To Prospero the whole world is as perishable as the life of man : "The cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces, Shakspere, when he speaks in a tone approaching to that of personal feeling, looks upon death with the common eye of humanity : "That time of year thou mayst in me behold As after sunset fadeth in the west, Which by and by black night doth take away, Death's second self, that seals up all in rest." Sonnet 1xxiii. He dwells in the place of his birth, and when he asks, "the friends of my childhood where are they? an echo answers, where are they?" Some few remain; the hoary-headed eld that he remembered fresh and full of hope. Ever and anon as he rambles through the villages where he rambled in his boyhood. the head of some one is laid under the turf whose name he remembers as the foremost at barley-break or foot-ball. The younger daughter of Shakspere was married on the 10th of February 1616, to Thomas Quiney, as the register of Stratford shows : Thomas Quiney was the son of Richard Quiney of Stratford, whom we have seen in 1598 soliciting the k'nd offices of his loving countryman Shakspere. Thomas, who was born in 1588, was probably a well-educated man. rate he was a great master of calligraphy, as his signature attests: At any +623 homas: Quynere " The last will of Shakspere would appear to have been prepared in some degree with reference to this marriage. It is dated the 25th of March, 1616: but the word Januarii" seems to have been first written and afterwards struck out, "Martii" having been written above it. It is not unlikely, and indeed it appears most probable, that the document was prepared before the marriage of Judith; for the elder daughter is mentioned as Susanna Hall,— the younger simply as Judith. To her one hundred pounds is bequeathed, and fifty pounds conditionally. The life-interest of a further sum of one hundred and fifty pounds is also bequeathed to her, with remainder to her children ; but if she died without issue within three years after the date of the will, the hundred and fifty pounds was to be otherwise appropriated. We pass over the various legacies to relations and friends to come to the bequest of the great bulk of the property. All the real estate is devised to his daughter Susanna Hall, for and during the term of her natural life. It is then entailed upon her first son and his heirs male; and in default of such issue, to her second son and * See the Will at the end of this Chapter. |