Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1877-11-23

"common in the extreme! The reader shall
| judge between us, for here it is quite literal
| ly:
Mother, thou CAV st me life thy milk, thy breasts
| Alas for all these gifts | stones return.
! For rather would that the angel bright
| Would roll away ior me this stone and loose
Thae breathing back as Christ came back to light.
But wishes powerless fall. Then, Saviour, come
That so my mother. prisoned in these bars,
| May rise aga n and meet Thee in the stars.
think every one must have observed that
| the dead are never wished back again by the
| living unless they were greatly useful or in
tensely loved, and this rdrs>t of tributes We
find Shakespeare's daughter paying to his wife.
| We may then suppose, as indeed always
have. that that most discriminating eye of
! his did not deceive him, young as he was,
when he wooed Anne Hathaway for his own.
and if i'll return he was loved not wisely but
too well, perhaps few women could have
loved .NldkSpare any other way. Thank
heaven that the worlds master poet was also
Il true man, and therefore true lover. and
that he behaved so honorably. In the long
run he was blessed tor it. not only III his
fame and in the blessings of the basket and
of the store" but also in the supreme bless
ing of sweet and gracious and tranquil
home whence emanated some OF his most
marvellous conceptions. If his wife did not
altogether all his ideal and if for a time he
layished his sentiment elsewhere, 1t Is too
common conjugal experience for the mar
riage TO be thereupon branded as ''disas-
trouS" or unhappy" Who can tell how he
might have wasted himself in Wild career
in London had he not left behind him IN
Stratford close ties always tugginG at his
heart strings? The latest discovery that
people often make is the discovery of the ro
nance that they have overlooked at their
own hearthstone. and many never stumble
upon it at all Certain, it is, that exquisite
and cherished daughters form the most poetic
figures III Shakespeare's later play, and that
in the very last of all, "The Winters Tale,
the heroine is the patient and injured 'cte
who had been msconceived for sixteen years.
i. e. about as long as Shakespeare lived
away from home in London.
From the church We retraced our steps
through the town to the sordld cottage where
Shakespeare was born, and which has been
so often described that will only say ot it,
that though it looks rude to us 1t was proba-
bly, far better house in its day than II seems
now, when the comforts and luXuries of life
have so immensely increased, and the stand
ard is So much raised They told us that it
was visited by about 10, 100 persons year
| saw the deed by which his father secured
the property, AID it was only signed with
his marx. Think of Shakespeare's parents
not being able to write But though his
father WAS only tradesman, ms mother,
like the sacred mother of Our Lord, was of
gentle blood, and descended from an old
family. Her name, too, was Mary, and what
aspirations backward toward her fathers
lineage must have smouldered within her to
have famed upon the world i'll such u mas
ter of language and of all lofty situations as
Shakespeare have long Thought, by the
way that the hymn of the Virgin Mary after
the Apnunciation. betokened anything but
the meek and lowly spirit usually attributed
to her. 1t is rather the pecan of free and
high nature, which had deeply felt its per
soDal and family and national humiliations,
and was rejoicing in the prospect of their
termination. Perhaps 1.-THE sword had to
pierce through her own heart Also" before
She thoroughly comprehended that "humil-
ty" which she was 10 place upon the brow of
her sex as the true crown of perfect woman
hood. Alas il is n crown We American wO-
men seem too much inclined to scof at and
fling away but some of the women of Shakes
peare's family must have worn it in all its
soft and periumed, if thorn-hned, loveliness,
or he never could have painted woman as he
did. The type still characterizes his native
land They are like flowers" said keen
observer to me in speaking of Englishwo
men. They are all, even the reckless ones,
like flowers while III France even the ladies
seem to belong to the demimonde.
In driving finally away, We left the town by
a road which follows the river on the side OPP
posite the church, and it WAS little way be-
low the latter in giving my last look at the
quiet, quiet stream bordered with its peren-
NAL reeds, that | suddenly realized that
Shakespeare must often have stood precisely
there and seen everything with his living
eyes that ! was then gazing at with mine. |
even thought of him as a boy with his trou-
sers turned up, wadiug down barefoot among
those reeds and it is impossible to express
or to explain why that excessively simple |
landscape, that commonplace scene, should |
have been SO wondrously appropriate to him.
But SO il was.
Stratford as a whole seemed to me the
most sacred place | was ever in. Not in the
church alone as some have said, but the
whole town is but a monument to Shakes
peare, and the spell OF that mighty spirit |
casts such a repose over the place that one |
longs to lay down the agitations of life and |
take up calm and contemplative abode |
there. 1t is neat, primitive, hushed little |
village, with wide stone paved streets. and /
low continuous cottages opening directly on |
to them. The only wonder TO me is that it |
has been permitted 10 remain small. One |
would think that loads Of people would have |
liked to live there. But no doubt this very |
all-pervadingness of Shakespeare's presence |
encroaches too much upon the precious self |
hood, and lesser mortals would either have |
to profaue it by forgetting it or be subdued |
by 1t. So it is well that the world has almost |
declined to reside in Strattord, |
and that from that time TO this the Great One
1. /. 4. /.
As | remember them all together, Warwick |
Castle, kenilworth and Standardization.
the contrast between the naughty and aspir-
Ing towers OF the two former and the humble
roofs % the last is complete
is so fiat that round Shakespeares
home the sky domed almost down to the very
horizon, and the whole sweep of heaven and
earth poured i'll upon him their mystic intlu-
ences. But not far away, and whittier his
adventurous feet must often have carried |
him, were the lordly battlcments, the pomp
pageantry and display of the highest crest of
England's splendid aristocracy, the most
sovereign men that had ruled III the world
since the days oiths Roman Senate. 1t was,
then, evidently arranged aud pre-ordained
that Shakespeare should be the Cosmos OF
his historic people, the millenninl plant of II
thousand infinitely reaching roots. suddenly
the English land. From top to bottom it was
given to him to see and feel and measure 1t
all, SO that the same soul which acted in life
like n man, despalred in his sonnets like
woman and commanded in his plays like II
king.
And perhaps Shakespeare was not the only
surpernal flower of the Heart u England
To me it is an exquisite instance OF the neg
lccted but absolute Poetry of History that
only twenty miles or so farther away from
Strhtford than Warwick, Is Great Brlngton,
III whose church our own Washington great
great grandfather was buried IN the same
year iii which Shakespeare himself WAS lald |
to rest. This Mr. Washington was inferred |
next to the Earl of Spcnser, to whom the |
poet Spenser was so nearly related. The
Washingtons were neighbors and frequent |
visitors at Althorp, the celebratrd seat of the |
Spenscr family, which has cherished equally |
n love for books and literature, and Tor the !
planting of forests and groves. Spenser !
and Washington, therefore the I
most divine trio of the composite English |
race, the most completely representative of
ITS reverence, it, manIursS, Its PATRIOTISM,
ITS tenderness, Its imagination, ITS REFINE
ment and Its passion for nature, were not far
apart ancestraly III geographical association,
and the most chivalrous and ideal two OF
them, Washington and Spenser. Were linked
together by actual ancestral intimacy. OF
these last, who shall say whether from the
same deep mother-sources III the abysmal
past dll not spring the sublime poetic dreams
OF the one aud the sublime poetic life OF the
other There are more things Ill heaven
and earth than uru dreamed OF in our phIlo-
sophy."
MELUsINA PEIKCE.
THE ltinerating Shoemaker was not prob
ably, great loss to society ut the time be
r....u..I liz. tl..t Il