Homes and Haunts of the Most Eminent British Poets Part 3

"Welcome all who lead or follow To the oracle of Apollo: Here he speaks out of his pottle, Or the tin-pot, his tower bottle: All his answers are divine; Truth itself doth flow like wine.

Hang up all the poor hop-drinkers, Cries old Sam, the king of skinkers.

He the half of life abuses That sits watering with the Muses, Those dull G.o.ds no good can mean us: Wine--it is the cream of Venus, And the poet's horse accounted: Ply it, and you all are mounted.

'Tis the true Phoebian liquor, Cheers the brain, makes it the quicker; Pays all debts, cures all diseases, And at once the senses pleases.

Welcome all who lead or follow To the oracle of Apollo."

There is not any reason to believe that Shakspeare, lover of wit and jollity as he was, was a practical upholder of this pernicious doctrine.

He may often make his characters speak in this manner, but personally he retired as soon as he could from this baccha.n.a.l life to his own quiet hearth at Stratford; and if we are to believe his sonnets addressed to his wife, and they possess the tone of a deep and real sentiment, he seriously rued the orgies in which he had partic.i.p.ated.

"O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide, The guilty G.o.ddess of my harmful deeds, That did not better for my life provide Than public means which public manners breeds: Hence comes it that my name receives a brand, And almost thence my nature is subdued To what it works in, like the dyer's hand; Pity me, then, and wish I were renewed.

While, like a willing patient, I will drink Potions of eysell,[1] 'gainst my strong infection.

No bitterness that I will bitter think, No double penance to correct correction.

Pity me, then, dear friend, and I a.s.sure ye Even that your pity is enough to cure me."

We can not read these and many other portions of his sonnets, we can not see Shakspeare retiring every year, and as soon as able, altogether from the baccha.n.a.lian and dissipated habits of the literary men of the day, to the peaceful place of his birth, and the purity of his wedded home, without respecting his moral character as much as we admire his genius.

The praises and the practice of drunkenness by literary men, and poets especially, have entailed infinite mischief on themselves and on their followers. What woes and degradations are connected with the history of brilliant men about town, which have tended to stamp the general literary character with the brand of improvidence and disrespect--jails, deaths, picking out of gutters, sponging-houses, and domestic misery--how thickly do all these rise on our view as we look back through the history of men of genius, the direct result of the absurd rant about drinking and debauch! With what a beautiful purity do the names of the greatest geniuses of all rise above these details, like the calm spires of churches through the fogs and smokes of London! How cheering is it to see the number of these grow with the growth of years!

Shakspeare, Spenser, Sidney, Milton, Cowper, Scott, Wordsworth, Southey, Sh.e.l.ley, have all been sober and domestic men; and the sanction which they have given by their practice to the proprieties of life, will confer on all future ages blessings as ample as the public truths of their teaching. The Mermaid Tavern, like the other haunts of Shakspeare, has disappeared. It was swept away by the fire. If any traces of his haunts remain, they must be in the houses of the great, where he was accustomed to visit, as those of the Lords Southampton, Leicester, Pembroke, Montgomery, and others. These are, however, now all either gone, or so cut up and metamorphosed that it were vain to look for them as abodes hallowed by the footsteps of Shakspeare. If it be true that he was commanded to read his play of Falstaff in love--the Merry Wives of Windsor--to Queen Elizabeth, it would probably be at Whitehall or St. James's, for Somerset House was comparatively little occupied by her.

The very places in London more particularly ill.u.s.trated by his genius have too much followed the fate of those in which he lived. It is true, the Tower, Westminster Palace, and some other of those public buildings and old localities where the scenes of his national dramas are laid, still remain, spite of time and change; and the sites of others, though now covered with wildernesses of fresh houses, may be identified. But The Boar's Head in East Cheap is annihilated; it, too, fell in the great fire, and the modern improvements thereabout, the erection of new London Bridge, and the cutting of King William-street, have swept away nearly all remaining marks of the neighborhood. It is supposed that the present statue of William IV. stands not very far from the spot where Hal reveled and Sir John swaggered and drank sack.

Over London, and many a spot in and about it, as well as over a thousand later towns, forests, and mountains, of this and other countries, wherever civilized man has played his part, will the genius of Shakspeare cast an undying glory; but to see the actual traces of his existence we must resort to the place of his nativity and death. There still stand the house and the room in which he was born; there stands the house in which he wooed his Ann Hathaway, and the old garden in which he walked with her. There stands his tomb, to which the great, and the wise, and the gifted from all regions of the world have made pilgrimage, followed by millions of those who would be thought so, the frivolous and the empty; but all paying homage, by the force of reason, or the force of fashion, vanity and imitation, to the universal interpreter of humanity. It is well that the slow change of a country town has permitted the spirit of veneration to alight there, and cast its protecting wings over the earthly traces of that existence which diffused itself as a second life through all the realms of intellect.

There is nothing missing of Shakspeare's there but the house which he built, and the mulberry-tree which he planted. The tree was hewn down, the house was pulled down and dispersed piecemeal, by the infamous parson Gastrell, who thus "d.a.m.ned himself to eternal fame" more thoroughly than the fool who fired the Temple of Diana. There, only a few miles distant, is the stately hall of Charlecote, whither the youthful poacher of Parna.s.sus was carried before the unlucky knight.

There, too, and, oh shame! shame to England, shame to the lovers of Shakspeare, shame to those who annually turn Stratford and their club into a regular "Eatanswill," on pretense of honoring Shakspeare; there, too, live the descendants of the nearest relative of Shakspeare--of his sister Joan--in unnoticed and unmitigated poverty! Seven years ago, on my visit to this place, I pointed out this fact; and now, that the disgraceful fact still remains, I will once more record the words I then wrote.

"As I went to Shottry, I met with a little incident, which interested me greatly by its unexpectedness. As I was about to pa.s.s over a stile, at the end of Stratford, into the fields leading to that village, I saw the master of the national school mustering his scholars to their tasks. I stopped, being pleased with the look of the old man, and said, 'You seem to have a considerable number of lads here; shall you raise another Shakspeare from among them, think you?' 'Why,' replied the master, 'I have a Shakspeare now in the school.' I knew that Shakspeare had no descendants beyond the second generation, and I was not aware that there was any of his family remaining. But it seems that the posterity of his sister, Joan Hart, who is mentioned in his will, yet exist; part under her marriage name of Hart, at Tewkesbury, and a family in Stratford, of the name of Smith.

"'I have a Shakspeare here,' said the master, with evident pride and pleasure. 'Here, boys, here!' He quickly mustered his laddish troop in a row, and said to me, 'There now, sir, can you tell which is a Shakspeare?' I glanced my eye along the line, and instantly fixing it on one boy, said, 'That is the Shakspeare.' 'You are right,' said the master, 'that is the Shakspeare; the Shakspeare cast of countenance is there. That is William Shakspeare Smith, a lineal descendant of the poet's sister.'

"The lad was a fine lad of, perhaps, ten years of age; and, certainly, the resemblance to the bust of Shakspeare in the church at Stratford is wonderful, considering he is not descended from Shakspeare himself, but from his sister; and that the seventh in descent. What is odd enough is, whether it be mere accident or not, that the color of the lad's eyes, a light hazel, is the very same as that given to those of the Shakspeare bust, which, it is well known, was originally colored, and of which exact copies remain.

"I gave the boy sixpence, telling him I hoped he would make as great a man as his ancestor--the best term I could lay hold of for the relationship, though not the true one. The boy's eyes sparkled at the sight of the money, and the healthful, joyous color rushed into his cheeks; his fingers continued making acquaintance with so large a piece of money in his pocket, and the sensation created by so great an event in the school was evident. It sounded oddly enough, as I was pa.s.sing along the street in the evening, to hear some of the same schoolboys say one to another, 'That is the gentleman who gave Bill Shakspeare sixpence.'

"Which of all the host of admirers of Shakspeare, who has plenty of money, and does not know what to do with it, will think of giving that lad, one of the nearest representatives of the great poet, an education, and a fair chance to raise himself in the world? The boy's father is a poor man; if I be not fanciful, partaking somewhat of the Shakspeare physiognomy,[2] but also keeps a small shop, and ekes out his profits by making his house a 'Tom-and-Jerry.' He has other children, and complained of misfortune. He said that some years ago Sir Richard Phillips had been there, and promised to interest the public about him, but that he never heard any more of it. Of the man's merits or demerits I know nothing: I only know that in the place of Shakspeare's birth, and where the town is full of the 'signs' of his glory; and where Garrick made that pompous jubilee, hailing Shakspeare as a demi-G.o.d, and calling him 'the G.o.d of our idolatry;' and where thousands, and even millions, flock to do homage to the shrine of this demi-G.o.d, and pour out deluges of verse, of the most extravagant and sentimental nature, in the public alb.u.ms; there, as is usual in such cases, the nearest of blood to the object of such vast enthusiasm are poor and despised: the flood of public admiration, at its most towering height, in its most vehement current, never for a moment winds its course in the slightest degree to visit them with its refreshment; nor, of the thousands of pounds spent in the practice of this devotion, does one bodle drop into their pockets.

"Garrick, as I have observed, once

'Called the world to worship on the banks Of Avon, famed in song. Ah, pleasant proof That piety has still in human hearts Some place--a spark or two not yet extinct.

The mulberry-tree was hung with blooming wreaths, The mulberry-tree stood center of the dance, The mulberry-tree was hymn'd with dulcet airs, And from his touchwood trunk the mulberry-tree Supplied such relics as devotion holds Still sacred, and preserves with pious care.

So 'twas an hallowed time. Decorum reign'd, And mirth without offense. No few return'd Doubtless much edified, and all refresh'd.'

_Cowper's Task_, b. vi.

"But it does not appear that Garrick and his fellow-worshipers troubled themselves at all about the descendants of the poet's sister; the object, in fact, seemed at the moment to be rather to worship Garrick than Shakspeare; how, then, could any ray of sympathy diverge from two 'demi-G.o.ds' to the humble relatives of one of them? And why should it? I hear honest utilitarians asking, why? What should lead the ragged descendants of poets and philosophers to forsake self-dependence, and look to the admirers of their ancestors for benefit? What a shocking thing, if they should, especially in a nation which enn.o.bles whole lines forever, and grants immense estates in perpetuity for the exploit of some man who has won a battle that had better never have been fought!

What! shall such men, and shall troops of lawyers, who have truckled to the government of the day, and become the tools of despotism in a country dreaming that it is free--shall men who have merely piled up heaps of coin, and purchased large tracts of earth, by plodding in the city dens of gain, or dodging on the Stock Exchange--shall such men be enn.o.bled, and their line forever, and shall men who have left a legacy of immortal mind to their country leave also to their families an exclusive poverty and neglect? Will our very philosophical utilitarian tell us why this should be?

"It might, also, be whispered, that it would not be much more irrational to extend some of that enthusiasm and money, which are now wasted on empty rooms and spurious musty relics, to at least trying to benefit and raise in the scale of society beings who have the national honor to be relics and mementos of the person worshiped, as well as to old chairs, and whitewashed butchers' shops. Does it never occur to the votaries of Shakspeare, that these are _the only sentient, conscious, and rational things connected with his memory_ which can feel a living sense of the honor conferred on him, and possess a grateful knowledge that the mighty poet of their house has not sung for them in vain, and that they only, in a world overshadowed with his glory, are not unsoothed by its visitings?"[3]

Seven years have gone over since this was written, and what has been the effect? The Shakspeare Club have gone down to Stratford, and feasted and guzzled _in honor of Shakspeare_, and the _representatives_ of Shakspeare in the place have been left in their poverty. There seems to be some odd a.s.sociation of ideas in the minds of Englishmen on the subject of doing honor to genius. To reward warriors, and lawyers, and politicians, places, t.i.tles, and estates are given. To reward poets and philosophers, the property which they honestly, and with _the toil of their whole lives_, create, is taken from them, and that which should form an estate for their descendants to all posterity, and become a monument of fame to the nation, is conferred on booksellers. The copyright of authors, or, in other words, the right to the property which they made, was taken away in the reign of Queen Anne, "_for the benefit of literature_;" so says the act. Let the same principle, in G.o.d's name, be carried out into all other professions, and we shall soon come to an understanding on the subject. Take a lord's or a squire's land from him and his family forever, after a given number of years, _for the benefit of aristocracy_; take the farmer's plow and team, his harrows and his corn, _for the benefit of agriculture_; take the mill-owner's mills, with all their spinning-jennies, and their cotton, and their wool, and their silk, and their own new inventions, for the benefit of manufacturing; take the merchant's ships and their cargoes, the shopkeeper's shop and his stores, the lawyer's parchment and his fees, the physician's and surgeon's physic and fees, for the benefit of commerce, trade, law, and physic: and let the clergy suffer no injury of neglect in this respect; let their churches, and their glebes, and t.i.thes, be taken for the benefit of religion; let them all go shares with the authors in this beautiful system of justice and encouragement, and then the whole posse will soon put their heads together, and give back to the author his rights, while they take care of their own.

But till this be done--so long as the children and descendants, and nearest successors of the author are robbed by the state, while the poet and philosopher crown their country with glory, and fill it with happiness, and their country in return brands their children with disgrace, and fills them with emptiness--while they go in rags, and the bookseller in broad-cloth--in leanness, and the bookseller, endowed by the state with the riches of their ancestors, in jollity and fat--so long let those who are anxious to do honor to the glorious names of our literature, honor them with some show of common sense and common feeling. Honor Shakspeare, indeed! Has he not honored himself sufficiently? What says John Milton, another glorious son of the Muse?

"What needs my Shakspeare for his honor'd bones, The labor of an age in piled stones?

Or that his hallowed reliques should be hid Under a star-ypointing pyramid?

Dear son of memory, great heir of fame!

What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name?

Thou in our wonder and astonishment Hath built thyself a long-lived monument."

But if this honor be not needed, what needs there for our Shakspeare, the still weaker witness of his name, of guzzling and gormandizing? Is there any the remotest connection between the achievements of pure intellect and seven-gallon barrel stomachs of anniversary topers?

Between the still labors of a divine imagination, and the uproarious riot of a public feed when half-seas over? Let mock turtle do honor to mock heroes; but what has Shakspeare, and the honor of Shakspeare, to do with the "hip! hips!" and the swilling of mere herds of literary swine?

To become part and parcel of such a herd, were d.i.c.kens and Talfourd invited down to Stratford this very year. They wisely eschewed the honor.

Let us suppose, for a moment, that the spirit of Shakspeare could hear the hiccoughings of the crew a.s.sembled in his name, to honor him forsooth! If he were permitted to descend from the serene glory of his seventh heaven, and appeared at the door of their dining-room with the meager descendants of the Shakspeare family crowding sadly behind him, what are the indignant words that he would address to the flushed and bloated throng of his _soi-disant_ worshipers? They have been already addressed to like ears by the great Master of love, and of the philosophy of true honor. "I was an hungered, and ye gave me no meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me not in; naked, and ye clothed me not; sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. * * * _Inasmuch as ye did it not to the least of these, ye did it not to me._"[4] No, the sycophantic humbugs never did it to Shakspeare. What cares he, in his seventh heaven of glory and of poetry, for their guzzlings? What have they to do with him or his honor? Is it not a precious imposture, to make a feast to a man's honor, and not to invite to it his nearest relatives, especially when they live at the next door? In the name of the national reputation, let this wretched and egotistic farce be put down by the good sense of the British public.

If these people will not honor Shakspeare by honoring his family, let them at least abstain from insulting their poverty and their neglect by this public parade, and this devouring of joints.

Hear what Robert Southey says: "The last descendants of Milton died in poverty. The descendants of Shakspeare[5] are living in poverty, and in the lowest condition of life. Is this just to these individuals? Is it grateful to those who are the pride and boast of their country? Is it honorable or becoming to us as a nation, holding--the better part of us a.s.suredly, and the majority affecting to hold--the names of Shakspeare and Milton in veneration? To have placed the descendants of Shakspeare and Milton in respectability and comfort in that sphere of life where, with a full provision for our natural wants and social enjoyments, free scope is given to the growth of our intellectual and immortal part, simple justice was all that was required--only that they should have possessed the perpetual copyright of their ancestors' works--only that they should not have been deprived of their proper inheritance."[6]

The time is evidently not yet come for setting this great matter right; for doing this great act of justice toward the teachers of the world and glorifiers of our national name; for executing this due redress. We have yet much to learn from those divine minds, whom, in Southey's words, we profess to venerate. But still the public mind is not dest.i.tute of its glimmerings of the truth, and its responsibilities. Since I wrote the pages quoted, numerous individuals have written to inquire if nothing can be done to remove the opprobrium of our treatment to the Shakspeare family. Many visitors have desired to see the boy thus pointed out, and have made him presents, but he still remains unprovided for. A clergyman, about two years ago, wrote to me from the west of England, expressing the interest he felt in this youth, whom he had seen at Stratford, and his anxious desire to have a subscription raised to educate him, and put him into some honorable way of life. He begged me to make a move, in which he would zealously co-operate, to interest a sufficient number of literary and influential individuals to agitate the question, and commence the subscription. I made the attempt, but in vain. Some parties gave professions which ended in nothing, others which began in nothing; some doubted the chance of success, and some successfully chanced to doubt. One of the first persons whom I was naturally induced to write to for advice and co-operation was Mr.

Charles Knight. Mr. Charles Knight had recently published a voluminous edition of Shakspeare's works, with elaborate criticisms and life; his apparent enthusiasm about Shakspeare suggested him instantly as a most likely person to unite in a plan for vindicating the honor of the nation toward the living representatives of the poet. I begged him to say whether he would do so, and whether he would be good enough to point out any means or parties by which this might be prosecuted. This enthusiast of Shakspearian honors did not even observe the ordinary courtesy of a reply. On the contrary, the Countess of Lovelace, the worthy representative of another great bard, expressed the readiest and most zealous desire to move all those within the reach of her influence in the matter. But, in a word, it did not succeed. The honor of Shakspeare lay too much on the national tongue instead of on the heart, yet to procure justice to the living members of his family.

Let us still trust that that time will come. I will not believe that this great and intellectual nation, which has given an estate and t.i.tles to the family of Marlborough, and the same to the family of Wellington, will refuse all such marks of honor to the Shakspeare family. Shall the heroes of the sword alone be rewarded? Shall the heroes of the pen, those far n.o.bler and diviner heroes, be treated with a penniless contempt? In this nation the worship of military honors is fast subsiding, the perception of the greatness and beneficence of intellect is fast growing. We are coming to see that it is out of our immortal minds, and not out of our swords and cannons, that our highest, purest, and most imperishable glory has grown and will grow. The people every day are more and more coming to this knowledge, and making it felt by government and the world. Let the people, then, wait no longer of Shakspeare clubs; let them leave them to their bottles and their beef; let them wait of no dilettanti authors, commentators, or scribbling publishers; let them wait of no governments, but let the people stand forward, and pay a national honor to Shakspeare, and in Shakspeare to justice and to intellect. The money, I have said, which is spent in visiting the trumpery collected as his at Stratford would have purchased a large estate for the descendants of the Shakspeare family. That has not been done, and never will be done; but a penny a piece from every person in this kingdom, who has derived days and months of delight from the pages of Shakspeare, would purchase an estate equal to that of Strathfieldsaye, or of Blenheim. What a glorious tribute would this be from the people of England to their great dramatic poet--the greatest dramatic poet in the world! How far would it rise above the tributes to violence and bloodshed! The tribute of a nation's love to pure and G.o.dlike intellect! This estate should not be appropriated on the feudal principle of primogeniture; should not be the estate of one, but of the family; should be vested in trustees chosen by the people, to educate, and honorably settle in the world _every_ son and daughter of the Shakspearian family; and to support and comfort the old age of the unfortunate and decrepit of it. That it should not encourage idleness and a mischievous dependence, all such persons, when educated and endowed with a sufficient sum to enable them to make their way in the world, should be left so to make their way. The nation would then have discharged its parental duties toward them, and they could expect no more. They should be educated to expect no more, and more should not be extended to them, except in case of utter misfortune or dest.i.tution, and then only on a scale that should be in itself no temptation.

Such an estate, founded by the people, would be the n.o.blest monument ever yet erected to any man, or on any occasion. Shakspeare has a decent monument at Stratford, and an indifferent one in Westminster Abbey; this would be one worthy of him and of the nation which produced him. It would take away from us a melancholy opprobrium, and confer on him and the British people an equal glory.

ABRAHAM COWLEY.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

The chief places connected with the name of Cowley are Barn-Elms and Chertsey, both in Surrey. Cowley is one of those poets who had a great reputation in his own time, but who at the present day are only read by those who are anxious to know the real history of the poetry of their country. He is so overloaded with the most outrageous conceits, and his whole system of versification is at once so affected, artificial, and yet rugged and often mean, that he has, in the midst of so much more genuine inspiration, fallen into almost utter neglect. Johnson, often unjust to our poets, can hardly be said to have been so to Cowley, when he says of him and the other metaphysical poets, that "they were men of learning, and to show their learning was their whole endeavor; but unluckily resolving to show it in rhyme, instead of writing poetry, they wrote only verses, and very often such verses as stood the trial of the finger better than of the ear; for the modulation was so imperfect, that they were only found to be verses by counting the syllables."... From this account of their compositions it will be readily inferred that they were not successful in representing or moving the affections. "For these reasons," Johnson adds, "that though in his own time considered of unrivaled excellence, and as having taken a flight beyond all that went before him, Cowley's reputation could not last. His character of writing was, indeed, not his own: he unhappily adopted that which was predominant. He saw a certain way to present praise; and, not sufficiently inquiring by what means the ancients have continued to delight through all the changes of human manners, he contented himself with a deciduous laurel, of which the verdure in its spring was bright and gay, but which time has been continually stealing from his brows."

In Cowley, in fact, you will find many beautiful sentiments, and much learning; but he seems always playing with his matter, not dealing earnestly with it; constructing toys and gewgaws, not everlasting structures. You have artifice instead of feeling, and conceits and often downright fustian instead of heart, soul, and human pa.s.sion. Who would now willingly wade through pages of such doggerel as this?

"Since 'tis my doom, Love's undershrieve, Why this reprieve?

Why doth she my advowson fly, Inc.u.mbency?

To sell thyself dost thou intend By candle's end; And hold the contract thus in doubt, Life's taper out?

Think but how soon the market fails," &c.

Who can tolerate, after being raised to some expectation by a beginning like the following, the end which comes?

"Begin the song, and strike the living lyre: Lo! how the years to come a numerous and well-fitted quire, All hand in hand do decently advance, And to my song with smooth and equal measure dance; While the dance lasts, how long soe'er it be, My music's voice shall bear it company, Till all gentle notes be drowned In the last trumpet's dreadful sound.

But stop, my muse-- Hold thy Pindaric Pegasus closely in, Which does to rage begin-- 'Tis an unruly and a hard-mouthed horse 'Twill no unskillful touch endure, But flings writer and reader too that sits not sure."

As a specimen of his fiction, Johnson has quoted his description of the Archangel Gabriel: