the face of it, it appears an act that might at least be reproved in the words which follow those we have just quoted: "As the most forward bud Is eaten by the canker ere it blow, Even so by love the young and tender wit This is the common consequence of precocious marriages; but we are not therefore to conclude that "the young and tender wit" of our Shakspere was "turned to folly ”—that his " forward bud" was "eaten by the canker "—that "his verdure" was lost "even in the prime," by his marriage with Anne Hathaway before he was nineteen. The influence which this marriage must have had upon his destinies was no doubt considerable; but it is too much to assume, as it has been assumed, that it was an unhappy influence. All that we really know of Shakspere's family life warrants the contrary supposition. We believe, to go no farther at present, that the marriage of Shakspere was one of affection; that there was no disparity in the worldly condition of himself and the object of his choice; that it was with the consent of friends; that there were no circumstances connected with it which indicate that it was either forced or clandestine, or urged on by an artful woman to cover her apprehended loss of character. Taking up, as little as possible, a controversial attitude in a matter of such a nature, we shall shape our course according to this belief. 66 In the last week of November, in the year 1582, let us look upon a cheerful family scene in the pretty village of Clifford. The day is like a green old age, frosty but kindly." The sun shines brightly upon the hills, over which a happy party have tripped from Stratford. It is a short walk of some mile and a half. The village stands very near the confluence of the Stour with the Avon. It is Sunday; and after the service there is to be a christening. The visitors assemble at a substantial house, and proceed reverently to church. The age is not yet arrived when the cold formalities of a listless congregation. have usurped the place of real devotion. The responses are made with the earnest voice which indicates the full heart; and the young, especially, join in the choral parts of the service, so as to preserve one of the best characters of adoration, in offering a tribute of gladness to Him who has filled the world with beauty and joy. During the service the sacrament of baptism is administered with a reverential solemnity. William Shakspere had often been so present at its administration, and the ceremonial has appeared to him full of truth and holiness. But the opinions which were earnestly disseminated amongst the people, by teachers pretending to superior sanctity and wisdom, would be also familiar to him; and he would have learnt, from those who were opposed to most ancient ceremonial observances, that the signing with the Cross in baptism was a superstitious relic of Rome-a thing rejected by the understanding, and only preserved as a delusion of the imagination. A book with which he was familiar in after-life was not then written; but on such occasions of controversy it would occur to him that "the holy sign," "imprinted on the gates of the palace of man's fancy," would suggest associations which to Christian men would be "a most effectual though a silent teacher to avoid whatsoever may deservedly procure shame." Through the imagination would this holy sign work; for "the mind, while we are in this present life, whether it contemplate, meditate, deliberate, or howsoever exercise itself, worketh nothing without continual recourse unto imagination, the only storehouse of wit, and peculiar chair of memory. On this anvil it ceaseth not day and night to strike, by means whereof, as the pulse declareth how the heart doth work, so the very thoughts and cogitations of man's mind, be they good or bad, do nowhere sooner bewray themselves than through the crevices of that wall wherewith Nature hath compassed the cells and closets of fancy."* Such was the way in which the young Shakspere would, we think, religiously and philosophically, regard this ceremony; it would be so impressed upon his "imagination." But the service is ended; the gossips are assembled in the churchyard. A merry peal rings out from the old tower. Cordial welcome is there within the yeoman's house, to whose family such an occasion as this is a joyful festival. The chief sponsors duly present the apostle-spoons to the child; but one old lady, who looks upon this practice as a luxurious innovation of modern times, is content to offer a christening shirt. The refection of the guests aspires to daintiness as much as plenty; and the comely dames upon their departure do not hesitate to put the sweet biscuits and comfits into their * Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity,' book v. † See Note to this Chapter. pockets. There is cordial salutation, at this meeting, of William Shakspere and his fair companion. He and Anne Hathaway are bound together by the trothplight. There is no secret as to this union; there is no affectation in concealing their attachment. He speaks of her as his wife; she of him as her husband. He is tall and finely formed, with a face radiant with intellect, and capable of expressing the most cheerful and most tender emotions; she is in the full beauty of womanhood, glowing with health and conscious happiness. Some of the gossips whisper that she is too old for him; but his frank and manly bearing, and her beauty and buoyant spirits, would not suggest this, if some tattle about age was not connected with the whisper. No one of that company, except an envious rival, would hold that they were "misgraffed in respect of years." The Church is in a few days to cement the union, which, some weeks ago, was fixed by the public trothplight. They are hand-fasted, and they are happy. There is every reason to believe that Shakspere was remarkable for manly beauty" He was a handsome, well-shaped man," says Aubrey. According to tradition, he played Adam in As You Like It, and the Ghost in Hamlet. Adam says, "Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty." Upon his personation of the Ghost, Mr. Campbell has the following judicious remarks:—" It has been alleged, in proof of his mediocrity, that he enacted the part of his own Ghost, in Hamlet. But is the Ghost in Hamlet a very mean character? No: though its movements are few, they must be awfully graceful; and the spectral voice, though subdued and half-monotonous, must be solemn and full of feeling. It gives us an imposing idea of Shakspeare's stature and mien to conceive him in this part. The English public, accustomed to see their lofty nobles, their Essexes, and their Raleighs, clad in complete armour, and moving under it with a majestic air, would not have tolerated the actor Shakspeare, unless he had presented an appearance worthy of the buried majesty of Denmark. ""* That he performed kingly parts is indicated by these lines, written, in 1611, by John Davies, in a poem inscribed To our English Terence, Mr. William Shakespeare :' "Some way, good Will, which I in sport do sing, And been a king among the meaner sort." The portrait by Martin Droeshout, prefixed to the edition of 1623, when Shakspere would be well remembered by his friends, gives a notion of a man of remarkably fine features, independent of the wonderful development of forehead. The lines accompanying it, which bear the signature B. I. (most likely Ben Jonson), attest the accuracy of the likeness. The bust at Stratford bears the same character. The sculptor was Gerard Johnson. It was probably erected soon after the poet's death; for it is mentioned by Leonard Digges, in his * Remarks prefixed to Moxon's edition of the Dramatic Works. verses upon the publication of Shakspere's collected works by his "pious fellows." All the circumstances of which we have any knowledge imply that Shakspere, at the time of his marriage, was such a person as might well have won the heart of a mistress whom tradition has described as eminently beautiful. Anne Hathaway at this time was of mature beauty. The inscription over her grave in the church of Stratford-upon-Avon states that she died on "the 6th day of August, 1623, being of the age of 67 years." In November 1582, therefore, she would be of the age of twenty-six. This disparity of years between Shakspere and his wife has been, we think, somewhat too much dwelt upon. Malone holds that "such a disproportion of age seldom fails at a subsequent period of life to be productive of unhappiness." Malone had, no doubt, in his mind the belief that Shakspere left his wife wholly dependent upon her children,—a belief of which we have shown the utter groundlessness. He suggests that in the Midsummer-Night's Dream this disproportion is alluded to, and he quotes a speech of Lysander in Act I. Scene 1., of that play, not however giving the comment of Hermia upon it. The lines in the original stand thus: "Lys. Ah me! for aught that ever I could read, Could ever hear by tale or history, The course of true love never did run smooth: But either it was different in blood; Her. O cross! too high to be enthrall'd to low! Difference in blood, disparity of years, the choosing of friends, are opposed • See Postscript to Twelfth Night, Pictorial Edition, proving that Shakspere's widow was provided for by dower. + Life of Shakspeare in the Encyclopædia Britannica. "For they shall yet belie thy happy years That say thou art a man,” is pressed by the Duke to own that his eye "hath stay'd upon some favour." Viola, who is enamoured of the Duke, punningly replies,-" A little, by your favour;" and being still pressed to describe the "kind of woman," she says, of the Duke's "complexion" and the Duke's "years." Any one who in the stage representation of the Duke should do otherwise than make him a grave man of thirty-five or forty, a staid and dignified man, would not present Shakspere's whole conception of the character. There would be a difference of twenty years between him and Viola. No wonder, then, that the poet should make the Duke dramatically exclaim,— And wherefore ? "Too old, by Heaven! Let still the woman take An elder than herself; so wears she to him, "For, boy, however we do praise ourselves, The pathetic counsels, therefore, which Shakspere is here supposed to breathe in his maturer years, have reference only to his own giddy and unfirm fancies. We are of opinion, as we have before stated with regard to this matter, that, upon the general principle upon which Shakspere subjects his conception of what is individually true to what is universally true, he would have rejected instead of adopted whatever was peculiar in his own experience, if it had been emphatically recommended to his adoption through the medium of his selfconsciousness. Shakspere wrote these lines at a time of life (about 1602) when a slight disparity of years between himself and his wife would have been a very poor apology to his own conscience that his affection could not hold the bent; and it certainly does happen, as a singular contradiction to his supposed “earnestness in pressing the point as to the inverted disparity of years, which indicates pretty clearly an appeal to the lessons of his personal experience,"* that at this precise period he should have retired from his constant attendance upon the stage, purchasing land in his native place, and thus seeking in all probability the more constant companionship of that object of his early choice of whom he is thus supposed to have expressed his distaste. It appears to us that this is a tolerably convincing proof that his affections could hold the bent, however he might dramatically and poetically have said, "Then let thy love be younger than thyself, Or thy affection cannot hold the bent: For women are as roses; whose fair flower, Being once display'd, doth fall that very hour." The season is not the most inviting for a journey on horseback of more than |