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throw additional light on this important subject. I do not wish to disparage the humblest of the biographies of Shakspere; and for all of them I feel extremely thankful. But of a writer whom Hallam has declared "is the greatest in our literature-is the greatest in all literature," a simple biography, however fully given, will not content us. We feel a longing to know more-to know all that concerned him who were his contemporaries, what they were doing, and what was the state of society, in religion, politics, learning, amusements, and social well-being, at that era. We want a sort of panorama, or bird's-eye-view, of the times. It is in this spirit I propose, as far as circumstances permit, to conduct my brethren of the humbler classes through the times of Shakspere, indulging in a pleasant gossip on him and his contemporaries, and thus to give to the unread man that information which he could not otherwise obtain with the same expenditure of time and money. And if I should succeed in awaking within the minds of my working-class readers an earnest desire to provide themselves with the standard writings of the Elizabethian worthies, my humble labours will not be in vain. A new world of delight will be opened to them; mental riches in which the soul of the poorest man can revel, and a neverfailing source of enjoyment by the humblest hearth in the stormy nights of winter, will be their's.

"Wings have we,—and, as far as we can go,
We may find pleasure: wilderness and wood,
Blank ocean, and mere sky, supply that mood,

Which, with the lofty, sanctifies the low :

Dreams, books, are each a world; and books, we know,

Are a substantial world, both pure and good.

Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,

Our pastime and our happiness will grow.

There do I find a never-failing source

Of personal themes, and such as I love best ;

Matter, wherein right voluble I am :

Two will I mention, dearer than the rest;
The gentle Lady married to the Moor,

And heavenly Una with her milk-white lamb."

WORDSWORTH.

22

THE BIRTH AND FIRST YEAR OF SHAKSPERE.

"When Learning's triumph o'er her barbarous foes
First rear'd the stage, immortal Shakspere rose;
Each change of many colour'd life he drew,
Exhausted worlds, and then imagined new :
Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign,
And panting Time toil'd after him in vain.
His powerful strokes presiding Truth impress'd,
And unresisted Passion storm'd the breast."

DR. JOHNSON.

CHAUCER and GOWER-who may be styled the A.D. parents of English poetry-had left the earth more 1564. than a century and a half, when William Shakspere was born; and John Lydgate had rested in his grave about one hundred and thirty-four years. Skelton, Surrey, Wyatt, and others of lesser fame, after aiding in refining their native language, by many polished poems, now slept the sleep of death. The reformation in religion, for which Wickliffe had contended two hundred years before, had spread wider than his scattered ashes; and the lion-hearted Luther

"The solitary monk who shook the world,"

had died in peace only eighteen years before. The Protestant prelates, Hooper, Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer, with numerous other martyrs for conscience sake, had perished at the stake only nine years agone; and the people of England had now thrown off the papal yoke for ever. But whilst boldly contending for their own right of private judgment in religious matters, our protestant forefathers had not yet learned to respect the consciences of other men. To be a papist or a nonconformist was a dangerous thing in those days. One great object the people had already accomplished, in spite of all the persecution of papal power, in obtaining possession of the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue; and no one can calculate the benefits civilization has and will derive from that simple boon. The printing press-even in its then rude construction, a mighty auxiliary of human enlightenment— had only been introduced into England some eighty-seven years; and the venerable Caxton, our first English printer, had rested from his labours for half a century, in his West

See note B.

minster grave. And yet how great were the results that printing press had already accomplished! It had given the Bible and many of the classics to the people, and even then was beginning to cause a demand for new contributions to literature; so that an author would not be altogether dependent on a single patron, as before. Even in the provinces, as well as in the metropolis, were printingpresses springing up for after the establishment of Caxton's press, in 1477, we find others at London and St. Alban's, in 1480; at York, in 1509; at Beverley, in 1510; at Southwark, in 1514; at Cambridge, in 1521; at Tavistock, in 1525; at Winchester, in 1545; at Ipswich and Worcester, in 1548; and at Greenwich, in 1554. Even in its infancy, Printing, like a second Hercules, could seize the serpent Ignorance by the throat, inflicting wounds upon the reptile from which it could never altogether recover. Charles Knight, in his excellent little biography of Caxton, gives a list-supplied by Sir Henry Ellis, Principal Librarian of the British Museum-of sixty-four books issued by the first English printer, in which list one is glad to see that the works of Chaucer and Lydgate were not forgotten. Most industrious men were the early English printers, and courageous in every sense of the word.Maugre all the opposition that could be offered to the new art, Wykin de Worde, Richard Pynson, and other successors of Caxton, appear to have issued in England not less than two thousand works, in the various departments of letters, previous to the birth of Shakspere. And yet we find that a hundred years after this event (October 23rd, 1666) there were only one hundred and forty working printers in London and its vicinity. Truly has the poet sung:

"Lord! taught by Thee, when Caxton bade
His silent words for ever speak,

A grave for tyrants then was made

Then crack'd the chain, which yet shall break.

"For bread, for bread, the all-scorn'd man,
With study worn, his press prepared ;
And knew not, Lord, thy wond'rous plan,
Nor what he did, nor what he dared.

"When first the might of deathless thought
Impress'd his all-instructing page,
Unconscious giant! how he smote

The fraud and force of many an age.

"Pale wax'd the harlot, fear'd of thrones,
And they who bought her harlotry:

He shook the throned on dead men's bones,
He shakes-all evil yet to be !

"The power he grasp'd let none disdain;
It conquer'd once, and conquers still;
By fraud and force assail'd in vain,

It conquer'd erst, and ever will."

EBENEZER ELLIOTT.

The unnatural wars of the Red and White Roses-the bloody contentions of the rival houses of Lancaster and York had ceased with the destruction of the usurper Gloucester, on Bosworth-field,—an event on which the poet has built one of his noblest historical dramas; and, but for the unchristian persecutions carried on in the sacred name of religion, England might already have enjoyed the blessings of nearly four-score years of peace, and have fully recovered from those evils which civil war will always bring upon the country it visits. Even as it was, our prose literature had already been enriched with the " Utopia" of Sir Thomas More, and his History of Edward V., and of his brother, and of Richard III." (which account of the latter king, Shakspere has followed in his drama of that name); with the chronicles of Fabian and Hall, and numerous other works, all of which were destined to aid the labours of the future dramatist.

66

I cannot here enter into any lengthened description of the social condition of the people, at the period when a Shakspere was born. It could be no effeminate age to produce such a man. But commerce was crippled by monopolies, and of the arable land of the country not more than one-fourth was in a state of cultivation; but large flocks of sheep were kept on account of the wool. Manufactures were only in their infancy; and great numbers of thieves and vagrants infested every part of the kingdom. To repress this evil, the most severe laws were useless, and the famous poor-law of Elizabeth had not yet been enacted. The flower-garden was but little cultivated, the parks of the nobility and gentry serving them for pleasure-grounds. Some valuable esculent herbs and fruits had been recently introduced into the country, amongst which were turnips, carrots, salads, apricots, melons, and currants; and the cultivation of hops and flax were not neglected. The old dungeon-like castles of the nobility now gave way to the more commodious halls or mansions; but the houses of the people improved slowly.* Few of them had glass for their windows, and even in towns

See Note C.

of importance chimnies were an unknowu luxury; the smoke being allowed to escape as best it could, from the lattice, the door, or from openings in the roof. On an humble pallet of straw would the poor husbandman repose his wearied limbs; and wheaten bread was not used by more than one-half of the population. We have progressed much since then, whatever we may be told by political agitators; and that England was rapidly, though gradually, progressing even then, we shall see as we proceed.

The amusements of the people, for the most part, were gross and debasing. Cockfighting-a cruel pastime, which no Grecian or Asiatic antiquity can justify-was not then confined to the lowest of the people, but had the patronage of the learned and powerful of the land; for, though Edward the Third, as early as 1366, had prohibited it, with other disorderly games, by public proclamation, we find queen Elizabeth's father, Henry the Eighth, "defender of the faith," building a cockpit at the palace of Whitehall, and James the First, to whom our translation of the Bible is dedicated, amusing himself with cockfighting twice a week; and the learned author, Roger Ascham-the university orator at Cambridge, and the tutor of Queen Elizabeth-was a passionate admirer of this disgraceful sport. Then at Shrovetide, what a torturing of poor poultry did cock-throwing and thrashingthe-hen occasion! Both the popish Mary and the protestant Elizabeth derived pleasure from the baiting of bulls and bears; and many a fair lady of that day might say with Slender, in the "Merry Wives of Windsor,"—"I have seen Sackerson loose twenty times." Even the gentle, but unfortunate, Mary queen of Scots, when rendered so weak by her unjust imprisonment as not to be able to walk without support, according to the report of Sir Amias Powlet, her keeper, (June 3rd, 1586,)was sometimes "carried in a chair to one of the adjoining ponds, to see the diversion of duck-hunting;" and, perchance, at times, compared the hard fate of the poor persecuted fowls with the harder and more lingering one of her own. I do not mean to charge these inhuman amusements as peculiar only to the period of which I write; but they were then alike patronised by rich and poor. Even as late as the reign of Queen Anne, they were still prevalent, but the literary men-who ought always to march in the van of the army of progress-were beginning to oppose them manfully. In "The Tattler," No. 134, dated Thursday, February 16th, 1709, Sir Richard Steele thus writes on

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