[ 398 ] [APRIL, 







SUGGESTION FOR THE CELEBRATION OF SHAKSPEARE's 

 BIRTH-DAY. 



AN event once happened in April, that has made it illustrious more 

 illustrious even than " the fairest maid on ground," the ever fair and 

 ever youthful May herself. The light of one little day has shed a glory 

 upon the month, that is as pleasant and refreshing to the heart, as the 

 breathings of spring that come with it are to the sense. SHAKSPEARE 

 was born in April ! on the twenty-third of the month, in the year 1564. 

 This is quite enough to hallow the recollection of April, in the minds of 

 all true lovers of poetry and human nature, as long as there shall be 

 months, or mankind to enjoy them. 



Let not the reader imagine that I am going to gild refined gold, and 

 to eulogize Shakspeare. If I were an emperor, and were inclined to 

 offer a reward for a new pleasure, I should probably offer one for a 

 volume of praises worthy to be placed on the shrine of the greatest and 

 gentlest-hearted poet that the world has ever seen. But, as it is, I 

 should as soon think of writing an essay to prove that nature is a greater 

 thing than art ; that Falstafs quips and quillets have a tendency to 

 excite laughter, and that Hamlet is a finer philosopher than the grave- 

 digger. My only object is to tell a short story, and then to throw out a 

 suggestion by way of a moral to it. 



I have the pleasure of being a member of a " club" that was instituted 

 a few years ago, by a few personal friends, in honour of Shakspeare. 

 The number of our members is limited to the number of his plays ; and 

 our regular meetings are two only, 'in the year on the Anniversary of 

 the Poet's Birth-day, and on a particular day in the autumn. This 

 meeting we distinguish by the title of the Mulberry Festival. As the 

 club, if I must call it so, consists chiefly of persons connected with 

 literature and the arts, we have provided a book called the Mulberry 

 Leaves ; and at each half-yearly meeting we elect a member or two to 

 contribute something to its pages an essay, or a song, or perhaps a 

 fanciful vignette, all of course in praise, if not in illustration of the 

 " golden meanings" of the spirit in whose name we are assembled. 

 Besides these contributions, which are reserved for publication at a 

 future period, we have a few Shakspeare-songs, which the sentiment 

 they express at least lends music to, and which the occasion never fails 

 to make pleasant. 



Now without pointing out, as a model for others, the plan upon which 

 one little cluster of the admirers of Shakspeare thus meet together, I 

 may hope to be pardoned for suggesting to all who have drunk witn 

 similar delight and profit at the fountain of that verse, which philosophy 

 repairs to for an inspiring knowledge, and which flows on from age to 

 age in a current of the purest and truest humanity to all who have ears 

 for his music, and hearts for the glorious beings with which he has 

 peopled the realm of fancy to such I may venture to suggest, without 

 the slightest apprehension of incurring ridicule, that they cannot evince 

 their gratitude to so social and loving a genius, more acceptably, than by 

 marking out the day of his birth as one of the brightest in their calendar 

 as a period when friends may well meet together in unaffectedness of 

 heart, to discuss all pleasant things in his name, to whom we owe so 

 much of our knowledge of them to put his poetry into practice for at 



