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"The Queen!" 



The toast, so appropriately proposed, was duly honoured, and the President 

 then called on the author of Historic Warwickshire to speak a few minutes on 

 the topic he loves so well. 



Mr. J. Tom Burgess said that it had been truly observed that in this life there 

 was nothing certain- but the unexpected, and though it was a common remark by 

 speakers tliat "they were unexpectedly called upon," it was never more truly 

 applied than on the present occasion, when the Woolhope Club relaxed one of 

 their strictest rules in order that he might say a few words. He should be untrue 

 to himself if he denied that the proposal gave him pleasure, for " out of the ful- 

 ness of the heart the mouth speaketh," and at the name of William Shak gpeare 

 thoughts came with a power almost too great for utterance. From his earliest 

 youth he had been a pilgrim at the shrine which has given Stratford a place in 

 history, and many a time and oft he had been " the faithful one amongst the 

 faithful many " at each recurring anniversary of the poet's birtliday — St. George's 

 day, be it remembered. The memory of these old-new associations brought home 

 to him the fact that though Shakespeare was born when Field Clubs were not, still 

 he had an intense love of nature : he could notice the freckles of a cowslip as well 

 as portray the tempest of passion in the human heart. Their President had 

 quoted to them the eloquent words applied to Her Majesty in Henry VIII., and 

 that reminded him that the first Queen of bluff King Hal, when discarded and 

 forlorn at the gates of death, called to ber maidens and said, 



"When I .nmde.nd, good wench, 

 Let me be used with honour ; strew me over 

 With maiden flowers, that all the world may know 

 I was a chaste wife to my grave. " 



Act IV., Sc. 2. 



It said something for the rough and passionate soul of Henry that he spared the 

 Cathedral of Peterborough — the old minster of The Medehamstead — as a fitting 

 tomb of Catherine of Arragon, his first, if not his best-loved wife. The eye that 

 could see the 



and 



"Willow growing ascaunt the brook 

 That shows its hoar leaves in the glassy stream. " 



" The gentle ripple kissing every sedge," 



could "ive the world such thoughts, and shaped those thoughts in such language 

 that appealed to every one— which the world cherished as the best and most 

 valued of its literary treasures. The boy Shakespeare and "the poet of all time " 

 was no recluse, hoarding sentimental dreams in the cloister or the closet, he was 

 a man of the world, living amongst men and women, observing their foibles and 

 the springs of action, using up as he went along the garnered facts of others, which 

 he polished and set until the rude pebbles became precious jewels. His contem- 

 poraries, envious of the fame which he himself seems to have despised, charged 

 him with decking himself out in other men's garments ; but they should not forget 

 that the man who digs the clay, makes the bricks, or hews the stone, is not the 

 architect or creator of the fabric in which princes love to dwell, artists admire, 

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