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and poets love. So it was witli the son of the gentle Mary Avden, and frequently 

 he had gone from Snitterfield by the old tumulus at Pathlow to Wilmcote along 

 the road which John Shakespeare must have trod when he went courting the 

 yeoman's daughter, who was destined to be the mother of one to whose birth- 

 place they had that day made a pilgrimage. They could imagine the anxiety of 

 that mother when the plague was raging, for the safety of her infant son. They 

 could imagine her pride in his prosperity and fortunes. They could picture forth 

 the stories she told of the deeds her ancestors had done, for it is shrewdly guessed 

 that her grandfather had fought at Bosworth, from the neighbourhood of which 

 bloody field the Shakespeares had migrated. There were passages in Richard III. 

 which seem to betoken an acquaintance with the detail of the last battle of tlie 

 Koses, other than what was to be gleaned from books and chronicles, and he may 

 have heard only at second-hand how Richard exclaimed, 



" Saddle White Surrey for the field to-morrow ! " 

 and thus it was that this great genius thought no detail too insignificant, no 

 stupendous thought too grand to be embodied in his marvellous plays, and in his 

 heart-felt poetic effusions. It had been truly said that whilst he could give 

 Hamlet an everlasting fame, he could remember to leave his wife his second best 

 bed. It was but right that such a man should be born in the heart of England, 

 and that he should live in the hearts of every English-speaking people. As a 

 Midland man, he was proud to be a loving fellow-countryman. He was proud 

 of having a common lineage derived from the county of his fathers, and when in 

 sickness or in sorrow he wanted his mind diverted and fed full of sumptuous 

 things, he found an everlasting font of immortal words in those books of which 

 the author seemed to have no care in his lifetime. He seemed to have been 

 prouder to be a country gentleman than the author of Lear. He left his beauti ■ 

 ful Ophelias, Cordelia, and Imogen to the casual care of careless printers. He 

 thought more of his barley apparently than his sonnets, and perhaps thought 

 more of his lineage from the old Saxon Earls of Warwick, who were said to have 

 been descended from Alfred himself, than of the Queen and heroes — the stalwart 

 soldiers and finest patriots — to whom he had given a lasting name and fame. The 

 subject was a vast and tempting one. Each gushing seemed overtaken by another. 

 He felt that he was trespassing beyond the few minutes allowed him ; he could only a 



" Round, unvarnished tale deliver" 

 off-hand, a simple collation of crude ideas, when he would have liked to have set 

 before them a rich repast. The trees, the hedge rows, and the meadows bear wit- 

 ness to him. They are the faithful, truest witnesses of his fame, and seem to 

 speak in a low monody, 



" We shall ne'er look upon his like again." 

 It had been a great pleasure to him to leave the bustle and toil of London, to 

 accompany the members of the Woolhope Field Club by the banks of the Avon, 

 and he trusted that each one would remember with pleasure the day of their 

 pilgrimage to Stratford, and proposed the toast, which was duly honoured, Club 

 rules notwithstanding — "To the immortal memory of Shakespeare." 



