MUI.BEKllY THEE. 



261 



The beautiful they make more beauteous seem. 

 The charming sex owe half their charms to them ; 

 To them effeminate men their vestments owe ; 

 How vain that pride which insect worm^s bestow !" 



Cov»'LEY on Plants, book v. 



In the mind of an Englishman, the Mulberry tree w ill 

 ever be intimately associated with the miemory of our 

 Shakespeare — of the v.orld's Shakespeare — of Nature's 

 Shakespeare. It is generally knovxn that about the year 

 1609, when King James so zealously recommended the 

 cultivation of Mulberry trees, Shakespeare, a loyal sub- 

 ject of nature and the king, planted one in his garden 

 at New Place, Stratford. Mr. Drake mentions a person, 

 the son of an alderman of Stratford, who in his youth 

 remembered to have frequently eaten of the fruit of that 

 tree, some of its branches hanging over the wall which 

 divided that garden from his father's. 



In the year 1742, Garrick, Macklin, and Dr. Delany 

 were entertained under the shade of that noble tree, by 

 Sir Hugh Clopton, at that time proprietor of New Place. 

 By the executor of that gentleman, it was afterwards 

 sold to the Rev. Francis Gastrell, Vicar of Frodsham in 

 Cheshire. Why would this man fix such an ugly blot 

 upon his own memory ? This man, who was in possession 

 of the house and garden of Shakespeare, of the very tree 

 which he planted with his own hand ; could he, is it 

 possible he could, be so wholly destitute of common feeling 

 as to destroy them ? Surely he must have been utterly 

 devoid of all soul, that such a neighbourhood did not in- 

 spire him with something like natural sensibility, even 

 though he had it not before ! It has been said that 

 Pope's Willow was destroyed to relieve the lady to whom 



