and abroad, and even when death looked him in the face, speaking words of wisdom and sage counsel for the good of his native land. He is, perhaps, the noblest of all the great band of nobles who have been immortalized by Shakspeare. One cannot held asking if these are not the likenesses of the mighty men who rallied round the good Queen Bess, and enabled her, by their bravery and hardihood and statesmanship, to preserve, during a time of sore trial, the independence and liberties of England. But there is one picture, and it is evidently a life picture, of a very different kind: it exhibits a class of the nobility who became very numerous during the times of the Stuarts. The passage occurs where the headstrong Hotspur gives his reasons for refusing to deliver his captives to the king's envoy, whom he describes as follows: A certain lord, neat, trimly dress'd, He was perfumed like a milliner; And 'twixt his finger and his thumb he held A pouncet-box, which ever and anon He gave his nose, and took't away again; To be so pester'd with a popinjay, he made me mad, To see him shine so brisk, and smell so sweet, If there is one thing more than another in which the present age differs from that of Queen Elizabeth, it is in the modern love of mountain scenery-in the taste, the passion I may rather call it, which year by year sends no small portion of the community away from their homes in search of the wild and picturesque. There is no reason to suppose that Shakspeare, bred in the fat champaign of the midland counties, ever saw a real mountain. He speaks of "the smug *1 Henry IV, Act i, Scene 3. "and silver Trent," and of " the gentle Severn's sedgy bank," but not a word of the ranges of hills and valleys which lie beyond. Even the cliffs at Dover affright him There is a cliff, whose high and bending head Looks fearfully in the confined deep: This is by no means in accordance with the Excelsior spirit of the present day-the poor cliff at Dover, Shakspeare's cliff,† is almost scorned by Messieurs les voyageurs pour Paris et la Suisse, who hurry past it day by day. I think if our great poet could have conceived such a thing as the Alpine Club, some of their feats would have afforded him subjects for raillery-the great pleasure, for instance, to be derived from passing over a dangerous col enveloped in a mist or driving storm, or of glissading down a snow slope almost to the edge of a precipice, the luxury of sleeping in châlets where the beds are formed of a mixture of damp hay and fleas, and the intellectual advantage of rushing from civilized life to enter into very close companionship with peasants who often can only speak an unintelligible patois. Yet I also think there is much of Alpine life which, if it had ever been Shakspeare's fortune to experience it, would have found a place in his verses. Not least would have been the manly nature of the adventures of mountain life, the hardihood, the self-reliance, the powers of self-control, which must be called * Lear, Act iv, Scenes 1 and 6. The railway has destroyed a considerable part of this cliff, into play. Nor could he have been indifferent to the glories. of the mountains, the silver peaks, the rugged cliffs, the emerald valleys, the sunrise on the boundless plain, the radiance of the evening glow. Nor would he have been. unmindful of the wayside charms of the mountains, the chamois bounding over the snowy slopes or rocky precipices, the hunter's jodel, the songs of the cow-maidens, the bright flowers of the upland slopes and meadows. I think it would not have been left for a lady of the present day to sing the praises of the Alpine gentian She 'mid ice mountains vast Long had lain sleeping, Timidly peeping. Through the blue sky. Loving on high; Till she grew heavenly, Milton, who had enjoyed the advantages of foreign travel and of a liberal education, embellished his great poem with many descriptions of romantic scenery-but he also was ignorant of the genuine love of a mountain. He speaks of Paradise as bounded by that "steep savage hill," and in another place he calls it that shaggy hill." Cotton, in the second part of the Complete Angler, expresses unmingled horror at having to pass over the little hills of Derbyshire. Whilst John Bunyan, whose mind was stored with all the imagery of the sacred poets of the hill country of Judea, often brings in mountains as something beautiful; yet, as he had never seen one, his descriptions make them very similar to the level plain-for instance, he speaks of the Delectable Mountains as "a plea * Three Wakings, by Mrs. Charles. sant mountainous country, beautified with woods, vineyards, "fruits of all sorts, flowers also, with springs and fountains very delectable to behold." 66 But I must leave this subject: Shakspeare was not a mountaineer, nor in all probability should we have cared to be so, unless it had been the fashion of the age, and unless we had found practicable roads spreading over what formerly were wild and desolate districts, and comfortable inns to welcome us at the end of our day's march. Shakspeare probably never left the narrow bounds of England: his geography, which assigns a sea coast to Bohemia, was of the most doubtful character. Sometimes he relates the current tales about foreign lands-the fables of adventurous seamen, who had witnessed marvels as great as any they could invent. For instance, in the Tempest, Caliban is afraid that he and his companions will be turned To barnacles, or to apes Whilst Benedick, mad with the jests of the lady Beatrice, offers to perform all manner of feats "rather than hold three words' conference with the harpy." "Will your grace com"mand me any service to the world's end? I will go on the "slightest errand now to the Antipodes, that you can devise 66 to send me on: I will fetch you a tooth-picker now from "the farthest inch of Asia: bring you the length of Prester "John's foot; fetch you a hair off the great Cham's beard; "do you any embassage to the Pigmies."* The age of Shakspeare may be said to have been the commencement of a long chain of naval adventures. "The black "north-easter" was then beginning to "stir up the brave "Vikings' blood," and to "drive our English hearts of oak "seaward round the world." The feats of daring and enterprise * Much Ado About Nothing, Act ii, Scene. 1. which were then performed have never since been surpassed. We recently heard with some astonishment that an Irish nobleman had taken his yacht on a summer excursion to the ice-bound shores of Jan Mayen within the limits of the Arctic circle; but he possessed charts and instruments, and all the appliances of science- and it was an undertaking by no means equal to those of the hardy seamen of Queen Elizabeth, of Martin Frobisher, who in three successive voyages explored the coasts of Labrador and of Greenland, and of Sir Francis Drake who circumnavigated the globe in vessels not much larger than good-sized fishing-smacks. The very soul of the nation was stirred up by adventures such as these, the inland people were affected by the excitement of the dwellers on the sea coast, and there is hardly one subject to which our great Warwickshire poet more frequently alludes. For instance, in Henry V, the chorus calls upon the audience to imagine a fleet leaving harbour (the theatres in those days had little scenery or machinery of any kind)— Play with your fancies; and in them behold, Draw the huge bottoms through the furrow'd sea, You stand upon the rivage, and behold A city on the inconstant billows dancing: For so appears this fleet majestical.* Again, in the Merchant of Venice, the return of the homeward-bound vessel furnishes Shakspeare with a beautiful simile * How like a younker, or a prodigal, The scarfed bark puts from her native bay. Henry V, Act iii, Chorus. + Merchant of Venice, Act ii, Scene 6. |