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Of all the objects of creation it is in flowers that Shakspere's genius appears most to revel and luxuriate; but the precision with which he seizes upon their characteristics distinguishes him from all other poets. A word is a description. The "pale primrose," the "azur'd harebell," are the flowers to be strewn upon Fidele's grave; but how is their beauty elevated when the one is compared to her face, and the other to her veins! Shakspere perhaps caught the sweetest image of his sweetest song from the lines of Chaucer which we have recently quoted; where we have the lark, and the fiery Phoebus drying the silver drops on the leaves. But it was impossible to have translated this fine passage, as Shakspere has done, without the minute observation of the naturalist working with the invention of the poet :

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"Hark! hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings,
And Phoebus 'gins arise,

His steeds to water at those springs

On chalic'd flowers that lies."

The rosebud shrivels and dies, and the cause is disregarded by a common obThe poetical naturalist points out "the bud bit by an envious worm.Ӡ Again, the microscope of the poet sees "the crimson drops i' the bottom of a cowslip," and the observation lies in the cells of his memory till it becomes a comparison of exquisite delicacy in reference to the "cinque-spotted" mark of the sleeping Imogen. But the eye which observes everything is not only an eye for beauty, as it looks upon the produce of the fields; it has the sense of utility as strong as that which exists in the calculations of the most anti-poetical. The mad Lear's garland is a catalogue of the husbandman's too luxuriant enemies :

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"Crown'd with rank fumiter, and furrow weeds,
With harlocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flowers,
Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow
In our sustaining corn." ‡

Who could have conceived the noble picture in Henry V. of a country wasted by war, but one who from his youth upward had been familiar, even to the minutest practice, with all that is achieved by cultivation, and all that is lost by neglect ;-who had seen the wild powers of nature held in subjection to the same producing power under the guidance of art;—who had himself assisted in this best conquest of man?—

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Even the technical poetry:

The freckled cowslip, burnet, and green clover,
Wanting the scythe, all uncorrected, rank,
Conceives by idleness; and nothing teems

But hateful docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burs,
Losing both beauty and utility."*

words of agriculture find their place in his language of

"Like to the summer's corn by tempest lodg'd." +

He goes into the woods of his own Arden, and he associates her oaks with the sublimest imagery; but still the oak loses nothing of its characteristics. "The thing of courage, as roused with rage, with rage doth sympathise,"

Again:

"When splitting winds

Make flexible the knees of knotted oaks."

"Merciful Heaven!

Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt
Splitt'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak
Than the soft myrtle." §

Even the woodman's economy, who is careful not to exhaust the tree that furnishes him fuel, becomes an image to show, by contrast, the impolicy of excessive taxation:

"Why, we take

From every tree, lop, bark, and part of the timber;
And, though we leave it with a root, thus hack'd
The air will drink the sap." ||

It is in these woods that he has studied the habits of the "joiner squirrel," who makes Mab's chariot out of an "empty hazel-nut." Here the active boy was no doubt the "venturous fairy" that would seek the "squirrel's hoard, and fetch new nuts."** Here he has watched the stock-dove sitting upon her nest, and has stored the fact in his mind till it becomes one of the loveliest of poetical comparisons :—

"Anon as patient as the female dove

When that her golden couplets are disclos'd,

His silence will sit drooping."††

What book-fed poet could have chosen a homely incident of country life as the aptest illustration of an assembly suddenly scattered by their fears?—

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The poet tells us and we believe him as much as if a Pliny or a Gesner had written it-that

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The boy has climbed to the kite's nest, and there perchance has found some of the gear that "maidens bleach;" the discovery becomes a saying for Autolycus : -"When the kite builds, look to lesser linen."+ In all this practical part of Shakspere's education it is emphatically true that the boy "is father of the man."+

Shakspere, in an early play, has described his native river:

"The current, that with gentle murmur glides,

Thou know'st, being stopp'd, impatiently doth rage;
But, when his fair course is not hindered,

He makes sweet music with the enamell'd stones,

Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge

He overtaketh in his pilgrimage;

And so by many winding nooks he strays,

With willing sport, to the wild ocean." §

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The solitary boat of the young poet may be fancied floating down this "current." There is not a sound to disturb his quiet, but the gentle murmur when "the waving sedges play with wind."|| As the boat glides unsteered into some winding nook, the swan ruffles his proud crest; and the quick eye of the naturalist sees his mate deep hidden in the reeds and osiers :

"So doth the swan her downy cygnets save,
Keeping them prisoner underneath her wings."¶

*Macbeth, Act Iv., Scene 11. + Winter's Tale, Act Iv., Scene 11. + Wordsworth.

Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act 11., Scene VII.

|| Induction to Taming of the Shrew.

¶ Henry VI., Part I., Act v., Scene 111.

Very lovely is this Avon for some miles above Stratford; a poet's river in its beauty and its peacefulness. It is disturbed with no sound of traffic; it holds its course unvexed by man through broad meadows and wooded acclivities, which for generations seem to have been dedicated to solitude. All the great natural features of the river must have suffered little change since the time of Shakspere. Inundations in some places may have widened the channel; osier islands may have grown up where there was once a broad stream. But we here look upon the same scenery upon which he looked, as truly as we gaze upon the same blue sky, and see its image in the same glassy water. As we unmoor our boat from the fields near Bishop's Hampton, we look back upon the church embosomed in lofty trees. The church is new; but it stands upon

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the same spot as the ancient church: its associations are the same. We glide by Charlecote. The house has been enlarged; its antique features somewhat improved; but it is essentially the same as the Charlecote of Shakspere. pass its sunny lawns, and are soon amidst the unchanging features of nature. We are between deep wooded banks. Even the deer, who swim from shore to shore where the river is wide and open, are prevented invading these quiet deeps. The old turrets rising amidst the trees alone tell us that human habitation is at hand. A little onward, and we lose all trace of that culture which is ever changing the face of nature. There is a high bank called Old Town, where perhaps men and women, with their joys and sorrows, once abided. It

* The old name for Hampton Lucy.

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is colonized by rabbits. The elder-tree drops its white blossoms luxuriantly over their brown burrows. The golden cups of the yellow water-lilies lie brilliantly beneath on their green couches. The reed-sparrow and the willowwren sing their small songs around us: a stately heron flaps his heavy wing above. The tranquillity of the place is almost solemn; and a broad cloud deepens the solemnity, by throwing for a while the whole scene into shadow. We have a book with us that Shakspere might have looked upon in the same spot two hundred and sixty years ago; a new book then, but even then seeking to go back into the past, in the antique phraseology adopted by the young author. It is the first work of Spenser,- The Shepherd's Calendar,' originally

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