William Winter

“ Shakespeare's grave, in the chancel of Stratford church, awakens the same ennobling awe and melancholy pleasure; and it is with kindred feeling that you linger at the tomb of Gray. But who can be content that poor Letitia Landon should sleep beneath the pavement of a barrack, with soldiers trampling over her dust? One might almost think, sometimes, that the spirit of calamity, which follows certain persons throughout the whole of life, had pursued them even in death, to haunt about their repose and to mar all the gentleness of association that ought to hallow it. ”

“ His coming seems attended with monstrous shapes; he diffuses dissonance; his voice is a cry of anguish or a wail of desolation; his existence is a tempest; there can be no relief for him save death, and the death that ends him comes like the blessing of tears to the scorched eyelids of consuming misery. That is the Saul of the Bible and of Alfieri's tragedy; and that is the Saul whom Salvini embodied. It was a colossal monument of human suffering that the actor presented, and no one could look upon it without being awed and chastened. ”

“ The sweet breeze of evening stirs the long grasses, and on many a gray stone house shakes the late pink and yellow roses and makes the ivy tremble. It is Scotland now, and as we pass through the storied Border we keep the ocean almost constantly in view,—losing it for a little while at Dunbar, but finding it again at Drem,—till, past the battlefield of Prestonpans, and past the quaint villages of Cockenzie and Musselburgh and the villas of Portobello, we come slowly to a pause in the shadow of Arthur's Seat, where the great lion crouches over the glorious city of Edinburgh. ”

“ Here, at Kenilworth, as elsewhere, at such places as Marlowe, Henley, Richmond, Maidenhead, Cookham, and the region round about Windsor, I saw many a sweet nook where tired life might be content to lay down its burden and enter into its rest. In all true love of country—a passion that seems to be more deeply felt in England than anywhere else upon the globe—there is love for the literal soil itself: and surely that sentiment in the human heart is equally natural and pious which inspires and perpetuates man's desire that where he found his cradle he may also find his grave. ”

“ While thus I lingered in wondering meditation upon the crag-like summit of York minster, the muffled thunder of its vast, sonorous organ rose, rolling and throbbing, from the mysterious depth below, and seemed to shake the great tower as with a mighty blast of jubilation and worship. At such moments, if ever, when the tones of human adoration are floating up to heaven, a man is lifted out of himself and made to forget his puny mortal existence and all the petty nothings that weary his spirit, darken his vision, and weigh him down to the level of the sordid, trivial world. ”

“ This fanciful, kindly, visionary, drifting, and altogether romantic comedy of Robin Hood is not to be tried by the standard that is author reared when he wrote Ulysses and Tithonus and The Passing of Arthur—that imperial, unapproachable standard that no other poet has satisfied.
"Cold upon the dead volcano sleeps the gleam of dying day."
But though the passion be subdued and the splendour faded, the deep current of feeling flows on and the strong and tender voice can still touch the heart and charm the ear. That tide of emotion and that tone of melody blend in this play and make it beautiful. ”

“ Hardly a light is anywhere visible. A few great elms, near by, are nodding and rustling in the wind, and once or twice a drowsy bird-note floats up from the neighbouring thicket that skirts the vacant, lonely road. There, at some distance, are the dim arches of Clopton's Bridge. In front—a graceful, shapely mass, indistinct in the starlight—rises the fair Memorial, Stratford's honour and pride. Further off, glimmering through the tree-tops, is the dusky spire of Trinity, keeping its sacred vigil over the dust of Shakespeare. ”

“ Before coming to Oban I gave two nights and days to Loch Awe,—a place so beautiful and so fraught with the means of happiness that time stands still in it, and even "the ceaseless vulture" of care and regret ceases for a while to vex the spirit with remembrance of anything that is sad. Looking down from the summit of one of the great mountains that are the rich and rugged setting of this jewel, I saw the crumbling ruin of Kilchurn upon its little island, gray relic first of the Macgregors and then of the Campbells, who dispossessed them and occupied their realm. ”

“ Standing on the lonely ramparts of Elsinore, and with awe-stricken, preoccupied, involuntary glances questioning the star-lit midnight air, while he talks with his attendant friends, Edwin Booth's Hamlet is the simple, absolute realisation of Shakespeare's haunted prince, and raises no question, and leaves no room for inquiry, whether the Danes in the Middle Ages wore velvet robes or had long flaxen hair. It is dark, mysterious, melancholy, beautiful—a vision of dignity and of grace, made sublime by suffering, made weird and awful by "thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls." ”

“ It is off the noble crags of Holyhead that the voyager first observes with what a deft skill the hand of art has here moulded nature's luxuriance into forms of seeming chance-born beauty; and from that hour, wherever in rural England the footsteps of the pilgrim may roam, he will behold nothing but gentle rustic adornment, that has grown with the grass and the roses—greener grass and redder roses than ever we see in our western world! In the English nature a love of the beautiful is spontaneous, and the operation of it is as fluent as the blowing of the summer wind. ”

“ But one sweet picture no sooner vanishes than its place is filled with another. Yonder, on the hillside, is the manor-house, with stately battlement and tower, its antique aspect softened by great masses of clinging ivy. Here, nestled in the sunny valley, are the little stone cottages, [316] roofed with red tiles and bright with the adornment of arbutus and hollyhock. All around are harvest-fields and market-gardens,—the abundant dark green of potato-patches being gorgeously lit with the intermingled lustre of millions of wild-flowers, white and gold, over which drift many flights of doves. ”

“ Othello, the perfection of simplicity, is not simpler than Juliet. In him are embodied passion and jealousy, swayed by an awful instinct of rude justice. In her is embodied unmixed and immitigable passion, without law, limit, reason, patience, or restraint. She is love personified and therefore a fatality to herself. Presented in that way—and in that way she was presented by Adelaide Neilson—her nature and her experience come home to the feelings as well as the imagination, and all that we know, as well as all that we dream, of beauty and of anguish are centred in one image. ”

“ England means stability—the fireside and the altar, home here and heaven hereafter; and this is the secret of the power that she wields in the affairs of the world, and the charm that she diffuses over the domain of thought. Such a temple as St. Paul's cathedral, such a palace as Hampton Court, such a castle as that of Windsor or that of Warwick, is the natural, spontaneous expression of the English instinct of permanence; and it is in memorials like these that England has written her history, with symbols that can perish only with time itself. ”

“ To float along here in the gloaming, when the bats are winging their "cloistered flight," when great flocks of starlings are flying rapidly over, when "the crow makes wing to the rooky wood," when the water is as smooth as a mirror of burnished steel, and equally the grasses and flowers upon the banks and the stately trees and the gray, solemn, and beautiful church are reflected deep in the lucid stream, is an experience of thoughtful pleasure [175] that sinks deep into the heart and will never be forgotten. You do not know Stratford till you know the Avon.
Clopton Bridge. ”

“ The public taste does not ask Jefferson to trifle with his art. Its deep, spontaneous, natural preference feels that he is a true actor, and so yields to his power, and enjoys his charm, and is all the time improved and made fitter to enjoy it. He has reached as great a height as it is possible to reach in his profession. He could if he chose play greater parts than he has ever attempted; he could not give a better exemplification than he gives, in his chose and customary achievement, of all that is distinctive, beautiful, and beneficent in the art of the actor. ”

“ Once again, as on that sacred night, the streets of Stratford are deserted and silent under the star-lit sky, and I am standing, in the dim darkness, at the door of the cottage in which Shakespeare was born. It is empty, dark, and still; and in all the neighbourhood there is no stir nor sign of life; but the quaint casements and gables of this haunted house, its antique porch, and the great timbers that cross its front are luminous as with a light of their own, so that I see them with perfect vision. ”

“ Great trees are all around the church, but not too near. A massive yew stands darkly at one corner. Chestnuts and elms blend their branches in fraternal embrace. Close by the poet's grave a vast beech uprears its dome of fruited boughs and rustling foliage. The sky was [81] blue, except for a few straggling masses of fleecy, slate-coloured cloud. Not a human creature was anywhere to be seen while I stood in this sacred spot, and no sound disturbed the Sabbath stillness, save the faint whisper of the wind in the lofty tree-tops and the low twitter of birds in their hidden nests. ”

“ It would be impossible to overstate the excellence of all that McCullough did and said, in the forum scene—the noble severity of the poise, the grace of the outlines, the terrible intensity of the mood, the heartrending play of the emotions, the overwhelming delirium of the climax. Throughout the subsequent most difficult portraiture of shattered reason the actor never, for an instant, lost his steadfast grasp upon sympathy and inspiration. Every heart knew the presence of a nature that could feel all that Virginius felt and suffer and act all that Virginius suffered and acted ”

“ There is no tediousness of solitude to him who has within himself resources of thought and dream, the pleasures and pains of memory, the bliss and the torture of imagination. It is best to have few acquaintances—or none—on shipboard. Human companionship, at some times, and this is one of them, distracts by its pettiness. The voyager should yield himself to nature now, and meet his own soul face to face. The routine of everyday life is commonplace enough, equally upon sea and land. But the ocean is a continual pageant, filling and soothing the mind with unspeakable peace. ”

“ Each distant summit is seen to be crowned with a tower or a town. A fine castle springs into view just before Birtley glances by, and we see that this is a place of woodlands, piquant with a little of the roughness of unsophisticated nature. But the scene changes suddenly, as in a theatre, and almost in a moment the broad and teeming Tyne blazes beneath the scorching summer sun, and the gray houses of Gateshead and Newcastle fill the picture with life and motion. The waves glance and sparkle,—a wide plain of shimmering silver. The stream is alive with shipping. ”

“ Standing by her grave, on which the myrtle grows dense and dark, and over which the small birds swirl and twitter in the breezy silence, remembrance of the busy scenes of brilliant life wherein she used to move—the pictured stage, the crowded theatre, the wild plaudits of a delighted multitude—came strongly on the mind, and asked, in perplexity and sadness, what was the good of it all. ”

“ This avenue of foliage is said to be the copy of one that existed there in Shakespeare's day, through which he must often have walked, and through which at last he was carried to his grave. Time itself has fallen asleep in that ancient place. The low sob of the organ only deepens the awful sense of its silence and its dreamless repose. Yews and elms grow in the churchyard, and many a low tomb and many a leaning stone are there, in the shadow, gray with moss and mouldering with age. ”

“ But the dark has come, and this Edinburgh ramble shall end with the picture that closed its own magnificent day. You are standing on the rocky summit of Arthur's Seat. From that superb mountain peak your gaze takes in the whole capital, together with the country in every direction for many miles around. The evening is uncommonly clear. Only in the west dense masses of black cloud are thickly piled upon each other, through which the sun is sinking, red and sullen with menace of the storm. Elsewhere and overhead the sky is crystal, and of a pale, delicate blue. ”

“ The stage has not at any time heard from any lips but her own such tones of pathos as those in which she said the simple words:—
"May God forgive you, then, and pity me—
If God can pity more than mothers do."
It is not a long scene, and happily not,—for the strain upon the emotion of the actress was intense. The momentary wild merriment, the agony of the breaking heart, the sudden delirium and collapse, were not for an instant exaggerated. All was nature—or rather the simplicity, fidelity, and grace of art that make the effect of nature. ”

“ Hundreds of persons roam through the storied places of England, carrying nothing away but the bare sense of travel. It is not the spectacle that benefits, but the meaning of the spectacle. In the great temples of religion, in those wonderful cathedrals that are the glory of the old world, we ought to feel, not merely the physical beauty but the perfect, illimitable faith, the passionate, incessant devotion, which alone made them possible. The cold intellect of a sceptical age, like the present, could never create such a majestic cathedral as that of Canterbury. ”

“ Walking in the Dean, on an afternoon half-cloudy and half-bright, when the large trees that guard its western limit and all the masses of foliage in the dark ravine of the Leith were softly rustling in the balmy summer wind, while overhead and far around the solemn cawing of the rooks mingled sleepily with the twitter of the sparrows, I thought, as I paced the sunlit aisles, that Nature could nowhere show a scene of sweeter peace. In this gentle solitude has been laid to its everlasting rest all that could die of some of the greatest leaders of thought in modern Scotland. ”

“ It is an experience very strange and full of awe suddenly to find your steps upon the sepulchres of such illustrious men as Burke, Pitt, Fox, and Grattan; and you come, with a thrill of more than surprise, upon such still fresh antiquity as the grave of Anne Neville, the daughter of Warwick and queen of Richard the Third. But no single spot in the great cathedral can so enthral the imagination as that strip of storied stone beneath which Garrick, Johnson, Sheridan, Henderson, Cumberland, Dickens, Macaulay, and Handel sleep, side by side. ”

“ Those three superb spires steadily dominate the scene, and each new view of them seems fairer than the last. All around this little city the fields are richly green, and many trees diversify the prospect. Pausing to rest awhile in the mouldering graveyard of old St. Chad's, I saw the rooks flocking homeward to the great tree-tops not far away, and heard their many querulous, sagacious, humorous croakings, while over the distance, borne upon the mild and fragrant evening breeze, floated the solemn note of a warning bell from the minster tower, as the shadows deepened and the night came down. ”

“ The house in which he once lived might, no doubt, be discovered; but every nook and vista, every green lane and upland lawn and ivy-mantled tower of this delicious solitude is haunted with his presence.
The night is coming on and the picture will soon be dark; but never while memory lasts can it fade out of the heart. What a blessing would be ours, if only we could hold forever that exaltation of the spirit, that sweet, resigned serenity, that pure freedom from all the passions of nature and all the cares of life, which comes upon us in such a place as this! ”

“ The minster stands out like a mountain, and the giant towers rear themselves in solemn [226] majesty,—the grandest piece of church architecture in England! The brimming Ouse shines as if it were a stream of liquid ebony. The meadows around the city glow like living emeralds, while the harvest-fields are stored and teeming with stacks of golden grain. Great flights of startled doves people the air,—as white as snow under the sable fleeces of the driving storm. I had seen York under different guises, but never before under a sky at once so sombre and so romantic. ”

“ Sometimes it seems instinct with a superb wrath, and its huge masses rise, and clash together, and break into crests of foam. Sometimes it is gray and quiet, as if in a sullen sleep. Sometimes the white mist broods upon it and deepens the sense of awful mystery by which it is forever enwrapped. At night its surging billows are furrowed with long streaks of phosphorescent fire; or, it may be, the waves roll gently, under the soft light of stars; or all the waste is dim, save where, beneath the moon, a glorious pathway, broadening out to the far horizon, allures and points to heaven. ”

“ The higher a man's faculties the higher are his ideals,—toward which, under the operation of a divine law, he must perpetually strive, but to the height of which he will never absolutely attain. So, inevitably, it was with Shakespeare.
But, although genius cannot escape from itself and is no more free than the humblest toiler in the vast scheme of creation, it may—and it must—sometimes escape from the world: and this wise poet, of all men else, would surely recognise and strongly grasp the great privilege of solitude amid the sweetest and most soothing adjuncts of natural beauty. ”

“ Elizabeth Claypole, the meek, merciful, beloved daughter of Cromwell; Matilda, Queen to Henry the First, and model of every grace and virtue; and sweet Anne Neville, destroyed—if his enemies told the truth—by the politic craft of Gloster. Strange sights, truly, in the lonesome Abbey to-night!
In the sombre crypt beneath St. Paul's cathedral how thrilling now must be the heavy stillness! No sound can enter there. No breeze from the upper world can stir the dust upon those massive sepulchres. ”

“ It is impossible to convey an adequate suggestion of the prodigious and overwhelming sense of peace that falls upon the soul of the pilgrim in Stratford church. All the cares and struggles and trials of mortal life, all its failures, and equally all its achievements, seem there to pass utterly out of remembrance. It is not now an idle reflection that "the paths of glory lead but to the grave." No power of human thought ever rose higher or went further than the thought of Shakespeare. No human being, using the best weapons of intellectual achievement, ever accomplished so much. ”

“ The streets have been levelled, swept, rolled and garnished till they look like a Flemish drawing, of the Middle Ages. Even the Shakespeare cottage, the old Harvard house in High Street, and the two old churches—authentic and splendid memorials of a distant and storied past—have been "restored." If the poet could walk again through his accustomed haunts, though he would see the same smiling country round about, and hear, as of old, the ripple of the Avon murmuring in its summer sleep, his eyes would rest on but few objects that once he knew. ”

“ The old foot-path across the fields to Shottery remains accessible. Wild-flowers are blooming along its margin. The gardens and meadows through which it winds are sprinkled with the gorgeous scarlet of the poppy. The hamlet of Shottery is less than a mile from Stratford, stepping toward the sunset; and there, nestled beneath the elms, and almost embowered in vines and roses, stands the cottage in which Anne Hathaway was wooed and won. This is even more antiquated in appearance than the birthplace of Shakespeare, and more obviously a relic of the distant past. ”

“ The cottage stands close upon the margin of the street, according to ancient custom of building throughout Stratford; and, entering through a little porch, the pilgrim stands at once in that low-ceiled, flag-stoned room, with its wide fire-place, so familiar in prints of the chimney-corner of Shakespeare's youthful days. Within the fire-place, on either side, is a seat fashioned in the brick-work; and here, as it is pleasant to imagine, the boy-poet often sat, on winter nights, gazing dreamily into the flames, and building castles in that fairyland of fancy which was his celestial inheritance. ”

“ This writer, when lately he visited the Abbey, found a chair upon the grave of Johnson, and sat down there to rest and muse. The letters on the stone are fast wearing away; but the memory of that sturdy champion of thought can never perish, as long as the votaries of literature love their art and honour the valiant genius that battled—through hunger, toil, and contumely—for its dignity and renown. It was a tender and right feeling that prompted the burial of Johnson close beside Garrick. They set out together to seek their fortune in the great city. ”

“ England is a country which to see is to love. As you draw near to her shores you are pleased at once with the air of careless finish and negligent grace that everywhere overhangs the prospect. The grim, wind-beaten hills of Ireland have first been passed—hills crowned, here and there, with dark, fierce towers that look like strongholds of ancient bandit chiefs, and cleft by dim valleys that seem to promise endless mystery and romance, hid in their sombre depths. ”

“ No human foot to-night invades its sacred precincts. The dead alone possess it. I see, upon its gray walls, the marble figures, white and spectral, staring through the darkness. I hear the night-wind moaning around its lofty towers and faintly sobbing in the dim, mysterious spaces beneath its fretted roof. Here and there a ray of starlight, streaming through the sumptuous rose window, falls and lingers, in ruby or emerald gleam, on tomb, or pillar, or dusky pavement. ”

“ It has left to succeeding ages not only a legacy of permanent beauty, not only a sublime symbol of religious faith, but an everlasting monument to the loveliness and greatness that are inherent in human nature. No creature with a human heart in his bosom can stand in such a building as Canterbury cathedral without feeling a greater love and reverence than he ever felt before, alike for God and man. ”

“ At the ancient grammar-school, with its pent-house roof and its dark, sagging rafters, you still may see, in fancy, the unwilling schoolboy gazing upward absently at the great, rugged timbers, or looking wistfully at the sunshine, where it streams through the little lattice windows of his prison. New Place, with its lovely lawn, its spacious garden, the ancestral mulberry and the ivy-covered well, will bring the poet before you, as he lived and moved, in the meridian of his greatness. ”