chosen for the sport; a plot of ground is marked cut into three compartments, in each of which a couple is placed, -the middle division bearing the name of hell. In that age the word was not used profanely nor vulgarly. Sidney and Browne and Massinger describe the sport. The couple who are in this condemned place try to catch those who advance from the other divisions, and we may imagine the noise and the laughter of the vigorous resistance and the coy yieldings that sounded on Hillborough, and scared the pigeons from their old dovecote. The difficulty of the game consisted in this-that the couple in the middle place were not to separate, whilst the others might loose hands whenever they pleased. Sidney alludes to this peculiarity of the game :

"There you may see, soon as the middle two

Do, coupled, towards either couple make,
They, false and fearful, do their hands undo."

But half a century after Sidney, the sprightliest of poets, Sir John Suckling, described the game of Barley-break with unequalled vivacity:

Yet this new coupling still doth tell
That Love and Folly were in hell.

The rest do break again, and Pride
Hath now got Reason on her side;
Hate and Fancy meet, and stand
Untouch'd by Love in Folly's hand;
Folly was dull, but Love ran well,
So Love and Folly were in hell."

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The young Shakspere, whose mature writings touch lightly upon country sports, but who mentions them always as familiar things, would be the foremost He would in these diversions. ride the wild mare with the boys," and "play at quoits well," and "change places" at "handy-dandy," and put out all his strength in a jump, though he might not expect to "win a lady at leapfrog," and run the country-base" with " striplings," and be a "very good bowler." ¶ It was not in solitude only that he acquired his wisdom. knew

"All qualities, with a learned spirit,

Of human dealings," **

He

through his intercourse with his fellows, and not by meditating upon abstractions. The meditation was to apply the experience and raise it into philo. sophy.

There is a temptation for the young men to make another day's holiday, resting at Hillborough through the night. No sprites are there to disturb the rest which has been earned by exercise. Before the sun is up they are in the dewy fields, for there is to be an otter-hunt below Bidford. The owner of the Grange, who has succeeded to the monks of Evesham, has his pack of otter. dogs. They are already under the marl-cliffs, busily seeking for the enemy of all anglers. "Look! down at the bottom of the hill there, in that meadow, checkered with water-lilies and lady-smocks; there you may see what work they make; look! look! you may see all busy; men and dogs; dogs and men; all busy." Thus does honest Izaak Walton describe such an animated scene The otter-hunt is now rare in England, but in those days, when field-sports had the double justification of their exercise and of their usefulness, the otterhunt was the delight of the dwellers near rivers. Spear in hand, every root and hole in the bank is tried by watermen and landsmen. The water-dog, as the otter was called, is at length found in her fishy hole, near her whelps. She takes to the stream, amidst the barking of dogs and the shouts of men; horsemen dash into the fordable places; boatmen push hither and thither; the dogs have lost her, and there is a short silence; for one instant she comes up to the surface to breathe, and the dogs are after her. but she bites him, and he swims away howling;

One dog has just seized her, she is under again, and they

Lear, Act IV., Scene VI.
Cymbeline, Act v., Scene IV.

** Othello, Act II, Scene III.

are at fault. Again she rises, or, in the technical language, vents. Now Sweetlips has her; hold her, Sweetlips! Now all the dogs have her; some above, and some under water: but now, now she is tired, and past losing." This is the catastrophe of the otter-hunt according to Walton. Somerville, in his grandiloquent blank verse, makes her die by the spears of the huntsmen.

When Izaak Walton and his friends have killed the otter, they go to their sport of angling. Shakspere in three lines describes "the contemplative man's recreation" as if he had enjoyed it :

"The pleasantest angling is to see the fish
Cut with her golden oars the silver stream,
And greedily devour the treacherous bait." *

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The oldest books upon angling have something of that half poetical, half devout enthusiasm about the art which Walton made so delightful. Even the author of the Treatise of Fishing with an Angle,' in the Book of St. Albans,' talks of "the sweet air of the sweet savour of the mead-flowers," and the "melodious harmony of fowls ;" and concludes the Treatise' thus:-" Ye shall not use this foresaid crafty disport for no covetyseness to the increasing and sparing of your money only, but principally for your solace, and to cause the health of your body, and specially of your soul; for when ye purpose to go on your disports in fishing ye will not desire greatly many persons with you, which might let

Much Ado about Nc thing, Act III., Scene I.

you of your game. And then ye may serve God devoutly in saying affec. tuously your customable prayer, and thus doing ye shall eschew and void many vices." According to this good advice, with which he was doubtless familiar, would the young poet go alone to fish in the quiet nooks of his Avon. With his merry companions about him he would not try the water at Bidford on this day of the otter-hunt.

About a mile from the town of Bidford on the road to Stratford was, some twenty years ago, an ancient crab-tree well known to the country round as Shakspere's Crab-tree. The tradition which associates it with the name of Shakspere is, like many other traditions regarding the poet, an attempt to embody the general notion that his social qualities were as remarkable as his genius. In an age when excess of joviality was by some considered almost a virtue, the genial fancy of the dwellers at Stratford may have been pleased to confer upon this crab-tree the honour of sheltering Shakspere from the dews of night, on an occasion when his merrymakings had disqualified him from returning homeward, and he had laid down to sleep under its spreading branches. It is scarcely necessary to enter into an examination of this apocryphal story. But as the crab-tree is associated with Shakspere, it may fitly be made the scene of some of his youthful exercises. He may "cleave the pin" and strike the quintain in the neighbourhood of the crab-tree, as well as sleep heavily beneath its shade. We shall diminish no honest enthusiasm by changing the associa.

The Treaty ses perteynyng to Hawkynge, Huntynge, and Fisshynge with an Angle.' 1496

tion Indeed, although the crab-tree was long ago known by the name of Shakspere's Crab-tree, the tradition that he was amongst a party who had accepted a challenge from the Bidford topers to try which could drink hardest, and there bivouacked after the debauch, is difficult to be traced further than the hearsay evidence of Mr. Samuel Ireland. In the same way, the merry folks of Stratford will tell you to this day that the Falcon inn in that town was the scene of Shakspere's nightly potations, after he had retired from London to his native home; and they will show you the shovel-board at which he delighted to play. Harmless traditions, ye are yet baseless! The Falcon was not an inn at all in Shakspere's time, but a goodly private dwelling.

About the year 1580 the ancient practice of archery had revived in England. The use of the famous English long-bow had been superseded in war by e arquebuss; but their old diversion of butt-shooting would not readily be aban doned by the bold yeomanry, delighting as they still did in stories of their countrymen's prowess, familiar to them in chronicle and ballad. The 'Toxophilus of Roger Ascham was a book well fitted to be amongst the favourites of our Shakspere; and he would think with that fine old schoolmaster that the book and the bow might well go together.* He might have heard that a wealthy yeoman of Middlesex, John Lyon, who had founded the grammarschool at Harrow, had instituted a prize for archery amongst the scholars. Had not the fame, too, gone forth through the country of the worthy Show and Shooting by the Duke of Shoreditch, and his Associates the Worshipful Citizens of London,' and of The Friendly and Frank Fellowship of Prince Arthur's Knights in and about the City of London ?' There were men of Stratford who within a year or two had seen the solemn processions of these companies of archers, and their feats in Hogsden Fields; where the wealthy citizens and their ladies sat in their tents most gorgeously dressed, and the winners of the prizes were brought out of the field by torchlight, with drum and trumpet, and volleys ́ of shot, mounted upon great geldings sumptuously trapped with cloths of silver and gold. Had he not himself talked with an ancient squire, who, in the elder days, at Mile End Green" had played "Sir Dagonet at Arthur's Show?"§ Aud did he not know old Double," who was now dead?—" He drew a good bow; and dead -he shot a fine shoot: *** Dead!—he would have clapped i' the clout at twelve score; and carried you a forehand shaft a fourteen and fourteen and a half, that it would have done a man's heart good to see." || Welcome to him, then, would be the invitation of the young men of Bidford for a day of archery; for they received as a truth the maxim of Ascham,— That still, according to the old wont of England, youth should use it for the

"

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"Would to God that all men did bring up their sons, like my worshipful master Sir Henry Wingefield, in the book and the bow."-ASCHAM.

This is the title of a tract published in 1583; but the author says that these mock solemnities had been "greatly revived, and within these five years set forward, at the great cost and charges of sundry chief citizens."