from his works. Observe that these spots I have mentioned in Stratford and the neighbourhood yield us examples of all the sorts of life in England. Working in the fields about Stratford was many a rustic who might serve as a model for Touchstone or for Audrey; hardly a summer's day would pass that the boy Shakspere, strolling about the country lanes, would not meet some tinker who would at least suggest that profound rogue and merry soul, Autolycus. Here we have the lowest class of English domestic life. Again, in the house of William Shakspere's father, John Shakspere, in Henley Street, and in the cottage of Richard Hathaway, we have the life of the tradesman, the comfortable burgess, the alderman,—for Shakspere's father was alderman of Stratford before his reverses began, and of the substantial yeoman. Again, in the manor of Sir Thomas Lucy at Charlecote we are presented with the mode of existence of the English country gentleman, a grade higher than the middle class. "Gentleman" in those days had, as you all remember, a much more specialised meaning than in these: it was a pleasant thing to be able to write one's name Bartholomew Griffin, Gent., or Samuel Daniel, Gent., and we find our master not disdaining to see his name as William Shakspere, Gentleman, after he had gone up to London, and had become not only a popular playwright, but a man of substance, with interest in the Blackfriars and the Globe theatres and with investments in real estate. Lastly, at Kenilworth Shakspere might have seen when he was a boy the very highest phase of English life-not only that of the nobility but that of royalty itself. Perhaps it will interest you if I devote a moment at this point to showing exactly how it is that this castle of Kenilworth connects itself with Shakspere's existence. There is no eye-evidence that Shakspere was ever at Kenilworth; but a very pretty piece of circumstantial

testimony to the fact comes out by comparing a certain passage in Shakspere's Midsummer Night's Dream with certain events which are known to have taken place at Kenilworth. The passage is that beautiful vision which Oberon relates to Puck in Scene II of Act II. Oberon and Titania have been disputing the possession of the Indian boy, and have just parted, after such a gentle and airy tiff as might be supposed to take place sometimes between a fairy husband and wife. Oberon, resolving to wreak a fantastic revenge upon Titania, wishes to get the maddoting flower called love-in-idleness, for the purpose of dropping its juice on Titania's eyes. Calling Puck to him, he relates how it happened that this flower acquired its marvellous virtue of causing any one upon whose eyelids its juice was laid to love the next live creature that should be beheld, no matter how monstrous :

My gentle Puck, come hither. Thou remember'st
Since once I sat upon a promontory,

And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back,
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
That the rude sea grew civil at her song,

And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,
To hear the sea-maid's music.

Obe. That very time I saw, but thou couldst not,
Flying between the cold moon and the earth,
Cupid all arm'd a certain aim he took

At a fair vestal thronéd by the west,

And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow,
As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts:

But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft
Quenched in the chaste beams of the wat'ry moon,
And the imperial votaress passed on,

In maiden meditation, fancy-free.

Whereupon the erring shaft of Cupid fell upon a little flower, turned it from white to purple, and endowed it with its marvellous powers.

Now it so happens that this passage describes, with an exquisite mixture of fact and allegory, a series of events which took place at Kenilworth some fifteen or twenty years before. In the summer of the year 1575 Queen Elizabeth came down from London to visit Leicester, who was then in the very height of his ambitious purposes, and in particular was moving heaven and earth to win the hand of the Queen herself in marriage. He entertained his royal mistress in a series of pageants which were so magnificent and elaborate as to give them a supreme place even in that reign of glorious festivities. The chroniclers of the period have described these pageants in full; and among them was one which Shakspere is evidently describing in the passage quoted- when, for the entertainment of Queen Bess, Leicester had caused to come over a sheet of water in his park a figure on a dolphin's back, singing; and inasmuch as Leicester was all this time. making the most vigorous love to Elizabeth,- who appears in this passage as the "fair vestal throned by the west, —and as she escaped his toils and passed on "in maiden meditation, fancy-free," you can imagine the grateful pleasure with which the Queen would have had all this scene thus vividly recalled to her by Shakspere; for the Midsummer Night's Dream was doubtless acted before the Queen,— possibly written for that special purpose,- and Shakspere probably anticipated in writing this speech of Oberon's the delight with which her mind would recur to those "princely pleasures of Kenilworth" which marked the heyday of her life and of Leicester's brilliancy.

Now if, as I say, Shakspere witnessed these royal masques at Kenilworth,—as well might have happened,