brother that Shakspere inade a large purchase of land in 1602. The better tradition survived the memory of Rowe's and Aubrey's epitaph; and before the mansion was pulled down, the people of Stratford delighted to look upon the Hall where John Combe had listened to the "very ready and pleasant smooth wit" of his friend "the immortal Shakspere," as the good folks of Stratford always term their poet. It was here that the neighbours would talk of "pippins" of their "own graffing,"-of a fine "dish of leathercoats,"--" how a good yoke of bullocks at Stamford Fair?"-" how a score of ewes now?" The poet had brought with him from London a few of the new mulberry plants. There was one at New Place, and one at the College. Which throve best? Should they ever raise silk-worms upon the leaves, and give a new manufacture to Stratford? The King was sanguine about the success of his mulberry-tree project, for he procured plants from France, and dispersed them through the kingdom; but they doubted. The poet planted his mulberry-tree for the ornament

Aubrey.

+ See Howe's Continuation of Stow's 'Chronicie,' p. 894.

of his "curious knotted garden;" little dreaming that his very fame in future times should accelerate its fall.

It would be something if we could now form an exact notion of the house in which Shakspere lived; of its external appearance, its domestic arrangements. Dugdale, speaking of Sir Hugh Clopton, who built the bridge at Stratford and repaired the chapel, says-" On the north side of this chapel was a fair house built of brick and timber, by the said Hugh, wherein he lived in his later days, and died." This was nearly a century before Shakspere bought the "fair house," which, in the will of Sir Hugh Clopton, is called "the great house." Theobald says that Shakspere, having repaired and modelled it to his own mind, changed the name to New Place." Malone holds that this is an error:-"I find from ancient documents that it was called New Place as early at least as 1565." The great house, having been sold out of the Clopton family, was purchased by Shakspere of William Underhill, Esq. Shakespere by his will left it to his daughter, Mrs. Hall, with remainder to her heirs male, or, in default, to her daughter Elizabeth and her heirs male, or the heirs male of his daughter Judith. Mrs. Hall died in 1649; surviving her husband fourteen years. There is little doubt that she occupied the house when Queen Henrietta Maria, in 1643, coming to Stratford in royal state with a large army, resided for three weeks under this roof. The property descended to her daughter Elizabeth, first married to Mr. Thomas Nash and afterwards to Sir Thomas Barnard. She dying without issue, New Place was sold in 1675, and was ultimately repurchased by the Clopton family. Sir Hugh Clopton, in the middle of the eighteenth century, resided there. The learned knight, according to some of the local historians, thoroughly repaired and beautified the place, and built a modern front to it. But it is evident, from recent excavations, that he did much more. Malone says that he "pulled down our poet's house, and built one more elegant on the same spot." After the death of Sir Hugh, in 1751, it was sold to the Rev. Francis Gastrell, in 1753.

The total destruction of New Place in 1757, by its new possessor, is difficult to account for upon any ordinary principles of action. Malone thus relates the story:"The Rev. Mr. Gastrell, a man of large fortune, resided in it but a few years, in consequence of a disagreement with the inhabitants of Stratford. Every house in that town that is let or valued at more than 40s. a-year is assessed by the overseers, according to its worth and the ability of the occupier, to pay a monthly rate toward the maintenance of the poor. As Mr. Gastrell resided part of the year at Lichfield, he thought he was assessed too highly; but being very properly compelled by the magistrates of Stratford to pay the whole of what was levied on him, on the principle that his house was occupied by his servants in his absence, he peevishly declared that that house should never be assessed again; and soon afterwards pulled it down, sold the materials, and left the town. Wishing, as it should seem, to be damn'd to everlasting fame,' he had some time before cut down Shakspeare's celebrated mulberry-tree, to save himself the trouble of showing it to those whose admiration of our great poet led them to visit the poetic ground on which it

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stood." The cutting down of the mulberry-tree seems to have been regarded as a great offence in Mr. Gastrell's own generation. His wife was a sister of Johnson's correspondent, Mrs. Aston. After the death of Mr. Gastrell, his widow resided at Lichfield; and in 1776, Boswell, in company with Johnson, dined with the sisters. Boswell on this occasion says-"I was not informed, till afterwards, that Mrs. Gastrell's husband was the clergyman who, while he lived at Stratfordupon-Avon, with Gothic barbarity cut down Shakspeare's mulberry-tree, and, as Dr. Johnson told me, did it to vex his neighbours. His lady, I have reason to believe on the same authority, participated in the guilt of what the enthusiasts of our immortal bard deem almost a species of sacrilege." The mulberry-tree was cut down in 1756; was sold for firewood; and the bulk of it was purchased by a Mr. Thomas Sharp, of Stratford-upon-Avon, clock and watch maker, who made a solemn affidavit, some years afterwards, that out of a sincere veneration for the memory of its celebrated planter he had the greater part of it conveyed to his own premises, and worked it into curious toys and useful articles. The destruction of the mulberry-tree, which the previous possessor of New Place used to show with pride and veneration, enraged the people of Stratford; and Mr. Wheler tells us that he remembers to have heard his father say that, when a boy, he assisted in the revenge of breaking the reverend destroyer's windows. The hostilities were put an end to by the Rev. Mr. Gastrell quitting Stratford in 1757; and, upon the principle of doing what he liked with his own, pulling the house to the ground.

We may charitably believe, not only that this reverend person had no enthusiastic reverence for the spot hallowed by associations with the memory of Shakspere; but that he thought nothing of Shakspere in the whole course of his proceedings. He bought a house, and paid for it. He wished to enjoy it in quiet. People with whom he could not sympathise intruded upon him to see the gardens and the house. In the gardens was a noble mulberry-tree. Tradition said it was planted by Shakspere; and the professional enthusiasts of Shakspere, the Garricks and the Macklins, had sat under its shade, during the cccupation of one who felt that there was a real honour in the ownership of such a piace. The Rev. Mr. Gastreil wanted the house and the gardens to himself. He Lad that strong notion of the exclusive rights of property which belongs to most Englishmen, and especially to ignorant Englishmen. Mr. Gastrell was an ignorant man, though a clergyman. We have seen his diary, written upon a visit to Scotland three years after the pulling down of New Place. His journey was connected with some electioneering intrigues in the Scotch boroughs. He is a stranger in Scotland, and he goes into some of its most romantic districts. The scenery makes Lo impression upon him, as may be imagined; but he is scandalized beyond measure when he meets with a bad dinner, and a rough lodging. He has just literature enough to know the name of Shakspere; but in passing through Forres and Glamis he has not the slightest association with Shakspere's Macbeth. A Captain Gordon informs his vacant mind upon some abstruse subjects, as to which we have the following record :-" He assures me that the Duncan murdered at Forres was the same person that Shakspeare writes of." There scarcely requires any further

evidence of the prosaic character of his mind; and if there be some truth in the axiom of Shakspere, that

"The man that hath no music in himself,

Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds,

Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils,"

we hold, upon the same principle, that the man who speaks in this literal way of the "person that Shakspere writes of," was a fit man to root up Shakspere's mulberry-tree; pull down the house which had some associations with the more ancient structure in which the author of some of the greatest productions of the human intellect had lived and died; and feel not the slightest regret in abandoning the gardens which the matchless man had cultivated.

It is a singular fact that no drawings or prints exist of New Place as Shakspere left it, or at any period before the new house was built by Sir Hugh Clopton. It is a more singular fact that although Garrick had been there only fourteen years before the destruction, visiting the place with a feeling of veneration that might have led him and others to preserve some memorial of it, there is no trace whatever existing of

what New Place was before 1757. The wood-cut here given is a fac-simile of an engraving, first published by Malone, and subsequently appended to the variorum editions, which is thus described :-" New Place, from a drawing in the margin of an Ancient Survey, made by order of Sir George Carew (afterwards Baron Carew of Clopton, and Earl of Totnes), and found at Clopton, near Stratford-upon-Avon, in 1786." A person resident at Stratford at the period mentioned as that of the finding of the drawing-Poet Jordan, as he was called-an ignorant person, but ready enough to impose upon antiquarian credulity-an instrument perhaps in the hands of others--he sent to Malone this drawing of New Place from the margin of an ancient survey. If it was a survey found at Clopton, it was a survey of the Clopton property in the possession of the Earl of Totness, who was a contemporary

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of Shakspere. New Place, as Malone knew, had been out of the Clopton family fifty years when Shakspere bought it. The drawing is found on the margin of an ancient survey. It is not described in the margin, or elsewhere, as New Place. Immediately opposite New Place is a house which, though altered, is still a very old house. The gables have been concealed by a parapet, the windows have been modernized; but the gables are still to be traced upon ascending the roof. Restore the gables and windows to their primitive state, and we have the very house represented upon the margin of an ancient survey." That house, which is now occupied by Mr. Hunt, the town-clerk of Stratford, did belong to the Earl of Totness. But look at Shakspere's arms over the door, the " spear in bend." How do we account for this? There is a letter written by Malone on the 15th of April, 1790, to his convenient friend at Stratford, "good Mr. Jordan," in which the following passage occurs :-" Mr. Malone would be glad to have Shakspeare's house on the same scale as that of Sir Hugh Clopton's. He thinks the arms of Shakspere a very proper ornament over the door, and very likely to have been there; and neat wooden pales may be placed with propriety before the house." And yet this man was the most bitter denouncer of the Ireland forgeries; and shows up, as he had a just right to do, the imposition of the "View of my Masterre Irelande's House," with two coats-of-arms beneath it. Good Mr. Jordan, when, in the pride of his heart at having such a correspondent, he gave a copy of Malone's letter to a gentleman at Stratford, admitted that he had, of his own accord, added the porch to the house represented "in the margin of an ancient survey "'*

The register of marriages at Stratford-upon-Avon, for the year 1607, contains the following entry :-

Jofer hall gordhoma & Ensarma Exupspor

Susanna, the eldest daughter of William Shakspere, was now twenty-four years of age. John Hall, gentleman, a physician settled at Stratford, was in his thirtysecond year. This appears in every respect to have been a propitious alliance. Shakspere received into his family a man of learning and talent. Dr. Hall lived at a period when medicine was throwing off the empirical rules by which it had been too long directed; and a school of zealous practitioners were beginning to rise up who founded their success upon careful observation. It was the age which produced the great discoveries of Harvey. Shakspere's son-in-law belonged to this school of patient and accurate observers. He kept a record of the cases which came under his care; and his notes, commencing in the year 1617, still exist in manuscript. The minutes of his earlier practice are probably lost. The more remarkable of the cases were published more than twenty years

* See Note at the end of the Volume.