CHAPTER IX.

I question the infinite silence,And endeavor to fathom the deepThat rests in the ocean of knowledgeAnd dreams in the heaven of sleep;And I soar with the wing of science,Its mysterious realm to explore,But the wail of the wild sea breakersDrowns my soul in the Nevermore;For the answer of finite wisdomIs as fickle as ambient air,And my wreckage of hopes are scatteredOn the rocks and shores of despair!

Arriving at the Crown Tavern, in Oxford, we were, as usual, received by the old Boniface Devanant and his handsome wife, with warm words and luxurious table cheer. After a day and night of reasonable revelry, we proceeded on our way to London, and in due course found our sunny lodgings at the home of Maggie Mellow.

The night after our arrival Sir Walter Raleigh gave a grand banquet at the Mermaid Club to the principal wits of London.

Burbage, Florio, Field, William and myself were invited as special guests, in honor of the poetic and dramatic association.

Representative authors and actors of the various theatrical companies were present at the festive war of wits.

The Queen's men, and those who played under the patronage of Leicester, Pembroke, Burleigh, and the Lord Admiral were there, while Henslowe, the owner of the Rose Theatre on Bankside, with his son-in-law, Edward Alleyn, the noted actor, shone in all their borrowed glory.

Spenser, Drayton, Marlowe, Kyd, Nash, Chettle, Peele, Greene, and a young author, Ben Jonson, were a few of the literary luminaries present.

A contingent of London lords, patrons of authors and actors graced the scene. Essex,Southampton, Pembroke, Cecil, Mortimer, Burleigh and Lord Bacon occupied prominent places at the angle table of the club, where Raleigh sat as master of ceremonies.

Promptly at eleven o'clock, the great courtier, sailor and discoverer arose from his elevated chair and proposed a toast to the Virgin and Fairy Queen!

All stood to their tankards and drank unanimously to the Virgin Queen.

I thought I observed a flash of secret smiles pictured on the lips of Essex, Spenser, Bacon and Raleigh when Elizabeth was toasted as theVirginQueen; and William whispered in my ear:

"Her virtues graced with eternal gifts,Do breed love's settled passions in my heart!"

After tremendous cheers were given for the Queen, Sir Walter, in his blandest mood said: "We are glorified by having with us to-night the greatest poet in the realm, and I trust Sir Edmund Spenser will be gracious enough to give us a few lines from the 'Faerie Queen.'"

Sir Edmund arose in his place and said:

"In Una, the Fairy Queen, I beheld the purity and innocence of Elizabeth, and in the lion of passion, hungry from the forest, I saw her conquer even in her naked habiliments."

"One day, nigh weary of the irksome wayFrom her unhasty beast she did alight;And on the grass her dainty limbs did lay,In secret shadow, far from all men's sight,From her fair head her fillet she undight,And laid her stole aside, her angel's face,As the great Eye of Heaven, shone brightAnd made a sunshine in the shady place—Did never mortal eye behold such grace!It fortuned, out of the thickest woodA ramping Lion rushed suddenly,Hunting full greedy after savage blood;Soon as the Royal Virgin he did spy,With gaping month at her ran greedily,To have at once devoured her tender corse;But to the prey when as he drew more nigh—His bloody rage assuaged with remorse,And with the sight amazed, forgot his furious force!"

Spenser resumed his seat, while a whirl of echoing applause waved from floor to rafter.

Then Sir Walter remarked:

"We are honored to-night by the presence of the counsel extraordinary of Queen Elizabeth, the orator and philosopher, Sir Francis Bacon, who will, I trust, give us a sentiment in honor of Her Majesty, the patron of art, literature and liberty!"

Bacon, handsome, proud, but obsequious, then arose and addressed the jolly banqueters as follows:

"Gentlemen: The toast of the evening to her gracious Majesty, Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen, meets my soul-lit approval, and had I the wings of fancy, instead of the plodding pedals of practical administration, I should raise her virtuous statue to the skies until its pinnacle shone above the uplands of omnipotence!

"Philosophy teaches us that vice and virtue are at eternal war, and that whether married or single, the happiest state of man or woman is personal independence!

"Domestic cares afflict the husband's bed,Or pain his head;Those that live single, take it for a curse,Or do things worse;Some would have children, those that have them mourn,Or wish they were gone;What is it then, to have or have no wife,But single thraldom, or a double strife!

"My friends: The ocean is the solitary handmaid of eternity. Cold and salt cure alike!

"Men are like ants, crawling up and down.

"Some carry corn, some carry their young, and all go to and fro—at last a little heap of dust!"

The states' attorney took his seat, with frantic applause rattling in his ears.

Although the sentiments of Bacon were variable, mixed, foreign and epigrammatic, they received great attention; for no matter who may be the speaker at a banquet where royalty and power are the subjects at issue, there will be great and tremendous cheering by little sycophants who expect reward, and of course, by those patriots who have already received favors from the administration pie counter.

Sir Walter at last arose and said "that although the hour was late, or, more properly speaking, early, he earnestly desired the noble gentlemen present to hear one whose fame, in the world of dramatic letters, like the morning sun, had already flashed upon the horizon and rapidly approached the high noon of earthly immortality—William Shakspere, of Stratford-on-Avon!"

Then could be heard roof-lifting cheers by all present, who had often heard the Bard in his lofty language and kingly strides at the Blackfriars.

William, in the flush of self-conscious, imperial, splendid manhood exclaimed:

"Gentlemen:

Your toast of glory to The Virgin QueenCracks high heaven with reverberation,And through the ambient air, sonorous,The echoing muses mingle theHarmony of the spheres with celestial repetition!Elizabeth, I lift my song to thee,In holy adorationTo echo down the flowing tide of ages!Within the chronicle of wasted timeI see descriptions of the fairest wights,And beauty making beautiful old rhymeIn praise of ladies dead and gallant knights,Then in the blazon of sweet beauty's bestOf hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,I know their antique pen would have expressedEven such a beauty as you master now.So all their praises are but propheciesOf this our time, all you prefiguring;And, for they looked, but with divining eyes,They had not skill enough your worth to sing;For me, which now behold these present daysHave eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soulOf the wide world dreaming on things to come,Can yet the lease of my true love control,Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom.The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,And the sad augurs mark their own presage;Incertainties now crown themselves assured,And peace proclaims olives of endless age.Now with the drops of the most balmy time,My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes,Since spite of him I'll live in the poor rhymeWhile he sweeps over dull and speechless tribes.And thou, in this shall find thy monument,When tyrant crests and tombs of brass are spent!"

Within the chronicle of wasted timeI see descriptions of the fairest wights,And beauty making beautiful old rhymeIn praise of ladies dead and gallant knights,Then in the blazon of sweet beauty's bestOf hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,I know their antique pen would have expressedEven such a beauty as you master now.So all their praises are but propheciesOf this our time, all you prefiguring;And, for they looked, but with divining eyes,They had not skill enough your worth to sing;For me, which now behold these present daysHave eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.

Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soulOf the wide world dreaming on things to come,Can yet the lease of my true love control,Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom.The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,And the sad augurs mark their own presage;Incertainties now crown themselves assured,And peace proclaims olives of endless age.Now with the drops of the most balmy time,My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes,Since spite of him I'll live in the poor rhymeWhile he sweeps over dull and speechless tribes.And thou, in this shall find thy monument,When tyrant crests and tombs of brass are spent!"

Rapturous and universal praise and applause greeted William and his immortal sonnets; and if any critical reader or author will take pains to delve into and scan the poetry and philosophy of Spenser and Bacon with that of Shakspere, they will quickly and honestly come to the conclusion that the former writers are merely rushlights to the flashing electric lights of the Divine Bard!

To paraphrase the encomium of Shakspere to Cleopatra would fit the greatness of himself:

"Age cannot wither him, nor custom staleHis infinite variety; other men cloyThe appetites they feed; but he makes hungryWhere most he satisfies!"

"I have venturedLike little wanton boys that swim on bladdersThis many summers in a sea of glory."

The literary bohemians of London three hundred years ago were an impecunious and jealous lot of human pismires, who built their dens, carried their loads, and were filled with vaulting ambition just the same as we see them to-day.

The hack-writer for publishers, the actor for theatrical managers and the author of growing renown belonged to clubs and tavern coteries, pushing their way up the rocky heights of fame, and struggling, as now, for bread, clothes and shelter, many of the Bacchanalian creatures dying from hunger at the foothills of their ambition; and instead of winning a niche in the columned aisles of Westminster Abbey, dropped dead in some back alley or gloomy garret, to be carted away by the Beadle to the voracious Potter's field.

They often courted Dame Suicide, who neverfails to relieve the wicked, wretched, insane or desperate from their intolerable situation.

"Art thou so bare and full of wretchedness,And fear'st to die? Famine is in thy cheeks,Need and oppression starveth in thy eyes,Content and beggary hang upon thy back;The world is not thy friend, nor the world's law!"

How often at the Miter or Falcon taverns have I seen these little great literary men swell like a toad or puff like a pigeon at the flattery bestowed on them by fawning bohemians, meaner than themselves, who sought a midnight snack and a tankard of foaming ale.

Of all the despicable and miserable creatures I have ever known it is the poor starving devil, with latent genius, who attempts to pay court to a cad, snob, or drunken lord around the refuse of literary or sporting clubs in midnight hours.

William was always very kind to these threadbare wanderers, and although they often gave him pen prods behind his back, he never betrayed any recognition of their envious stings, but like the lion in his jungle, brushed these busy bees away by the underbrush of his philosophy.

He mildly rebuked their pretense, but relieved their immediate wants, impressing upon them the study of Nature and not the blandishments of art, having the appearance of Oriental porcelain or Phœnician glass, when it was really crude crockery painted to deceive the sight and auctioned off to the unwary purchaser as genuine material.

How many authors, artists and actors of to-dayfollow in the path of their London ancestors who blow, and brag, and strut in midnight clubs and taverns to the pity and disgust of their table tooters.

Speaking one evening at the Red Lion, in the rooms of Florio, I asked William how it was that his plays were so successful, while those of other authors had almost been banished from the dramatic boards. He at once replied:

I draw my plots from Nature's lawTo sound the depths of human life,And through her realm I find no flawIn all her seeming, varied strife;The good and bad are near allied;With sweet and sour forever blent,While vice and virtue side by sideExist in every continent.The poison vine that climbs the tree,Is just as great in Nature's planAs every mount and every seaDisplayed below for little man.And every ant and busy beeShall teach us how to build and toilIf we would mingle with the free,Who plough the seas or till the soil.

I shall never forget the visit Shakspere and myself paid to the cloistered, columned, pinnacled proportions of Westminster Abbey.

It was three o'clock in the afternoon of the 24th of December, 1592.

The living London world was rushing in great multitudes by alley, lane, street and park preparing for the celebration of Christmas Eve.

Vanity Fair was decked off with palm, spruce, pine, myrtle, ivy and holly to garnish home, hall and shop in honor of Jesus, who had been crucified nearly sixteen hundred years before for telling the truth and tearing down the vested arrogance of religious tyranny.

A bright winter sun was gilding the tall towers of the Abbey with golden light, and the mullioned windows were blazing over the surrounding buildings like flashes of fire.

We entered the court of Westminster through the old school by way of a long, low passage, dimly lighted corridors, with glinting figures of old teachers in black gowns, moving like specters from the neighboring tombs.

As we passed along by cloistered walls and mural monuments to vanished glory, we were soon within the interior of the grand old Abbey.

Clustered columns of gigantic dimensions, with lofty arches springing from wall to nave met the eye of the beholder, and stunned by the solemn surroundings, vain man wonders at his own handiwork, trembling with doubt amid the monumental glory of Old Albion.

The Abbey clock struck the hour of five as William and myself stood in deep contemplation at Poets' corner.

The reverberating tones of time echoed from nave to floor, through cloistered walls and columned aisles, noting the passing hour and ages, like billows of sound rolling over the graves of vanished splendor.

Here crumble the dust and effigies of courtiers, warriors, statesmen, lords, dukes, kings, queensand authors; and yet, there is no spot in the Abbey that holds such an abiding interest for mankind as the modest corner where lie the dust of noted poets and philosophers.

The great and the heroic of the world may be bravely admired in lofty contemplation of nationality, but a feeling of fondness creeps over the traveler or reader when he bows at the grave of buried genius, while tears of remembrance even wash away the sensuous Bacchanalian escapades of impulsive, poetic revelers.

The author, touched by the insanity of genius, must ever live in the mind of the reader, and while posterity shall forget even warriors, kings and queens, it never fails to preserve in marble, granite, bronze and song the name and fame of great poets.

David, Solomon, Job, Homer, Horace,Ovid,Angelo, Dante and Plutarch are deeply imbedded in the memory of mankind, and although great kingdoms, empires and dynasties, have passed away to the rubbish heap of oblivion, the poet, musician, painter, and sculptor still remain to thrill and beautify life, and teach hope of immortality beyond the grave.

After gazing on the statues of abbots, Knights Templar, Knights of the Bath, bishops, statesmen, kings and queens, many mutilated by time and profane hands, William stood by the coffin of Edward the Confessor and mournfully soliloquized:

Westminster! lofty heir of Pagan Temple;Imperial in stone; a thousand yearsCrowns the record of thy inheritance,Gilding the glory of thy ancient fame,With imperishable deeds—Liberty of thought and action,shallForever cluster about thy classic form;While new men with new creeds, and reason,Shall overturn the religions of to-day,As thou hast invaded and destroyedThe Pagan, Roman rules of antiquity.These marble hands and faces appealingFor remembrance, to animated dustAppeal in vain, for we, whose footfallsOnly sound in marble ears, cold and listless,Shall ourselves follow where they led, dyingNot knowing the mysterious secrets of the grave.Here the victor and vanquished, side by side,Sleep in dreamless rest, Kings and Queens in life,Battling for power, all conquered by tyrant Death,Whose universal edict, irrevocable,Levels Prince and Peasant, in impalpable dust.Crowns to-day, coffins to-morrow, with monumentsMossed over, letter-cracked, undecipherableAs the mummied remains of Egyptian Kings.Vain, vain, are all the monuments of man,The greatest only live a little span;We strut and shine our passing day, and then—Depart from all the haunts of living men,With only Hope to light us on the wayWhere billions passed beneath the silent clay;And, none have yet returned to tell us whereWe'll bivouac beyond this world of care;And these dumb mouths, with ghostly spirits nearWill not express a word into mine ear,Or tell me when I leave this sinning sodIf I shall be transfigured with my God!

In September, 1592, the second play of Shakspere, "Love's Labor's Lost," was given at the Blackfriars, to a fine audience.

He took the characters of the play from a French novel, based on an Italian plot, and wove around the story a lot of glittering talk to please the lords and ladies who listened to the silly gabble of their prototypes.

Ferdinand, King of Navarre, and his attendant lords are a set of silly beaux who propose to retire from the world and leave women alone for the space of three years.

The Princess of France and her ladies in waiting, with the assistance of a gay lord named Boyet, made an incursion into the Kingdom of Navarre and break into the solitude of the students.

Nathaniel, a parson, and Holofernes, a pedant schoolmaster, are introduced into the play by William to illustrate the asinine pretensions of ministers and pedagogues, who are constantly introducing Latin or French words in their daily conversation, for the purpose of impressing common people with their great learning, when, in fact, they only show ridiculous pretense and expose themselves to the contempt of mankind.

There are very few noted philosophic sentiments in the play, and the attempt at wit, of the clown, the constable and Holofernes, the schoolmaster, fall very flat on the ear of an audience, while the rhymes put in the mouth of the various characters are unworthy of a boy fourteen years of age.

I remonstrated with William about injecting his alleged poetry into the love letters sent by the lords and ladies, but he replied that young lovewas such a fool that any kind of rhyme would suit passionate parties who were playing "Jacks and straws" with each other.

Ferdinand, the King, opens up the play with a grand dash of thought:

"Let fame that all hunt after in their lives,Live registered upon our brazen tombs,And then grace us in the disgrace of death,When, spite of cormorant devouring time,The endeavor of this present breach may buyThat honor, which shall bait his scythe's keen edgeTo make us heirs of all eternity."

Lord Biron, who imagines himself in love with the beautiful Rosaline, soliloquizes in this fashion:

"What? I! I love! I sue! I seek a wife!A woman that is like a German clock,Still a repairing; ever out of frame.And never going aright, being a watch,But being watched that it may still go right!Is not Love a HerculesStill climbing trees in the Hesperides?Subtle as a sphinx; as sweet and musicalAs bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hairAnd when Love speaks, the voice of all the godsMakes heaven drowsy with the harmony!"

Holofernes, the Latin pedagogue, criticising Armado, exclaims:

Novi hominem tanquam te.His humor is lofty, his discourse peremptory. He draweth out thethread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument.

And then Holofernes winds up the play with the Owl and Cuckoo song, a rambling verse, Winter speaking:

When icicles hang by the wall,And Dick, the shepherd, blows his wail,And Tom bears logs into the hall,And milk comes frozen home in pail,When blood is nipped and ways be foul,When nightly sings the staring owlTo-who;Tu-whit, to-who, a merry noteWhile greasy Joan doth scum the pot.

"Now all the youth of England are on fireAnd silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies;Now thrive the armorers, and honor's thoughtHangs solely in the breast of every man.Cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war!"

"Now all the youth of England are on fireAnd silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies;Now thrive the armorers, and honor's thoughtHangs solely in the breast of every man.

Cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war!"

The reign of Queen Elizabeth was a most glorious one for the material and mental progress of England, but most disastrous for Philip of Spain, Louis and Henry of France, Mary of Scotland,O'Neil, O'Brien, Desmond and Tyrone of Ireland.

The Reformation of Martin Luther, a Catholic priest, against the faith and financial exactions of the Pope of Rome, cracked from the Catholic sky like a clap of thunder from the noonday sun, and reverberated over the globe with startling detonation.

The cry of personal liberty and personal responsibility to God, went out from the German cloister like a roaring storm and echoed in thunder tones among the columned aisles of the Vatican.

Entrenched audacity and mental tyranny wasbroken from its ancient pedestal, as if an earthquake had shivered the Roman dominions, leaving sacerdotal precedents and papal bulls in the back-alley of bigotry and bloated ignorance.

People began to think and wonder how they had been bamboozled for centuries by a set of educated harlequins, who, in all lands and climes exhibited their antics and nostrums for the delectation and digestion of infatuated fools! Millions yet living!

Queen Elizabeth's elevation to the throne of England was a bid for the banished and persecuted Protestants to return from foreign lands and again pursue their puritanical philosophy.

Pope Paul demanded of Elizabeth that all the church lands, monasteries and cathedrals confiscated by her father, Henry the Eighth, be restored to the Roman hierarchy, and that she make confession and submission to the divine authority of the Catholic Church.

Although religion and civil law was in a very chaotic state, Queen Bess was not at all disturbed by the threats of the Vatican or the Armada of Spain. With old Lord Cecil as her prime counsel, she never hesitated to believe in her own destiny, and, like her opponents, the Jesuits, the end always justified the means. When it was necessary to rob or kill anybody, the Queen did so without any compunction of conscience.

She did not care for religion one way or the other, and flattered the Catholic and Protestant lords alike, manipulating them for her personal and official advantage. Victory at any price. Business Bessy!

She professed great love for her sister, Mary Queen of Scots, but to foil the French Catholics and satisfy the Scotch and English Protestants, Lizzie cut off the head of her beautiful sister. She professed great sorrow after Mary's head was detached.

Essex and Raleigh, and many other royal courtiers were sent to the Tower and the block by this red-headed, snaggle-tooth she devil, who only thought of her own physical pleasures and official vanities, sacrificing everything to her tyrannical ambition. She died in an insane, frantic fit.

Yet, with all her devilish conduct, she pushed the material interest of Englishmen ahead for five hundred years, and by her patronage of sailors, warriors, poets and philosophers, gave the British letters a boom that is felt to the present day, and through Shakspere's lofty lines, shall continue down the ages to tell mankind that nothing on earth is lasting but honest work and eternal truth.

Contention and war is the natural condition of mankind; for all animated nature, from birth to death, struggles for food and shelter.

The birds of the air, animals of the land and fishes of the sea, fight and devour each other for food, while man, the great robber and murderer of all, delights in destruction, and from his first appearance on earth to the present day, has been earnestly engaged in emigrating from land to land, seeking whom he may rob and kill for personal wealth and power! Doing it to-day more than ever.

Civilization is only refined barbarism; and this very hour the unions of the world are inventing and manufacturing powder, guns and terrible battle ships for the purpose of robbing and killing each other in the next war, nearly at hand. Japan and Russia will tear each other to pieces.

Peace is only a slight resting spell for the nations to trade with each other and make secret preparations to finally kill and secure increased dominion.

The minions of monarchy and lovers of liberty have invariably despised each other, and waited only favorable opportunity to rob and murder. Even now, they crouch like lions at bay, and fight to the death.

Liberty is forging ahead with ten league boots and monarchy is silently, but surely being relegated to the tomb of defeat.

Of course, right is right in the abstract, but might is the winning card in the lottery of Fate, and that nation having the most brave men, money and guns will come out victorious!

Strong nations have become stronger by robbing and killing weaker nations, and the British Government for a thousand years—particularly from the bloody reigns of Elizabeth and Oliver Cromwell—can boast that it has never failed to rob and kill the weak, while truckling and fawning at the feet of Russia and the Republic of the United States, which will soon extend from Bering Sea and Baffin's Bay to the Isthmus of Panama—absorbing Canada, Cuba, Mexico and Central America within its imperial jurisdiction. We intend to, and shall rule the world!

Then, this vast Republic, looking over the globe from the dome of our national Capitol, at Washington, can invite all lands to banquet at the tableof the Goddess of Liberty, and in mercy to the blind tyranny of monarchy we may lay a wreath of myrtle on the graves of lords, earls, dukes, kings, queens and emperors, to be only remembered as the nightmare of tyranny, extirpated from the earth forever. God grant their speedy official destruction!

The gentle reader (of course) will excuse this enthusiastic digression from the story of Queen Bess and my soul friend William Shakspere.

If they were present at this moment, they would not dare deny the truth of this memory narrative.

In the summer of 1595, the periodical plague of London was thinning out the inhabitants of that dirty city. In the lower part of the city skirting the Thames, the sewerage was very bad and but the poorest sanitary rules existed. After a hard rain, the lanes, alleys and streets ran with a stream of putrefaction, as the offal from many tenement houses was thrown in the public highway, where the rays from the hot sun created malarial fever or the black plague.

At such times the theatres and churches were closed, and those who could get out of London, by land or water, fled to the inland shires of England, the mountains of Scotland or to the heather hills of Ireland.

Edmund Spenser, the poet and Secretary of Lord Gray for Ireland, invited William and myself to visit his Irish estate near the city of Cork.

One bright morning in May, we boarded the good ship Elizabeth, near the Tower, passed out of Gravesend, then into the channel and steered our way to Bantry Bay, until we landed in the coveof Cork, as the church bells were ringing devotees to early mass.

The green fields and hills of Ireland were blooming in rustic beauty, the thrush sang from every hawthorn bush, the blackbird was busy in the fields filching grain from the ploughman, the lark, in his skyward flight poured a stream of melody on the air, and all Nature seemed happy, but man.

He it is who makes the blooming productive earth miserable, with his voracious greed for gold and power.

Elizabeth was then waging war with the various Irish chieftains, importing cunning Scotchmen and brutal Englishmen as soldiers and traders to colonize the lands and destroy the homes of what she was pleased to call "Barbarous, rebellious, wild Irish."

Whenever any strong power invades a weaker one for the purpose of robbery and official murder (war), the tyrant labels his victim—a "Rebel!"

That is, the original owner of the land destined to be robbed is regarded as bigoted, barbarous and rebellious, unless he submits to be robbed, banished and murdered for the edification and glory of freebooters, thieves, tyrants, assassins and foreign man hunters.

Leinster, Munster, Ulster and Connaught, the four provinces of Ireland, had been marked out for settlement by Henry the Eighth and Queen Elizabeth, and hordes of English "carpetbaggers" and soldiers were turned loose on the island to rob, burn and destroy the natives.

As soon as counties and provinces were conquered, the military and lordly pets of the variousmonarchs were given large grants of the lands stolen from the people.

O'Neil, O'Brien, Desmond, O'Donnell, O'Connor, Burke, Clanrickard and Tyrone disputed every inch of ground with Pellam, Mountjoy, Gray, Essex, Raleigh and Cromwell; and, although the original commanders and owners of the soil have been virtually banished or killed, their posterity has the proud satisfaction of knowing that more than a million of Englishmen and Scotchmen have been killed by the "Wild Irish," and the battle for liberty shall still go on till the Saxon robber relinquishes his blood sucking tentacles on the Emerald Isle.

Poet Spenser and Sir Walter Raleigh were rewarded by Queen Elizabeth with thousands of acres, confiscated from the great estate of the Earl of Desmond, who lived at the castle of Kilcolman, near the town of Doneraile.

Spenser paid for his stolen land by writing a dissertation on the way to conquer and kill off the Irish race, regarding them no more than the wild beasts of the forest. He also flattered Queen Bess by composing a lot of flattering verse, called the "Faerie Queen," and made her believe she was the beautiful, sweet, mild, chaste, angelic individual that had thrilled his imagination in the royal realms of dreamland.

What infernal lies political courtiers, religious ministers and even poets have told to flatter the vanity of governors, presidents, kings, queens, popes and emperors!

Yet in all the grand sentiments Shakspere evolved out of his volcanic brain, he never bent theknee to absolute vice, but pictured the horrors of royalty in its most devilish attitudes. His pen was never purchased against truth.

We remained at Kilcolman Castle with Spenser for about ten days riding and sporting, and then with an escort of soldiers, were piloted through the "Rebel" counties on to Dublin, where the head of O'Neil graced one of the "Red" walls of that unlucky city.

On our route from Cork to Dublin we beheld misery and ruin in every form, burned cabins, churches, monasteries and bridges, and starving women and children on the roadside, crouching under bushes, straw stacks and leaking sheds, with smouldering turf fires crackling on the ashes of despair!

We took shipping the next morning for Liverpool, as William was very anxious to get away from the land of funeral wails, where the cry of the "wake" over some dead peasant or defiant "Rebel" echoed on the air continually.

Where sorrow in her weeping form,Shed tears in sunshine, and in storm,While o'er the land, a reign of bloodWas running like a mountain flood!

As we pushed away from the sight of the Irish hills, Shakspere, leaning against the foremast, in pathetic tone exclaimed:

Farewell, old Erin, land of nameless sorrow,Albion crushes thee for opinion's sake;'Twixt the Bulls of Rome and Laws of EnglandThy children are robbed, banished and murdered.And cast away from native land, like leavesBestrewing forest wilds, bleak and lone.Merged in lands of Liberty, thy childrenShall rise again, a new born glorious race—Triumphant in home, church and State, honored,Masters of War, Wit, Eloquence and Poetry.Move out and move on, like the rising sunWhose face so oft is clouded with shadows,Yet, shall burst forth again in noonday splendor—Irradiating a bleak and cruel world!

"I know a bank where the wild thyme blows;Where ox-lips and the nodding violet grows;Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,With sweet musk roses and the eglantine.""Stony limits cannot hold love out;And what love can do, that dares love attempt."

"I know a bank where the wild thyme blows;Where ox-lips and the nodding violet grows;Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,With sweet musk roses and the eglantine."

"Stony limits cannot hold love out;And what love can do, that dares love attempt."

We remained in Liverpool three days, and then determined to return to London by land, crossing through the inland shires, taking in Manchester, Sheffield, Derby, Birmingham, Coventry, Warwick, and on to Stratford, where clustered the dearest objects of our affection.

We were ten days walking, riding and resting at taverns, in our rural tour of Old Albion. The fields were furrowed for the grain, the birds sang from every hedge and forest domain, the cattle, sheep and swine grazed in lowing, bleating, grunting security along winding streams, public fields or on the velvet meadows of rich yeoman or lordly estates, while the men, women, boys and girls that we encountered seemed to be infused with the delights of May blossoms, forest wild flowers and refreshing showers, all noting the practical prosperity of England.

How different these rural scenes to those we had recently encountered in poor down-trodden Ireland, the Niobe of nations, besprinkled with the tears of centuries for the loss of her crushed and exiled children.

Yet, the world is moving upwardTo the heights where Freedom reigns;Where the sunshine of redemptionShall give joy for all our pains,When the cruel hands of tyrantsShall be banished from the landWith our God the only MasterOf Dame Nature true and grand!

We arrived in sight of Stratford as the sun set over the hills of Arden, and as the pigeons and rooks sought their nests for the night, a golden glow flashed over the evening landscape.

The last rays of Sol shone in dazzling splendor upon the pinnacle of old Trinity Church as we gazed with ravished eyes on the winding, glistening Avon, meandering through emerald meadows and whispering wild flowers to the silvery Severn.

The old tavern was still there, but the old host slept in God's acre near by, while the lads we knew ten years before, had, like ourselves, gone out into the world for fame and fortune.

William sought out his father and mother, and then Anne Hathaway and the children, who still resided at the old Hathaway cottage at Shottery. I remained at the tavern for contemplation.

Time and age mellow the most violent spirits; and the temper of Anne had become modified by family troubles, inducing an inward survey of self, which brings a reasonable person to the realization of the fact that he or she is not the only stubborn oak in the forest of humanity.

A practical stubborn wife and a lofty poet never can assimilate.

Shakspere had no equals or superiors. Shakspere was simply SHAKSPERE.

At home he found a scolding wife,Abroad he felt the joys of life,While all his glory and renownWere reaped at last in London town.He looked for truth in crowds of men,In field, in street, in tavern,And mingled with the moving throngTo hear their story and their song,He pictured life in colors true,As brilliant as the rainbow hue,And all his characters displayThe pride and passion of to-day.He cared not for the crowds of men—As fierce as beasts within a den,And looked alone to Nature's GodDisplayed in heaven, in sea and sod,And held the scales of justice high-Uplifted to the sunlit sky,Weighing the passions of mankindWith lofty and imperial mind.The Puritan and Pope to himWere overflowing to the brimWith bigotry and cruel spleenThat desolated every scene.The midget minds of men in powerHe satirized from hour to hour,And on the stage portrayed the greedOf those who live by crime and creed.He tore the masks from royal browsAnd showed their guilt and broken vows,Exposing to the laughing throngThe horrid face of vice and wrong.In every land and every clime,He honored truth and punctured crime,And down the years his god-like rhymeShall be synonymous with Time!

We remained among relatives and friends in Warwickshire until the middle of September, when we heard that the London plague had abated and the theatrical profession were busy preparing for a winter campaign of dramatic glory. Shakspere had several plays partly or nearly finished, and, as Burbage and Henslowe desired our immediate services, we took our departure from Stratford, with the friendship of the town echoing in our ears.

The flowers and growing fields, the leafy forests and circling and singing birds seemed to say good-bye, good luck and God bless you!

We felt happy and hopeful ourselves, and consequently Dame Nature echoed the feeling of our souls. All was joy, song, feasting and laughter.

William, on our way to Oxford, in one of his original flights taken from an ode of Horace, impulsively exclaimed:

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