The inventory of Robert Arden's goods, which was taken shortly after his death in 1556, enables us to realize the kind of life that was followed by the poet's mother during her girlhood. In the total absence of books or means of intellectual education, her acquirements must have been restricted to an experimental knowledge of matters connected with the farm and its house. There can be no doubt that the maiden with the pretty name, she who has been so often represented as a nymph of the forest, communing with nothing less æsthetic than a nightingale or a waterfall, spent most of her time in the homeliest of rustic employments; and it is not at all improbable that, in common with many other farmers' daughters of the period, she occasionally assisted in the more robust occupations of the field. It is at all events not very likely that a woman, unendowed with an exceptionally healthy and vigorous frame, could have been the parent of a Shakespeare. Of her personal character or social gifts nothing whatever is known, but it would be a grave error to assume that the rude surroundings of her youth were incompatible with the possession of a romantic temperament and the highest form of subjective refinement. Existence, indeed, was passed in her father's house in some respects, we should now say, rather after the manner of pigs than that of human beings. Many of the articles that are considered necessaries in the humblest of modern cottages were not to be seen, there were no table-knives, no forks, no crockery. The food was manipulated on flat pieces of stout wood, too insignificant in value to be catalogued, and whatever there may have been to supply the places of spoons or cups were no doubt roughly formed of the same material; but some of the larger objects, such as kitchen-pans, may have been of

pewter or latten. The means of ablution were lamentably defective, if, indeed, they were not limited to what could have been supplied by an insulated pail of water, for what were called towels were merely used for wiping the hands after a meal, and there was not a single wash-hand basin in the establishment. As for the inmate and other laborers, it was very seldom indeed, if ever, that they either washed their hands or combed their hair, nor is there the least reason for suspecting that those accomplishments were in liberal requisition in the dwellings of their employers. But surely there was nothing in all this to have excluded the unlettered damsel from a fervid taste for oral romance, that which was then chiefly represented by tales of the fairies, the knights, or the giants,-nothing to debar the high probability of her recitals of them having fascinated her illustrious son in the days of his childhood,-nothing to disturb the graceful suggestion that some of his impressions of perfect womanhood had their origin in his recollections of the faultless nature of the matron of Henley Street.

The maiden name of Robert Arden's wife has not been discovered, but it is ascertained that he had contracted a second marriage with Agnes Hill, the widow of a substantial farmer of Bearley, and that, in a settlement which was probably made on that occasion, he had reserved to his daughter Mary the reversion to a portion of a large estate at Snitterfield, her step-mother taking only a life-interest. Some part of this land was in the occupation of Richard Shakespeare, the poet's grandfather, whence may have arisen the acquaintanceship between the two families. In addition to this reversion, Mary Arden received, under the provisions of her father's will, not only a handsome pe

cuniary legacy, but the fee-simple of a valuable property at Wilmecote, the latter, which was known as Asbies, consisting of a house with nearly sixty acres of land. An estimate of these advantages, viewed relatively to his own position, would no doubt have given John Shakespeare the reputation among his neighbors of having married an opulent heiress, his now comparative affluence investing him with no small degree of local importance. His official career at once commenced by his election in 1557 as one of the ale-tasters, an officer appointed for the supervision of malt liquors and bread. About the same time he was received into the Corporation, taking the lowest rank, as was usual with new comers, that of a burgess; and in the September of the following year, 1558, he was appointed one of the four petty constables by a vote of the jury of the Court Leet. He was re-elected to that quaternion on October 6, 1559, for another year, and on the same day he was chosen one of the affeerors appointed to determine the fines for those offenses which were punishable arbitrarily, and for which no express penalties were prescribed by statute. This latter office he again filled in 1561, when he was elected one of the Chamberlains of the borough, an office that he held for two years, delivering his second account to the Corporation in the first month of 1564.

The ostensible business followed by John Shakespeare was that of a glover, but after his marriage he speculated largely in wool purchased from the neighboring farmers, and occasionally also dealt in corn and other articles. In those days, especially in small provincial towns, the concentration of several trades into the hands of one person was very usual, and, in many cases, no matter how numerous and complicated were the intermediate processes, the

producer of the raw material was frequently its manufacturer. Thus a glover might, and sometimes did, rear the sheep that furnished him with meat, skins, wool, and leather. Whether John Shakespeare so conducted his business is unknown, but it is certain that in addition to his trade in gloves, which also, as was usual, included the sale of divers articles made of leather, he entered into a variety of other speculations.

In Henley Street, in what was for those days an unusually large and commodious residence for a provincial tradesman, and upon or almost immediately before April 22, 1564, but most probably on that Saturday, the eldest son of John and Mary Shakespeare, he who was afterwards to be the national poet of England, was born. An apartment on the first floor of that house is shown to this day, through unvarying tradition, as the birth-room of the great dramatist, who was baptized on the following Wednesday, April 26, receiving the Christian name of William. He was then, and continued to be for more than two years, an only child, two girls, daughters of the same parents, who were born previously, having died in their infancy.

The house in which Shakespeare was born must have been erected in the first half of the sixteenth century, but the alterations that it has since undergone have effaced much of its original character. Inhabited at various periods by tradesmen of different occupations, it could not possibly have endured through the long course of upwards of three centuries without having been subjected to numerous repairs and modifications. The general form and arrangement of the tenement that was purchased in 1556 may yet, however, be distinctly traced, and many of the old timbers, as well as pieces of the ancient rough

stone-work, still remain. There are also portions of the chimneys, the fire-place surroundings and the stone basement-floor, that have been untouched; but most, if not all, of the lighter wood-work belongs to a more recent period. It may be confidently asserted that there is only one room in the entire building which has not been greatly changed since the days of the poet's boyhood. This is the antique cellar under the sitting-room, from which it is approached by a diminutive flight of steps. It is a very small apartment, measuring only nine by ten feet, but near "that small most greatly liv'd this star of England."

In the July of this year of the poet's birth, 1564, a violent plague, intensified no doubt by sanitary neglect, broke out in the town, but the family in Henley Street providentially escaped its ravages. John Shakespeare contributed on this occasion fairly, at least, if not liberally, both towards the relief of the poor and of those who were attacked by the epidemic.

In March, 1565, John Shakespeare, with the assistance of his former colleague in the same office, made up the accounts of the Chamberlains of the borough for the year ending at the previous Michaelmas. Neither of these worthies could even write their own names, but nearly all tradesmen then reckoned with counters, the results on important occasions being entered by professional scriveners. The poet's father seems to have been an adept in the former kind of work, for in February, 1566, having been elected an alderman in the previous summer, he individually superintended the making up of the accounts of the Chamberlains for the preceding official year, at which time he was paid over three pounds, equivalent to more than thirty of present money, that had been owing to him for some