imagination and amuse the fancy, yet it cannot be denied that the gradual advancement of society from barbarism, rudeness and confusion is due mainly to the art of the poet and the professors of it. Poetry is the first of the finer arts into which uncivilised nations deviate, and the veneration in which they held their bards and minstrels proves the influence they had over their hearts. Orpheus and Amphion, well known in classical legend, were the civilisers of their native countries, who united their countrymen in the bonds of society, softening their uncouth manners and sentiments by the power of their strains.

The poet, then, Orpheus-like, cannot actually communicate his art, but he may soften rugged natures into sympathy. He cannot teach the expression of harmony, but he may awaken the perception of it. And the mind so awakened will find

and

"

Tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything,"

See in every hedgerow
Marks of angels' feet,
Epics in each pebble
Underneath his feet."

Poetry will prove a talisman or key to the " Palace of Delight," revealing its hidden treasures, and the nature thereof, until " a primrose by a river's brim” will become grand, beautiful, wonderful, sublime, which, until perception, was simply a yellow primrose and it was nothing more."

"The soul of poesy still lives! still breathes
Its melodies to gentle hearts, and wreathes
For them its fairy flowers; still hath its spell
The power to wake the lovely things that dwell,
Unseen, around us in the mystic air,
Yea, even as Music liveth ever there!
Though silent oft the spirit-voice must be,
Till, with a trembling hand, man sets it free;
By genius, almost divinely, taught

To vocalise his heart's unworded thought."

Poetry is embodied in the name of Shakespeare, but the biography of his life is a life's study, and I have neither time nor space in this volume, nor inclination, nor even learning to add aught to conjectures made by the learned on the poet's life-history, but I have given so much of his poetry, that it will show "he led a life of allegory; his works are the comments on it"; and, in the words of William Hazlitt, I have preferred to try" to know the force of human genius by reading Shakespeare, and to see the insignificance of human learning by studying his commentators." "Shakespeare," writes W. S. Landor, "is not our poet, but the world's. Therefore on him no speech!" Strongest minds are often those of whom we know the least, hence little is known of him, as was the case with Homer and others. He was born at Stratford, 1564. Married Ann Hathaway, 1582. Retired to Stratford, where at New Place he wrote his Tempest, perhaps the most beautiful of his plays. Died in 1616, and the flattering words on his monument the centuries have not yet reversed. Born: Married: Died:

such is the epitaph of most of the sons of men, and to supply the hiatus between these events would be difficult in the case of most. Shakespeare's dates, however, refuse to be dry, for it has been observed that his birth and death day happened on St George's Day 23rd April—the former in 1564 and the latter in 1616. His birth year was in the reign of Elizabeth, the last of the Tudors; his death year in the reign of the first of the Stuarts.

The Shakespearean extracts will be ushered into the presence of my readers by a poet who was, at the time the verses were written, perhaps the youngest who ever wrote a line in praise of Shakespeare. This poem, to a cultured mind, will recall the language and delicacy of some of the Elizabethans. It shows a reverential attitude towards OUR NATIONAL POET, and this attitude must be taken by all Shakespeare's lovers and friends! Mr Orde Ward-the "Poet Laureate of Sussex "-sings of Shakespeare's Art.

The frontispiece to this volume seems to demand a line or two of explanation. It is here produced by the courtesy of the Art Gallery Committee of the Manchester Corporation, and is their copyright. The portraits of Shakespeare are all too inferior as works of art to give any conception of what manner of man he was. Poets have in their imaginative mood painted him," with pointed beard," passing "by London Bridge-his frequent way," or when at the Mermaid, "reclining easeful in his leathern chair, in russet doublet, bearded and benign," sitting apart, weaving-who knows?-what wondrous woof of song, what other Hamlet from the shifting throng."

His "pale-plain-favoured face, the smile whereof is beautiful; the eyes, grey, changeful, bright, lowlidded now, and luminous as love; anon soul searching, ominous as night, seer-like, inscrutable, revealing deeps wherein a mighty spirit wakes or sleeps."

None of the portraits supposed to be his answer to the conceptions of him in any degree, with the exception of the bust in Stratford Church. The Droeshout, supposed to be the original of the plate engraved for the First Folio, is, of course, interesting, but a poor performance as a work of art. The Stratford portrait, framed in the wood once forming part of the structure of Shakespeare's house, is little better. The Chandos-so named from its former owner, the Duke of Chandos-differing from the two others in being the representation of an "amiable person," earringed!

It was left to Ford Madox Brown to supply a portrait of our national poet from the study of the traits in which the best-vouched portraits agree, as also those which seemed to be most likely true to fact. The picture was painted in 1850.

There is a caustic saying of Dr Parr's on record, that Warwickshire produced Shakespeare and became effete. I trust that this volume will, in the opinion of readers and critics, prove the fallacy of this remark of the almost forgotten learned eccentric of the eighteenth century. One of the poets of this shire certainly had his revenge in sketching his foibles, as can be read at page 185. Michael Drayton, Sir Fulke Greville, John Marston,

Sir Thomas Overbury, the Earl of Bristol, Sir Henry Goodyer, the two Landors, Lord Leigh, C. J. Feilding, Charles Lloyd, George Eliot, together with the sweet singers of our own days who are happily with us, prove that the " Spirit of Poesy" is not either effete or dead in Warwickshire. Its charm has even drawn many poets of other shires to dwell within its confines and accord it their praise, notably Joseph Addison, T. Warton, and, at the present day, Mr Norman Gale, a native of Surrey. The latter's praise of Warwickshire is that of a true devotee, and in its lanes he dreams of the presence of Shakespeare, and in listening to the songs of its birds he feels that

"The bough

Is bending with immortals now,
And gods go large in Warwickshire !"

Laurence Hart, who was born in Staffordshire but lived much in Warwickshire, shows a poetic spirit of lasting affection when he exclaims, in his beautiful little poem to Birdingbury:

"Dear spot! Remembrance holds thee yet,
So warm and close, thy pencilled name,
Floods all my thoughts, desire, and aim,
As with a rain of wild regret;

I should but give my love to shame,
Could I forget."

Any editor of anthological works must, while endeavouring to gratify the various tastes of his