English Pictures Drawn with Pen and PencilManning, Samuel
History
English Pictures Drawn with Pen and Pencil
Manning, Samuel
England -- Description and travel
It is to be regretted that this inscription has been effaced, to make
room for the epitaph of some obscure descendant. That to Shakespere's
widow, the wife of his youth, Anne Hathaway however remains placed over
Her grave by her son; there is something in it pathetically and nobly
Christian. It is in Latin, and may be rendered freely: "My mother: thou
gavest me milk and life: alas, for me, that I can but repay thee with a
sepulchre! Would that some good angel might roll the stone away, and
thy form come forth in the Saviour's likeness! But my prayers avail not.
Come quickly, O Christ! then shall my mother, though enclosed in the
tomb, arise and mount to heaven!"
Before leaving the church we may note some monuments worth attention,
at least in any other place; as well as a stained glass window, not yet
complete, but intended to illustrate from Scripture Shakspere's Seven
Ages of Man. Moses the infant, Jacob the lover, Deborah the Judge, and
one or two other representations are finished, but the observer feels
that the types of character are not Shakspere's.
The day's explorations are not yet over. The epitaph on Anne Hathaway's
tomb, if nothing else, has quickened our desire to know something more
of her surroundings in those days when Shakspere won and wooed her in
her rustic home. Retracing our steps through the town, we are directed
to a field-path bearing straight for Shottery, a village but a mile
distant. It is not difficult to picture the youthful lover, perhaps,
out here in the fair open country, among the wild flowers which line the
walk, and which he has so well described, for there are few traditions
of Stratford-upon-Avon better authenticated than that which represents
this as Shakspere's walk in the clays when he "went courting." The
village is a straggling one, with a look of comfort about its farmsteads
and cottages; and, at the furthest extremity from Stratford, in a
pleasant dell, opposite a willow-shaded stream, we find the cottage,
not much altered, it may be, in externals, since the poet, then a lad of
eighteen, there found his bride. The capacious chimney-corner, where
no doubt the lovers sat, is genuine; and other antique relics, from a
carved bed to an old Bible, carry the mind back, at least, to the era
of the poet; while the garden and orchard, with the well of pure spring
water, must be much as Shakspere saw them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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