It is impossible to dismiss Shakespeare without some notice of the man himself. But how little is known apart from his works![107] Go to Stratford-on-Avon, visit ‘the birthplace;’ bear those good ladies who show it tell you of the eight villages immortalised by their supposed connection with the poet; hear them repeat the lines ascribed by tradition to Shakespeare himself:-- Piping Pebworth, dancing Marston, Haunted Hillborough, hungry Grafton, Dudging Exhall, Popish Wickford, Beggarly Broom, and drunken Bidford. Hear them tell the story of Shakespeare’s crab-tree, how that the young poet was one of a party who accepted a challenge for a drinking bout from certain topers at Bidford, how that the hero became so overcome that when he started home he could proceed no further than the crab-tree, and so lay down there and sheltered for the night.[108] Hear, too, of ‘ye Falcon Tavern,’ close to the grammar school where the poet was almost certainly educated. And this is all that the present limit allows. How died he? We turn to the pages of an inimitable diary, and read thus: After this act (referring to the making of his will) we surmise the poet’s strength rallied, his friends probably heard of his illness, and crowded around him.... Then came Ben Jonson and Drayton, his chosen ones--they shared his inmost heart. In the city, on the stage, at good men’s feasts.... Their minds had been as one. Shakespeare was sick, and they came to cheer, to sooth, to sympathize with his sufferings. Animated and excited by their long-tried and much-loved society, as the sound of the trumpet rouses the spirit of the dying war-horse, their presence and voices made him forget the weakness that even then was bowing him to the very dust. He left his chamber, and perhaps quitted his bed to join the circle; we think we hear him, with musical voice, exclaim, ‘Sick now! droop now!’ We imagine we behold his pale face flushed with the brilliant animation of happiness, but not of health. We see his eyes flashing with the rays of genius, and sparkling with sentiments of unmingled pleasure. He is himself again, the terrors of death are passed away, the festive banquet is spread, and the warm grasp of friendly hands have driven the thick coming fancies from his lightened heart; he is the life of the party, the spirit of the feasts; but the exertion was far too great for his fragile frame, ‘the choice of death is rare,’ and the destroyer quitted not his splendid victim.[109] So passed away William Shakespeare, whose influence cannot be better summed up than in the words of a very thoughtful writer:--