The county of Warwick was called the heart of England as long ago as the time of Shakespeare. Indeed, it was his friend, Michael Drayton, born the year before himself, who first called it so. In his _Poly-Olbion_ (1613) Drayton refers to his native county as "That shire which we the heart of England well may call." The form of the expression seems to imply that it was original with him. It was doubtless suggested by the central situation of the county, about equidistant from the eastern, western, and southern shores of the island; but it is no less appropriate with reference to its historical, romantic, and poetical associations. Drayton, whose rhymed geography in the _Poly-Olbion_ is rather prosaic and tedious, attains a kind of genuine inspiration when, in his 13th book, he comes to describe "Brave Warwick that abroad so long advanced her Bear, By her illustrious Earls renowned everywhere; Above her neighboring shires which always bore her head." The verse catches something of the music of the throstle and the lark, of the woosel "with golden bill" and the nightingale with her tender strains, as he tells of these Warwickshire birds, and of the region with "flowery bosom brave" where they breed and warble; but in Shakespeare the same birds sing with a finer music--more like that to which we may still listen in the fields and woodlands along the lazy-winding Avon. WARWICK CASTLE AND SAINT MARY'S CHURCH. Warwickshire is the heart of England, and the country within ten miles or so of the town of Warwick may be called the heart of this heart. On one side of this circle are Stratford and Shottery and Wilmcote--the home of Shakespeare's mother--and on the other are Kenilworth and Coventry. In Warwick itself is the famous castle of its Earls--"that fairest monument," as Scott calls it, "of ancient and chivalrous splendor which yet remains uninjured by time." The earlier description written by the veracious Dugdale almost two hundred and fifty years ago might be applied to it to-day. It is still "not only a place of great strength, but extraordinary delight; with most pleasant gardens, walls, and thickets such as this part of England can hardly parallel; so that now it is the most princely seat that is within the midland parts of this realm." [Illustration: WARWICK CASTLE] The castle was old in Shakespeare's day. Cæsar's Tower, so called, though not built, as tradition alleged, by the mighty Julius, dated back to an unknown period; and Guy's Tower, named in honor of the redoubted Guy of Warwick, the hero of many legendary exploits, was built in 1394. No doubt the general appearance of the buildings was more ancient in the sixteenth century than it is to-day, for they had been allowed to become somewhat dilapidated; and it was not until the reign of James I. that they were repaired and embellished, at enormous expense, and made the stately fortress and mansion that Dugdale describes.