Stratford Bridge. That (flood) drowned three furlongs of corn in Thetford field. It was so high at the height that it unthatched the mill, and stocked up a number of willows and salles, and did take away one (of) Sales's daughters of Grafton, out of Hilborrow meadow, removing of the hay-cock, that she had no shift but to get upon the top of a hay-cock, and was carried thereupon by the water a quarter of a mile well nigh, till she came to the very last bank of the stream, and there was taken into a boat, and all was liked to be drowned, but that another boat coming rescued them soon. Three men going over Stratfordbridge, when they came to the middle of the bridge they could not go forward, and then returning presently, could not get back, for the water was so risen, it rose a yard every hour from eight to foure, that it came into the parsonage of Welford Orchard, and filled his fish-poole, and took away the sign-post at the Bare; it carried away Edward Butler's carte, and which was soon beneath Bidford, and it came into the vicarage of Weston, and made Adam Sandars thence remove, and took away half a hundred pounds of hay."

I would beg the reader to remark at the commencement of the extract the beautiful expression of Avon, without the personal article, as if the river were a friend, and not an inanimate object, a mode of speaking still in use among

the peasantry. The account of the poor miller's wife not knowing her own child, when it was brought, is very touching; and the whole shows that life in the sixteenth century was much the same in respect to its joys and sorrows as life is now. I hardly like to hazard a conjecture on a subject about which the best commentators cannot agree; but perhaps the date of this flood may help to fix the date of the Midsummer Night's Dream, and that when Shakspere wrote,

The winds, piping to us in vain,
As in revenge, have suck'd up from the sea
Contagious fogs; which falling in the land,
Have every pelting river made so proud,
That they have overborne their continents:
The ox has therefore stretch'd his yoke in vain,
The ploughman lost his sweat; and the green corn
Hath rotted, ere his youth attained a beard :

The fold stands empty in the drowned field:

The crows are fatted with the murrain flock.

He may have had this flood and its disastrous conse

quences in his mind. The Midsummer Night's Dream, though not amongst the earliest series of Shakspere's plays, is, from the internal evidence of style, an early work, and the first draft of it may have been produced soon after 1588, when Shakspere would be in his twenty-fifth year.

I SUPPOSE there is no one who does not know the story that Shakspere having gone over to Bidford, on a drinking bout, was overcome with the Bidford ale, and spent the night on his road home under a crab-tree, and in the

morning, being asked to renew the contest, refused, saying

that he had drunk with

Piping Pebworth, Dancing Marston,

Haunted Hillborough, and hungry Grafton;

With dodging Exhall, Papist Wixford,
Beggarly Broom, and drunken Bidford.

I suppose the story, with different variations, will be told wherever Shakspere's name is mentioned. We hear so little about him authentic, that we make up for it by believing in the silliest tradition. It may, or may not, have been true. Drinking bouts or contests were very frequent in those days, and there is no reason for supposing that Shakspere, when a young man, should have been proof against their temptations. I dare even say that Shakspere, as Anthony Wood quaintly says of Skelton, "was guilty of certain crimes as most poets are." But to suppose that Shakspere was a drunkard is an absurdity self-refuted. It is like that other foolish tradition handed down on the authority of the good gossiping old vicar of Stratford, the Rev. John Ward, that Shakspere died from a fever contracted by drinking. The shallower the theory the deeper it impresses itself on men's minds. No doubt, Shakspere, as we all do, fell into temptation. Life is, after all, a lesson, taught us by our mistakes; but it is from rising after every fall, and not grovelling on the ground, that we learn wisdom.

Since these doggerel lines are so interwoven with Shakspere's name, we may as well go to the places mentioned. And we will go in the autumn, that we may then have seen the country in each season of the year. The places all lie so scattered, that we cannot take them in the order given in the lines.

We will begin with Dancing Marston, or Marston sicca, a long straggling village, about two miles from Welford, where we stopped at in the last chapter. The lines have at least the charm of truth about them, for, to this day, Marston is celebrated for dancing, and I believe that even now, a band of morris-dancers, with their proper costumes, could be collected in the place. But Marston is known for other things beside dancing. Here Charles the Second, after the battle of Worcester, took refuge, at the Manor House of the Tomes', in whose family it still remains, and where the well-known incident of his turning the jack took place. The jack may to this day be seen, and the village tradition will tell you, how "the king fled into the kitchen, hard pursued by the Parliamentary soldiers, and the loyal kitchen-maid, to save his life, set him to turn the jack. The soldiers broke in after him. The King in his fright looked round; but the loyal maiden, still faithful, hit him on the back with the basting-ladle, adding, Now, go on; and mind your work.'"

The