1886.]
When Shakspere was a Boy.
489
Boys fishing in the Avon—opposite the weir-brake.
“to see the fish
Cut with her golden oars the silver stream,
And greedily devour the treacherous bait”[1]
Cut with her golden oars the silver stream,
And greedily devour the treacherous bait”[1]
Then who can doubt that he often watched the hunting of the hare? Each line in his wonderful description of the hunted hare is written by a thorough sportsman and a keen observer of nature. How the purblind hare runs among a flock of sheep or into a rabbit-warren, or “sorteth with a herd of deer” to throw out “the hot scent-snuffing hounds.” How they pause silent till they have worked “with much ado the cold fault cleanly out,” and then burst into music again.
Of deer, Shakspere knew much—too much for his own comfort. In his childhood, there were herds at Fulbrooke,—and when he was older, at Charlecote, at Grove Park, and at Warwick. And probably there were a few roe in the wilder parts of the Forest of Arden, which came down within three miles of Stratford, and covered the whole of