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This want of knowledge is in part due to his obscure youth, during which
no one could predict what he would afterward achieve, and therefore no one
took notes of his life: to his own apparent ignorance and carelessness of
his own merits, and to the low repute in which plays, and especially
playwrights, were then held; although they were in reality making their
age illustrious in history. The pilgrim to Stratford sees the little low
house in which he is said to have been born, purchased by the nation, and
now restored into a smart cottage: within are a few meagre relics of the
poet's time; not far distant is the foundation--recently uncovered--of his
more ambitious residence in New Place, and a mulberry-tree, which probably
grew from a slip of that which he had planted with his own hand. Opposite
is the old Falcon Inn, where he made his daily potations. Very near rises,
above elms and lime-trees, the spire of the beautiful church on the bank
of the Avon, beneath the chancel of which his remains repose, with those
of his wife and daughter, overlooked by his bust, of which no one knows
the maker or the history, except that it dates from his own time.
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