g Dr. Furnivall's text, his excellent and generally
exhaustive notes have been inserted. As for my own follies, sprinkled here
and there, they are as occasional relief for frivolous readers from the
classical height of Harrison and the scholarly depth of the Doctor. There
was no particular sacrilege in rearranging Harrison's fragments in a new
and compact fashion; for he varied his two editions in evident
indifference. It has had to be cut to measure, and the difficulty has been
to make a new garment out of odd cuttings. Suffice to say, well or ill
jointed, the story here told plucks the heart out of the mystery of the
cradle of the English race at the exact period of Shakspere's youthful
manhood. But this story no more than Shakspere's own work is the exclusive
property of the residents of one particular spot. England is not merely a
matter of political arrangement. Race after race have swept over the
island home and left lasting impression upon the soil. England is not a
matter of bounds and barriers; it is a human fabric like Rome and Greece,
living in distant climes, an inheritance of all who speak the English
tongue and inherit the boundless treasures of English thought, far
surpassing the known accomplishment of any other people. By far the
greater portion of these treasures of the mind were worked out in the
England of Harrison. It was the outcome of a young giant's strength. The
full realisation of the earth's existence, the full grasp of man's true
relation to the footstool beneath him, produced this startling activity of
mind, and this sudden leap to perfection. Such another epoch will never
occur until we poor crawling mites on this rolling ball discover the
socket it rolls in and once again feel ourselves masters of all knowledge
and devoid of all doubts.

L. W.

HARRISON'S PREFACE.

To the Right Honourable, and his singular good Lord and Master, Sir
William Brooke, Knight, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, and Baron of
Cobham, all increase of the fear and knowledge of God, firm obedience
towards his Prince, infallible love to the commonwealth, and commendable
renown here in this world, and in the world to come life everlasting.

Having had just occasion, Right Honourable, to remain in London during the
time of Trinity term last passed, and being earnestly required of divers
my friends to set down some brief discourse of parcel of those things
which I had observed in the reading of such manifold an