Erato:

"Soon they arrived, with Hermes at their side,
By Jove commission'd, as their friend and guide.
But when the mirth-inspiring dames stepp'd o'er
The sacred threshold of _great Shakspeare's door_,
The heav'nly guests, _who came to laugh with me_,
Oppress'd with grief, wept with _Melpomene_;
Bow'd pensive o'er the Bard of Nature's tomb,
Dropt a sad tear, then left me to my doom!"

I leave the reader to judge for himself whether the Muses really "came to
laugh" with Mary Hornby, or whether, under the belief of the immortality of
our Bard, they did not rather expect a pleasant _soiree_ with Gentle Will,
and naturally enough went off in a huff when they found themselves
inveigled into a tea-party at Mrs. Hornby's.

Mr. Wilson, in the work above quoted, does condescend to notice Mrs.
Hornby,--

"Who rented the butcher's shop under the chamber in which the poet was
born, and kept the _Shaksperian Album_, an interesting record of the
visitors to that shrine. Some of the subscribers having given vent to
original stanzas suggested by the scene, those effusions," continues
the lofty bookseller, "_the female in question_ caused to be inscribed
and printed in a small pamphlet, which she sells to strangers."

Not a word, you will see, about the poet's mantle having descended upon the
shoulders of our Mary,--which was unpolite of him, seeing that both the
tragedy and comedy had the precedence of his book by some years. Not having
before me the later history of Shakspeare's house, I am unable to say
whether our subject deserved more consideration and gallant treatment at
the hands of MR. COLLIER, when he and his colleagues came into possession.

J. O.

{475}

* * * * *

Minor Notes.

_Shakspeare's Monument._--When I was a young man, some thirty or forty
years ago, I visited the monument of Shakspeare, in the beautiful church of
Stratford-upon-Avon, and there copied, from the Album which is kept for the
names of visitors, the following lines:

"Stranger! to whom this monument is shown,
Invoke the poet's curse upon Malone!
Whose meddling zeal his barbarous taste displays,
And smears his tombstone, as he marr'd his plays.
R. F.
Oct. 2, 1810."

This has just now been brought to my mind by reading, in page 155. of the
second volume of Moore's Journal, the following account of a conversation
at Bowood: