ressed in her life and manners could not
but be caught and repeated in his susceptive and fertile mind. He must
have grown familiar with the noblest parts of womanhood somewhere; and
I can scarce conceive how he should have learned them so well, but
that the light and glory of them beamed upon him from his mother. At
the time of her death, the Poet was in his forty-fifth year, and had
already produced those mighty works which were to fill the world with
his fame. For some years she must in all likelihood have been more or
less under his care and protection; as her age, at the time of her
death, could not well have been less than seventy.

And here I am minded to notice a point which, it seems to me, has been
somewhat overworked within the last few years. Gervinus, the German
critic, thinks--and our Mr. White agrees with him--that Shakespeare
acquired all his best ideas of womanhood after he went to London, and
conversed with the ladies of the city. And in support of this notion
they cite the fact--for such it is--that the women of his later plays
are much superior to those of his earlier ones. But are not the _men_
of his later plays quite as much superior to the men of his first? Are
not his later plays as much better _every way_, as in respect of the
female characters? The truth seems to be, that Shakespeare saw more of
great and good in both man and woman, as he became older and knew
them better; for he was full of intellectual righteousness in this as
in other things. And in this matter it may with something of special
fitness be said that a man finds what he brings with him the faculty
for finding. Shakespeare's mind did not stay on the surface of things.
Probably there never was a man more alive to the presence of humble,
modest worth. And to his keen yet kindly eye the plain-thoughted women
of his native Stratford may well have been as pure, as sweet, as
lovely, as rich in all the inward graces which he delighted to unfold
in his female characters, as any thing he afterwards found among the
fine ladies of the metropolis; albeit I mean no disparagement to these
latter; for the Poet was by the best of all rights a gentleman, and
the ladies who pleased him in London doubtless had sense and womanhood
enough to recognize him as such. At all events, it is reasonable to
suppose that the foundations of his mind were laid before he left
Stratford, and that the gatherings of the boy's eye and heart were the
germs of the ma