An ancient clock, that important article of cottage
furniture, ticked on the opposite side of the room; with a bright
warming-pan hanging on one side of it, and the old man's
horn-handled Sunday cane on the other. The fireplace, as usual, was
wide and deep enough to admit a gossip knot within its jambs. In one
corner sat the old man's granddaughter sewing, a pretty blue-eyed
girl,- and in the opposite corner was a superannuated crony, whom he
addressed by the name of John Ange, and who, I found, had been his
companion from childhood. They had played together in infancy; they
had worked together in manhood; they were now tottering about and
gossiping away the evening of life; and in a short time they will
probably be buried together in the neighboring church-yard. It is
not often that we see two streams of existence running thus evenly and
tranquilly side by side; it is only in such quiet "bosom scenes" of
life that they are to be met with.
I had hoped to gather some traditionary anecdotes of the bard from
these ancient chroniclers; but they had nothing new to impart. The
long interval during which Shakspeare's writings lay in comparative
neglect has spread its shadow over his history; and it is his good
or evil lot that scarcely any thing remains to his biographers but a
scanty handful of conjectures.
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