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 man's thoughts.

We have seen our Poet springing from what may be justly termed the
best vein of old English life. At the time of his birth, his parents,
considering the purchases previously made by the father, and the
portion inherited by the mother, must have been tolerably well off.
Malone, reckoning only the bequests specified in her father's will,
estimated Mary Shakespeare's fortune to be not less than £110. Later
researches have brought to light considerable items of property that
were unknown to Malone. Supposing her fortune to have been as good as
£150 then, it would go nearly if not quite, as far as $5000 in our
time. So that the Poet passed his boyhood in just about that medium
state between poverty and riches which is accounted most favourable to
health of body and mind.

At the time when his father became High-Bailiff the Poet was in his
fifth year; old enough to understand something of what would be said
and done in the home of an English magistrate, and to take more or