I had to go into Exeter yesterday. I got there about sunset,

transacted my business, and turned to walk home again through the
warm twilight. In Southernhay, as I was passing a house of which

the ground-floor windows stood open, there sounded the notes of a
piano--chords touched by a skilful hand. I checked my step, hoping,

and in a minute or two the musician began to play that nocturne of
Chopin which I love best--I don't know how to name it. My heart

leapt. There I stood in the thickening dusk, the glorious sounds
floating about me; and I trembled with very ecstasy of enjoyment.

When silence came, I waited in the hope of another piece, but
nothing followed, and so I went my way.

It is well for me that I cannot hear music when I will; assuredly I
should not have such intense pleasure as comes to me now and then by

haphazard. As I walked on, forgetting all about the distance, and
reaching home before I knew I was half way there, I felt gratitude

to my unknown benefactor--a state of mind I have often experienced
in the days long gone by. It happened at times--not in my barest

days, but in those of decent poverty--that some one in the house
where I lodged played the piano--and how it rejoiced me when this

came to pass! I say "played the piano"--a phrase that covers much.
For my own part, I was very tolerant; anything that could by the

largest interpretation be called music, I welcomed and was thankful;
for even "five-finger exercises" I found, at moments, better than

nothing. For it was when I was labouring at my desk that the notes
of the instrument were grateful and helpful to me. Some men, I

believe, would have been drivenfrantic under the circumstances; to
me, anything like a musical sound always came as a godsend; it tuned

my thoughts; it made the words flow. Even the street organs put me
in a happy mood; I owe many a page to them--written when I should

else have been sunk in bilious gloom.
More than once, too, when I was walking London streets by night,

penniless and miserable, music from an open window has stayed my
step, even as yesterday. Very well can I remember such a moment in

Eaton Square, one night when I was going back to Chelsea, tired,
hungry, racked by frustrate passions. I had tramped miles and

miles, in the hope of wearying myself so that I could sleep and
forget. Then came the piano notes--I saw that there was festival in

the house--and for an hour or so I revelled as none of the bidden
guests could possibly be doing. And when I reached my poor

lodgings, I was no longer envious nor mad with desires, but as I
fell asleep I thanked the unknown mortal who had played for me, and

given me peace.
XXVII

To-day I have read The Tempest. It is perhaps the play that I love
best, and, because I seem to myself to know it so well, I commonly

pass it over in opening the book. Yet, as always in regard to
Shakespeare, having read it once more, I find that my knowledge was

less complete than I supposed. So it would be, live as long as one
might; so it would ever be, whilst one had strength to turn the

pages and a mind left to read them.
I like to believe that this was the poet's last work, that he wrote

it in his home at Stratford, walking day by day in the fields which
had taught his boyhood to love rural England. It is ripe fruit of

the supremeimagination, perfect craft of the master hand. For a
man whose life's business it has been to study the English tongue,

what joy can equal that of marking the happy ease wherewith
Shakespeare surpasses, in mere command of words, every achievement

of those even who, apart from him, are great? I could fancy that,
in The Tempest, he wrought with a peculiarconsciousness of this

power, smiling as the word of inimitable felicity, the phrase of
incomparable cadence, was whispered to him by the Ariel that was his

genius. He seems to sport with language, to amuse himself with new
discovery of its resources. From king to beggar, men of every rank

and every order of mind have spoken with his lips; he has uttered
the lore of fairyland; now it pleases him to create a being neither

man nor fairy, a something between brute and human nature, and to
endow its purposes with words. These words, how they smack of the

moist and spawning earth, of the life of creatures that cannot rise
above the soil! We do not think of it enough; we stint our wonder

because we fall short in appreciation. A miracle is worked before
us, and we scarce give heed; it has become familiar to our minds as

any other of nature's marvels, which we rarely pause to reflect
upon.

The Tempest contains the noblest meditative passage in all the
plays; that which embodies Shakespeare's final view of life, and is

the inevitablequotation of all who would sum the teachings of
philosophy. It contains his most exquisite lyrics, his tenderest

love passages, and one glimpse of fairyland which--I cannot but
think--outshines the utmost beauty of A Midsummer Night's Dream:

Prospero's farewell to the "elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes,
and groves." Again a miracle; these are things which cannot be

staled by repetition. Come to them often as you will, they are ever
fresh as though new minted from the brain of the poet. Being

perfect, they can never droop under that satiety which arises from
the perception of fault; their virtue can never be so entirely

savoured as to leave no pungency of gusto for the next approach.
Among the many reasons which make me glad to have been born in

England, one of the first is that I read Shakespeare in my mother
tongue. If I try to imagine myself as one who cannot know him face

to face, who hears him only speaking from afar, and that in accents
which only through the labouring intelligence can touch the living

soul, there comes upon me a sense of chill discouragement, of dreary
deprivation. I am wont to think that I can read Homer, and,

assuredly, if any man enjoys him, it is I; but can I for a moment
dream that Homer yields me all his music, that his word is to me as

to him who walked by the Hellenic shore when Hellas lived? I know
that there reaches me across the vast of time no more than a faint

and broken echo; I know that it would be fainter still, but for its
blending with those memories of youth which are as a glimmer of the

world's primeval glory. Let every land have joy of its poet; for
the poet is the land itself, all its greatness and its sweetness,

all that incommunicable heritage for which men live and die. As I
close the book, love and reverence possess me. Whether does my full

heart turn to the great Enchanter, or to the Island upon which he
has laid his spell? I know not. I cannot think of them apart. In

the love and reverenceawakened by that voice of voices, Shakespeare
and England are but one.

AUTUMN
I

This has been a year of long sunshine. Month has followed upon
month with little unkindness of the sky; I scarcely marked when July

passed into August, August into September. I should think it summer
still, but that I see the lanes yellow-purfled with flowers of

autumn.
I am busy with the hawkweeds; that is to say, I am learning to

distinguish and to name as many as I can. For scientific
classification I have little mind; it does not happen to fall in

with my habits of thought; but I like to be able to give its name
(the "trivial" by choice) to every flower I meet in my walks. Why

should I be content to say, "Oh, it's a hawkweed"? That is but one
degree less ungracious than if I dismissed all the yellow-rayed as

"dandelions." I feel as if the flower were pleased by my
recognition of its personality. Seeing how much I owe them, one and

all, the least I can do is to greet them severally. For the same
reason I had rather say "hawkweed" than "hieracium"; the homelier

word has more of kindly friendship.
II

How the mood for a book sometimes rushes upon one, either one knows
not why, or in consequence, perhaps, of some most trifling

suggestion. Yesterday I was walking at dusk. I came to an old
farmhouse; at the garden gate a vehicle stood waiting, and I saw it

was our doctor's gig. Having passed, I turned to look back. There
was a faint afterglow in the sky beyond the chimneys; a light

twinkled at one of the upper windows. I said to myself, "Tristram