vicar as to the critic, it must have been a labour of love. He replied to innumerable questions requiring laborious and tedious investigations in a spirit of zeal and good humour, which to the end won the gratitude and friendship of his correspondent.[1]
The latter, at the end of a long letter, and in remembrance of the scene where the mulberry-tree stood, warms to the theme, drops the cold pen of criticism, and seizes upon the lyre to propitiate the owner.—
In giving an account of Mr. Hunt’s garden, I could not help breaking out into a poetical rhapsody, which may perhaps render him more propitious to my inquiries. I fear these lines are entitled to the reverse of Ovid’s description, Materiam superabat opus. However, such as they are, let them make some small amends for this very tedious letter. I wish them not to wander out before my “books” which will not be ready for some months.[2]
With matchless skill surveyed all human kind.
Here let each sweet that blest Arabia knows,
‘Flowers of all hues, and without thorn the rose,’
To latest times their balmy odours fling,
And Nature here display eternal spring.”
These lines, with an account of New Place, then the residence of Mr. Charles Hunt, appeared in print. But the destroyer of the Mulberry Tree, and indeed of Shakspeare’s house, is well-known to have been the Reverend Mr. Gastrell. It is difficult to account for such an act of human perversity; but the researches of Malone appear to make it an act of divided delinquency. To Mr. Davenport he writes
