WINDSOR CASTLE.* Ix is with a calm and holy feeling
of gladness that we are becoming conscious that the Jubilee is passing away from us. The politician from the platform no longer maunders about fifty years of progress; the parson in the pulpit ceases to incite us to a pious moderation of rejoicing ; even the itinerant minstrel in the public streets raises no longer his weird cry of exaltation, and the street-boys are looking out for some newer effort of popular minstrelsy. Yet we have a Jubilee edition still before us. It is a more portable and convenient reproduc- tion of a mighty volume published in pre-Jubilean ages under the name of Windsor. The present volume is restricted to the more particular title of Windsor Castle, as it also contains descriptions of Datehet, Langley, Upton, Stoke Poges, Ascot Heath, Burnham Beeches, and the surrounding country generally.
Windsor Castle has been singularly fortunate in the small number of books which have been written about it. In more enthusiastic ages than this present one of ours, it has had its complement of panegyrists ; the extraordinary beauty of its situation, and the merits of the buildings themselves, have been celebrated by admiring visitors; but the stern historian with a soul above beauty, the laborious but unimpressionable archaeologist,— " Of painful pedantry the poring child," as some indiscreet admirer called Sir William Dugdale,—these
• Windsor Co.tle. By W. 7. La tie, London Seeley and Co. 1887.
held aloof and refrained from troubling till a comparatively late period. Happy the castle which not only had no annals, but even no annalists,—till the admirable work of Tighe and Davie was published, a production which Mr. Loftie praises for its accuracy, while unreasonably complaining of its dryness. Dryness is the privilege, the prerogative—we might almost. say, the birthright—of the accurate historian. Some are born dry, some achieve dryness, and some have dryness thrust upon them. It has been Mr. Loftie's misfortune to figure in both the latter characters. The work before us would well bear a little watering.
Mr. Lof tie is not pleased with Windsor Castle. From an artistic point of view, he finds it disappointing. Everything is too new, too spick and span ; "even the oldest bnildings are refaced." It is very and to find that the buildings of the Castle are less adapted to excite the admiration of the cultured visitor, than to supply the convenience of the mere mortals who live inside it. Yet, as Mr. Loftie began to make some acquaintance with the Castle in detail, he seems gradually to lessen the severity of his original disapproval. After taking a general view in the first chapter, lie has "had occasion to visit Windsor over and over again, and at every visit," he tells us, "something new has struck me, some- thing interesting or beautiful which I had not perceived before." For instance, on one of his later rambles in search of antiquarian lore, "I observed, close to the Lord Chamberlain's office, au extensive collection of fragments of carved stone, some of immense antiquity." The aforesaid collection of carved stones forming the most conspicuous object in one of the most frequented thoroughfares in the Castle, it must be supposed that Mr. Loftie's original researches had been of a somewhat superficial kind. "The longer Windsor is studied, it seems to grow more and more worth studying" (the grammar is Mr. Loftie's). We no entirely agree with this remark, that we think our author should have studied a good deal more than he seems ever to have done, before be passed such a sweeping condemnation of the Castle as a whole, as he has pronounced at the beginning of the work. There are some points on which it seems to us that he still requires enlightenment, concerning which even the unlearned might venture to dispute with him. He gives us in one place a picturesque description of the town of Windsor as it was in the days of Shakespeare, he conjures up the ancient buildings of that date ; he sees in his mind's eye the town hall, the pillory, and the church. 'A hundred yards farther on the houses cease, and we are in the open country, the Park with its dense foliage, closing in the view on the eastern side, and the river winding away into the distance westward toward Bray." Now, we are quite prepared to admit that many marvellous things happened in the time of Queen Elizabeth, and also that Windsor was probably very different at that time from what it is now ; hut, with all apologies to Mr. Loftie, we respectfully decline to believe that either then, or at any other time, did the Thames flow up-stream. This is the kind of description which the public, at its very mildest, resents as an insult to its judgment and powers of observation. Mr. Loftie should really be more careful in his statements, unless it be, perhaps, that his mental vision of times gone by is clouded by the mists of ages. In which case, we should recommend him to hire a boat—of any species he likes except a steam-launch, which is an invention of the enemy, and should be especially avoided by clergymen—and try to "wind away toward Bray," and, we shall be much surprised if his ideas regarding the direction of the current do not undergo a change.
In the main, however, the observations on the scenery of the Merry Wives are interesting enough. In the great number of Shakespeare's plays, the localities are of very little import- ance, such topography as is required being evolved out of the poet's inner consciousness. The scene of The Merchant of Venice might just as well have been laid at Genoa ; it would have made practically no difference if Antigonus, instead of being wrecked on the sea-shore of Bohemia, had been cast away on the coast of Switzerland or Bavaria. Angelo might have been Governor of Messina instead of Vienna, and brought over Elbow to assist Dogberry in the constabulary department, without affecting the story of Isabella or Beatrice. But in The Merry Wives of Windsor we have some local allusions, which, though really of no importance, are interesting as showing Shakespeare's acquaintance with the neighbourhood. Not that we think it at all to his credit that there existed a real Page and a real Ford in Windsor at the time. The exploit of dragging living people into publicity is one that might have well been left to inferior hands. Let us hope that Shake- speare, if he had known that there was a Master Ford at Windsor, would have let the decent man alone. But, of coarse, the little commentator bodies cannot be expected to see this. We will therefore put them a question which is not beyond the limit of their capacities,—Why did Falstaff not love to walk by the Counter-gate ? It was as hateful to him as the reek of a lime-kiln; but why, my gentle critics, why ?
We will not ask Mr. Lof tie, for that gentleman, strong in the possession of a considerable amount of real knowledge, openly declares that he is not omniscient. He cannot tell us "how a certain guild in London came to govern the whole city." He does not even know " when Canterbury received, or assumed, the right to elect her own chief magistrates." He even says that "we do not know" these things. This may be considered as a gratuitous assumption ; but we have no wish to cast stones. It is a more congenial task to show that our author's researches have unearthed some remarkable facts concerning the early in- habitants of Windsor, of a native calculated to make the heart of the true antiquary bound within him. There are records in exist- ence which show that at a remote period, not particularised by Mr. Loftie, "the widow of Simon the saddler sued Hugh the draper for a house worth two shillings a-year " (rents have risen in Windsor since those days). And "Robert of the Brick Bridge and Alice his wife became leaseholders of a messuage and its appurtenances." Very likely even the Master of the Rolls was not aware of this last fact. Further, we find that a merchant of Oxford was exempted from tolls. and pontage at Windsor in the days of King John. There are no exemptions nowadays ; but all her Majesty's subjects who cross Windsor Bridge must pay alike in the year of grace 1887. It is gratifying to reflect on such a proof of the growth of equality and the abolition of privileges, and is suitably chronicled in a Jubilee edition.
The sketches of the country around Windsor show that Mr. Loftie has taste to admire the beauties of Nature, and energy to explore into out-of-the-way nooks and corners, and is possessed of an open and unprejudiced mind. He is the first man we ever met who could see that Gray's " Elegy " was not written in Stoke Poges churchyard or at Upton, but in both, and possibly several other churchyards into the bargain. This will not appear strange to any one who considers the wonderful elasticity of fact. Had Mr. Loftie's peregrinations taken him a little farther afield to Runnymede, he would have been surprised to find in how many different places King John signed Magna Charts. We remember a Highland coachman once pointing out to us a ruined cottage as "one of the places where Rob Roy was born."
Stoke Poges itself is naturally one of the places whose praises are sung the highest. Catching enthusiasm from the inspiring words of Mr. Gosse, our author conjures up a picture of the poet wandering about the quiet fields of that neighbourhood, with his eye in a flue frenzy rolling, and without trespassing—(" The woodland parish' is full of little rights-of-way,"—W. L.)—and muttering his verses. But even if his eye had rolled up to the top of the steeple, we doubt whether he could have seen the distant spires and antique towers. Whether it is Mr. Gosse who says that he could, or only Mr. Loftie himself, the fact remains that Eton College is not visible from Stoke Poges. That he could see "the embattled outline of Windsor" is probable, because we are unacquainted with any spot within what Mr. Gladstone would call a measurable distance of Windsor where the Castle cannot be seen ; but the distant spires would be as invisible as the Playing Fields,—" the boys call them the Shooting Fields, which gives more point to the Duke of Wellington's assertion that Waterloo was won in them." Now, the boys call them nothing of the kind. There exists, or did exist, at Eton a tradition that at some remote period the portion of the Playing Fields called Upper Club was known as the Upper Shooting Fields, and this theory is, we believe, borne out by history. But for the last twenty years at least, the boys have certainly never been in the habit of calling them anything but the Playing Fields.
The illustrations are, as a rule, pretty, though a good many of them have the appearance of being printed from worn-ont plates. The only other objection to them is that they often fail to convey anything like a correct idea of the scene which they are supposed to represent. Flagrant instances of this are found in the sketches of Queen Anne's Closet in the Library, and "One Bay of the Memorial Chapel," respectively. A good many of the illustrations are by Mr. Herbert Renton, and show that gentleman's extraordinary propensity for representing everything as older and more picturesque than it really is. These, however, are always pretty. One of them repre- sents in very minute detail one particular stall in St. George's Chapel—that of the Emperor of Germany — con- taining the remarkable stall-plate of Charles the Bold. On this we have a cross faintly indicated, like that of St. George, where, as a point of fact, would conic the complicated arms of Burgundy. These, of course, could not be represented on so small a scale ; but why fill up the space at all, especially with a coat (to speak heraldically) which, oddly enough, does not occur on any of the plates in the stalls P This is a mere matter of detail, but the drawing is one of detail ; it is perhaps an objection only fit for an antiquary, but Mr. Loftie's book is written with a display of antiquarian knowledge. Below this illustration is an inscription to the effect that "in the same stall are the plates of Napoleon III., the late King of Italy, and the present Emperor of Germany." It would perhaps have been more interesting to note that it also contains those of Prince Rupert, James V. of Scotland (the latter being one of the most beautiful plates in the chapel), and Emanuel Philibert, of Savoy, the husband chosen by Queen Mary for her sister Elizabeth.
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