late Mr. T. Warton, "The meanest hovel to "which Shakespeare has an allufion interests curiofity, and acquires an importance,” furely the tree that has spread its shade over him, and sheltered him from the dews of the night, has a claim to our attention. In the morning when the company awakened our Bard, the story fays they in treated treated him to return to Bidford and renew the charge; but this he declined, and looking round upon the adjoining villages, exclaim ed, “No! I have had enough; I have "drank with "Piping Pebworth, Dancing Marston, "Dudging Exhall, Papift Wicksford, Beggarly Broom, and Drunken Bidford." Or the truth of this flory I have very little doubt: it is certain that the Crab Tree is known all round the country by the name of Shakspeare's Crab; and that the villages to which the allusion is made, all bear the epithets here given them: the people of Pebworth are still famed for their skill on the pipe and tabor: Hillborough is now called Haunted Hillborough; and Grafton is notorious for the poverty of its foil. On the fouth fide of the Avon, opposite to Bidford, lies the pleasant village of Bar ton, which is a hamlet belonging to the parish of Bidford. From the fimilarity of the name, and the confideration that no fuch place as Burton Heath has been by any enquiry of mine discovered in this neighbourhood, I am led to conceive that Barton Heath, which lies in this county, and is about eighteen miles from Stratford, must have been the fpot to which Shakspeare refers in the first act of the Taming of the Shrew, where Sly fays "Am not I Chriftopher Sly, old Sly's "fon of Burton Heath? Afk Marian Hacket, "the fat ale-wife of Wincot, if she know me "not. If fhe fay I am not fourteen pence on "the fcore for fheer ale, fcore me up for the lying'ft knave in Chriftendom." I am not only fortified in this conjecture, but emboldened to make another, by the further confideration, that on Barton Heath there is a houfe yet standing formerly a public house, called Woncott or Onecott. Nothing is more common than to vary the mode of spelling the names of towns and of families in different periods. periods. The above were doubtless places with which Shakspeare was very familiar. It is worth hazarding a conjecture to have even the chance of tracing him in any one of his haunts. Right or wrong in that, which we have hazarded (and in this age what has not conjectural criticism dared?) we have at least the fatisfaction of knowing, that no arbitrary departure from precedent and the only existing authorities could disturb the sense, or even tend to falfify the character of the writings of this great mafter. But substitutions of another fort do not only afford a shelter to ignorance and indolence; they rob of the teftimony it gives of itself, they pollute the fources from which only the scholar can draw his materials to deduce the history of his native tongue, and deprive pofterity of the means of afcertaining the characteristic features of the ftyle of our great authors. Such must be the confequences of the wretched systems of fome modern critics of at least no small pretenfions; and such and the age 1 Gg 2 and no less are the facrifices, they expect to be made to their petty studies and frivolous acquirements. ABOUT a mile below Bidford, on the fouthern bank of the Avon, ftands the village of Cleve, or Cliff, otherwife Cliff Priors. This place derives its name from a range of cliffs in its vicinity; and near to this spot we enter Worcestershire. BENEATH thefe cliffs the Avon winds beautifully in a very fpacious but fhallow course its bed is rocky, but perfectly level, and not more than four feet deep. Cleve mill, and lock, form a very picturefque fcene; but the elevated rocky back ground renders the whole too confined to become a fit fubject for the pencil. WINDING round the cliff, the church of Salford breaks pleasingly on the view: here the Avon is joined by the river Arrewe, or Arrow, |