EXAMINATION, ETC., ETC. (continued 2)

Sir Thomas.

“Ay, that I should indeed, and shortly. But, come now, I am sated of thy follies and roguish tricks, and yearn after the sound doctrine of that pious man. What expounded the grave Glaston upon signs and tokens whereby ye shall be known?”

William Shakspeare.

“Wonderful things! things beyond belief! ‘There be certain men,’ quoth he—”

Sir Thomas.

“He began well. This promises. But why canst not thou go on?”

William Shakspeare.

“‘There be certain men, who, rubbing one corner of the eye, do see a peacock’s feather at the other, and even fire. We know, William, what that fire is, and whence it cometh. Those wicked men, William, all have their marks upon them, be it only a corn, or a wart, or a mole, or a hairy ear, or a toe-nail turned inward. Sufficient, and more than sufficient! He knoweth his own by less tokens. There is not one of them that doth not sweat at some secret sin committed, or some inclination toward it unsnaffled.

“‘Certain men are there, likewise, who venerate so little the glorious works of the Creator that I myself have known them to sneeze at the sun! Sometimes it was against their will, and they would gladly have checked it had they been able; but they were forced to shew what they are. In our carnal state we say, What is one against numbers? In another we shall truly say, What are numbers against one?’”

Sir Thomas did ejaculate, “Amen! Amen!” And then his lips moved silently, piously, and quickly; and then said he, audibly and loudly,—

“And make us at last true Israelites!”

After which he turned to young Willy, and said, anxiously,—

“Hast thou more, lad? give us it while the Lord strengtheneth.”

“Sir,” answered Willy, “although I thought it no trouble, on my return to the Mitre, to write down every word I could remember, and although few did then escape me, yet at this present I can bring to mind but scanty sentences, and those so stray and out of order that they would only prove my incapacity for sterling wisdom, and my incontinence of spiritual treasure.”

Sir Thomas.

“Even that sentence hath a twang of the doctor in it. Nothing is so sweet as humility. The mountains may descend, but the valleys cannot rise. Every man should know himself. Come, repeat what thou canst. I would fain have three or four more heads.”

William Shakspeare.

“I know not whether I can give your worship more than one other. Let me try. It was when Doctor Glaston was discoursing on the protection the wise and powerful should afford to the ignorant and weak:—

“‘In the earlier ages of mankind, your Greek and Latin authors inform you, there went forth sundry worthies, men of might, to deliver, not wandering damsels, albeit for those likewise they had stowage, but low-conditioned men, who fell under the displeasure of the higher, and groaned in thraldom and captivity. And these mighty ones were believed to have done such services to poor humanity that their memory grew greater than they, as shadows do than substances at day-fall. And the sons and grandsons of the delivered did laud and magnify those glorious names; and some in gratitude, and some in tribulation, did ascend the hills, which appeared unto them as altars bestrown with flowers and herbage for heaven’s acceptance. And many did go far into the quiet groves, under lofty trees, looking for whatever was mightiest and most protecting. And in such places did they cry aloud unto the mighty who had left them, “Return! return! help us! help us! be blessed! for ever blessed!”

“‘Vain men! but had they stayed there, not evil. Out of gratitude, purest gratitude, rose idolatry. For the devil sees the fairest, and soils it.

“‘In these our days, methinks, whatever other sins we may fall into, such idolatry is the least dangerous. For neither on the one side is there much disposition for gratitude, nor on the other much zeal to deliver the innocent and oppressed. Even this deliverance, although a merit, and a high one, is not the highest. Forgiveness is beyond it. Forgive, or ye shall not be forgiven. This ye may do every day; for if ye find not offences, ye feign them; and surely ye may remove your own work, if ye may re-remove another’s. To rescue requires more thought and wariness; learn, then, the easier lesson first. Afterward, when ye rescue any from another’s violence, or from his own (which oftentimes is more dangerous, as the enemies are within not only the penetrals of his house but of his heart), bind up his wounds before ye send him on his way. Should ye at any time overtake the erring, and resolve to deliver him up, I will tell you whither to conduct him. Conduct him to his Lord and Master, whose household he hath left. It is better to consign him to Christ his Saviour than to man his murderer; it is better to bid him live than to bid him die. The one word our Teacher and Preserver said, the other our enemy and destroyer. Bring him back again, the stray, the lost one bring him back, not with clubs and cudgels, not with halberts and halters, but generously and gently, and with the linking of the arm. In this posture shall God above smile upon ye; in this posture of yours he shall recognize again his beloved Son upon earth. Do ye likewise, and depart in peace.’”

William had ended, and there was silence in the hall for some time after, when Sir Thomas said,—

“He spake unto somewhat mean persons, who may do it without disparagement. I look for authority, I look for doctrine, and find none yet. If he could not have drawn us out a thread or two from the coat of an apostle, he might have given us a smack of Augustin, or a sprig of Basil. Our older sermons are headier than these, Master Silas! our new beer is the sweeter and clammier, and wants more spice. The doctor hath seasoned his with pretty wit enough, to do him justice, which in a sermon is never out of place; for if there be the bane, there likewise is the antidote.

“What dost thou think about it, Master Silas?”

Sir Silas.

“I would not give ten farthings for ten folios of such sermons.”

William Shakspeare.

“These words, Master Silas, will oftener be quoted than any others of thine; but rarely (do I suspect) as applicable to Doctor Glaston. I must stick unto his gown. I must declare that, to my poor knowledge, many have been raised to the bench of bishops for less wisdom and worse than is contained in the few sentences I have been commanded by authority to recite. No disparagement to any body I know, Master Silas, and multitudes bear witness, that thou above most art a dead hand at a sermon.”

Sir Silas.

“Touch my sermons, wilt dare?”

William Shakspeare.

“Nay, Master Silas, be not angered; it is courage enough to hear them.”

Sir Thomas.

“Now, Silas, hold thy peace and rest contented. He hath excused himself unto thee, throwing in a compliment far above his station, and not unworthy of Rome or Florence. I did not think him so ready. Our Warwickshire lads are fitter for football than courtesies; and, sooth to say, not only the inferior.”

His worship turned from Master Silas toward William, and said, “Brave Willy, thou hast given us our bitters; we are ready now for any thing solid. What hast left?”

William Shakspeare.

“Little or nothing, sir.”

Sir Thomas.

“Well, give us that little or nothing.”

William Shakspeare was obedient to the commands of Sir Thomas, who had spoken thus kindly unto him, and had deigned to cast at him from his lordly dish (as the Psalmist hath it) a fragment of facetiousness.

William Shakspeare.

“Alas, sir! may I repeat it without offence, it not being doctrine but admonition, and meant for me only?”

“Speak it the rather for that,” quoth Sir Thomas.

Then did William give utterance to the words of the preacher, not indeed in his sermon at St. Mary’s, but after dinner.

“‘Lust seizeth us in youth, ambition in midlife, avarice in old age; but vanity and pride are the besetting sins that drive the angels from our cradle, pamper us with luscious and most unwholesome food, ride our first stick with us, mount our first horse with us, wake with us in the morning, dream with us in the night, and never at any time abandon us. In this world, beginning with pride and vanity, we are delivered over from tormentor to tormentor, until the worst tormentor of all taketh absolute possession of us for ever, seizing us at the mouth of the grave, enchaining us in his own dark dungeon, standing at the door, and laughing at our cries. But the Lord, out of his infinite mercy, hath placed in the hand of every man the helm to steer his course by, pointing it out with his finger, and giving him strength as well as knowledge to pursue it.

“‘William! William! there is in the moral straits a current from right to wrong, but no re-flux from wrong to right; for which destination we must hoist our sails aloft and ply our oars incessantly, or night and the tempest will overtake us, and we shall shriek out in vain from the billows, and irrecoverably sink.’”

“Amen!” cried Sir Thomas most devoutly, sustaining his voice long and loud.

“Open that casement, good Silas! the day is sultry for the season of the year; it approacheth unto noontide. The room is close, and those blue flies do make a strange hubbub.”

William Shakspeare.

“In troth do they, sir; they come from the kitchen, and do savour woundily of roast goose! And, methinks—”

Sir Thomas.

“What bethinkest thou?”

William Shakspeare.

“The fancy of a moment,—a light and vain one.”

Sir Thomas.

“Thou relievest me; speak it!”

William Shakspeare.

“How could the creatures cast their coarse rank odour thus far?—even into your presence! A noble and spacious hall! Charlecote, in my mind, beats Warwick Castle, and challenges Kenilworth.”

Sir Thomas.

“The hall is well enough; I must say it is a noble hall,—a hall for a queen to sit down in. And I stuffed an arm-chair with horse-hair on purpose, feathers over it, swan-down over them again, and covered it with scarlet cloth of Bruges, five crowns the short ell. But her highness came not hither; she was taken short; she had a tongue in her ear.”

William Shakspeare.

“Where all is spring, all is buzz and murmur.”

Sir Thomas.

“Quaint and solid as the best yew hedge. I marvel at thee. A knight might have spoken it, under favour. They stopped her at Warwick—to see what? two old towers that don’t match, [105a] and a portcullis that (people say) opens only upon fast-days. Charlecote Hall, I could have told her sweet Highness, was built by those Lucys who came over with Julius Cæsar and William the Conqueror, with cross and scallop-shell on breast and beaver.”

“But, honest Willy!?—”

Such were the very words; I wrote them down with two signs in the margent,—one a mark of admiration, as thus (!), the other of interrogation (so we call it) as thus (?).

“But, honest Willy, I would fain hear more,” quoth he, “about the learned Doctor Glaston. He seemeth to be a man after God’s own heart.”

William Shakspeare.

“Ay is he! Never doth he sit down to dinner but he readeth first a chapter of the Revelation; and if he tasteth a pound of butter at Carfax, he saith a grace long enough to bring an appetite for a baked bull’s [106a] —zle. If this be not after God’s own heart, I know not what is.”

Sir Thomas.

“I would fain confer with him, but that Oxford lieth afar off,—a matter of thirty miles, I hear. I might, indeed, write unto him; but our Warwickshire pens are mighty broad-nibbed, and there is a something in this plaguy ink of ours sadly ropy—”

“I fear there is,” quoth Willy.

“And I should scorn,” continued his worship, “to write otherwise than in a fine Italian character to the master of a college, near in dignity to knighthood.”

William Shakspeare.

“Worshipful sir! is there no other way of communicating but by person, or writing, or messages?”

Sir Thomas.

“I will consider and devise. At present I can think of none so satisfactory.”

And now did the great clock over the gateway strike. And Bill Shakspeare did move his lips, even as Sir Thomas had moved his erewhile in ejaculating. And when he had wagged them twice or thrice after the twelve strokes of the clock were over, again he ejaculated with voice also, saying,—

“Mercy upon us! how the day wears! Twelve strokes! Might I retire, please your worship, into the chapel for about three quarters of an hour, and perform the service [108a] as ordained?”

Before Sir Thomas could give him leave or answer, did Sir Silas cry aloud,—

“He would purloin the chalice, worth forty-eight shillings, and melt it down in the twinkling of an eye, he is so crafty.”

But the knight was more reasonable, and said, reprovingly,—

“There now, Silas! thou talkest widely, and verily in malice, if there be any in thee.”

“Try him,” answered Master Silas; “I don’t kneel where he does. Could he have but his wicked will of me he would chop my legs off, as he did the poor buck’s.”

Sir Thomas.

“No, no, no; he hath neither guile nor revenge in him. We may let him have his way, now that he hath taken the right one.”

Sir Silas.

“Popery! sheer popery! strong as harts-horn! Your papists keep these outlandish hours for their masses and mummery. Surely we might let God alone at twelve o’clock! Have we no bowels?”

William Shakspeare.

“Gracious sir! I do not urge it; and the time is now past by some minutes.”

Sir Thomas.

“Art thou popishly inclined, William?”

William Shakspeare.

“Sir, I am not popishly inclined; I am not inclined to pay tribute of coin or understanding to those who rush forward with a pistol at my breast, crying, ‘Stand, or you are a dead man.’ I have but one guide in faith,—a powerful, an almighty one. He will not suffer to waste away and vanish the faith for which he died. He hath chosen in all countries pure hearts for its depositaries; and I would rather take it from a friend and neighbour, intelligent and righteous, and rejecting lucre, than from some foreigner educated in the pride of cities or in the moroseness of monasteries, who sells me what Christ gave me,—his own flesh and blood.

“I can repeat by heart what I read above a year agone, albeit I cannot bring to mind the title of the book in which I read it. These are the words,—

“‘The most venal and sordid of all the superstitions that have swept and darkened our globe may, indeed, like African locusts, have consumed the green corn in very extensive regions, and may return periodically to consume it; but the strong, unwearied labourer who sowed it hath alway sown it in other places less exposed to such devouring pestilences. Those cunning men who formed to themselves the gorgeous plan of universal dominion were aware that they had a better chance of establishing it than brute ignorance or brute force could supply, and that soldiers and their paymasters were subject to other and powerfuller fears than the transitory ones of war and invasion. What they found in heaven they seized; what they wanted they forged.

“‘And so long as there is vice and ignorance in the world, so long as fear is a passion, their dominion will prevail; but their dominion is not, and never shall be, universal. Can we wonder that it is so general? Can we wonder that anything is wanting to give it authority and effect, when every learned, every prudent, every powerful, every ambitious man in Europe, for above a thousand years, united in the league to consolidate it?

“‘The old dealers in the shambles, where Christ’s body is exposed for sale in convenient marketable slices, [111a] have not covered with blood and filth the whole pavement. Beautiful usages are remaining still,—kindly affections, radiant hopes, and ardent aspirations!

“‘It is a comfortable thing to reflect, as they do, and as we may do unblamably, that we are uplifting to our Guide and Maker the same incense of the heart, and are uttering the very words, which our dearest friends in all quarters of the earth, nay in heaven itself, are offering to the throne of grace at the same moment.

“‘Thus are we together through the immensity of space. What are these bodies? Do they unite us? No; they keep us apart and asunder even while we touch. Realms and oceans, worlds and ages, open before two spirits bent on heaven. What a choir surrounds us when we resolve to live unitedly and harmoniously in Christian faith!’”

Sir Thomas.

“Now, Silas, what sayest thou?”

Sir Silas.

“Ignorant fool!”

William Shakspeare.

“Ignorant fools are bearable, Master Silas! your wise ones are the worst.”

Sir Thomas.

“Prithee no bandying of loggerheads.”

William Shakspeare.

Sir Thomas.

“Thou reasonest aptly and timest well. And surely, being now in so rational and religious a frame of mind, thou couldst recall to memory a section or head or two of the sermon holden at St. Mary’s. It would do thee and us as much good as Lighten our darkness, or Forasmuch as it hath pleased; and somewhat less than three quarters of an hour (maybe less than one quarter) sufficeth.”

Sir Silas.

“Or he hangs without me. I am for dinner in half the time.”

Sir Thomas.

“Silas! Silas! he hangeth not with thee or without thee.”

Sir Silas.

“He thinketh himself a clever fellow; but he (look ye) is the cleverest that gets off.”

“I hold quite the contrary,” quoth Will Shakspeare, winking at Master Silas from the comfort and encouragement he had just received touching the hanging.

And Master Silas had his answer ready, and shewed that he was more than a match for poor Willy in wit and poetry.

He answered thus:—

Thou hadst other bolts to kill bucks withal. In wit, sirrah, thou art a mere child.”

William Shakspeare.

“Little dogs are jealous of children, great ones fondle them.”

Sir Thomas.

“An that were written in the Apocrypha, in the very teeth of Bel and the Dragon, it could not be truer. I have witnessed it with my own eyes over and over.”

Sir Silas.

“He will take this for wit, likewise, now the arms of Lucy do seal it.”

Sir Thomas.

“Silas, they may stamp wit, they may further wit, they may send wit into good company, but not make it.”

William Shakspeare.

“Behold my wall of defence!”

Sir Silas.

“An thou art for walls, I have one for thee from Oxford, pithy and apposite, sound and solid, and trimmed up becomingly, as a collar of brawn with a crown of rosemary, or a boar’s head with a lemon in the mouth.”

William Shakspeare.

“Egad, Master Silas, those are your walls for lads to climb over, an they were higher than Babel’s.”

Sir Silas.

“Have at thee!”

The foolishest dolts are the ground-plot of the most wit, as the idlest rogues are of the most industry. Even thou hast brought wit down from Oxford. And before a thief is hanged, parliament must make laws, attorneys must engross them, printers stamp and publish them, hawkers cry them, judges expound them, juries weigh and measure them with offences, then executioners carry them into effect. The farmer hath already sown the hemp, the ropemaker hath twisted it; sawyers saw the timber, carpenters tack together the shell, grave-diggers delve the earth. And all this truly for fellows like unto thee.”

William Shakspeare.

“Whom a God came down from heaven to save.”

Sir Thomas.

“Silas! he hangeth not. William, I must have the heads of the sermon, six or seven of ’em; thou hast whetted my appetite keenly. How! dost duck thy pate into thy hat? nay, nay, that is proper and becoming at church; we need not such solemnity. Repeat unto us the setting forth at St. Mary’s.”

Whereupon did William Shakspeare entreat of Master Silas that he would help him in his ghostly endeavours, by repeating what he called the preliminary prayer; which prayer I find nowhere in our ritual, and do suppose it to be one of those Latin supplications used in our learned universities now or erewhile.

I am afeard it hath not the approbation of the strictly orthodox, for inasmuch as Master Silas at such entreaty did close his teeth against it, and with teeth thus closed did say, Athanasiuswise, “Go and be damned!”

Bill was not disheartened, but said he hoped better, and began thus:—

“‘My brethren!’ said the preacher, ‘or rather let me call you my children, such is my age confronted with yours, for the most part,—my children, then, and my brethren (for here are both), believe me, killing is forbidden.’”

Sir Thomas.

“This, not being delivered unto us from the pulpit by the preacher himself, we may look into. Sensible man! shrewd reasoner! What a stroke against deer-stealers! how full of truth and ruth! Excellent discourse!”

William Shakspeare.

“The last part was the best.”

Sir Thomas.

“I always find it so. The softest of the cheesecake is left in the platter when the crust is eaten. He kept the best bit for the last, then? He pushed it under the salt, eh? He told thee—”

William Shakspeare.

“Exactly so.”

Sir Thomas.

“What was it?”

William Shakspeare.

“‘Ye shall not kill.’”

Sir Thomas.

“How I did he run in a circle like a hare? One of his mettle should break cover and off across the country like a fox or hart.”

William Shakspeare.

“‘And yet ye kill time when ye can, and are uneasy when ye cannot.’”

Whereupon did Sir Thomas say, aside unto himself, but within my hearing,—

“Faith and troth! he must have had a head in at the window here one day or other.”

William Shakspeare.

“‘This sin cryeth unto the Lord.’”

Sir Thomas.

“He was wrong there. It is not one of those that cry; mortal sins cry. Surely he could not have fallen into such an error! it must be thine; thou misunderstoodest him.”

William Shakspeare.

“Mayhap, sir! A great heaviness came over me; I was oppressed in spirit, and did feel as one awakening from a dream.”

Sir Thomas.

“Godlier men than thou art do often feel the right hand of the Lord upon their heads in like manner. It followeth contrition, and precedeth conversion. Continue.”

William Shakspeare.

“‘My brethren and children,’ said the teacher, ‘whenever ye want to kill time call God to the chase, and bid the angels blow the horn; and thus ye are sure to kill time to your heart’s content. And ye may feast another day, and another after that—’”

Then said Master Silas unto me, concernedly,

“This is the mischief-fullest of all the devil’s imps, to talk in such wise at a quarter past twelve!”

But William went straight on, not hearing him,

“‘—upon what ye shall, in such pursuit, have brought home with you. Whereas, if ye go alone, or two or three together, nay, even if ye go in thick and gallant company, and yet provide not that these be with ye, my word for it, and a powerfuller word than mine, ye shall return to your supper tired and jaded, and rest little when ye want to rest most.’”

“Hast no other head of the Doctor’s?” quoth Sir Thomas.

“Verily none,” replied Willy, “of the morning’s discourse, saving the last words of it, which, with God’s help, I shall always remember.”

“Give us them, give us them,” said Sir Thomas.

“He wants doctrine; he wants authority; his are grains of millet,—grains for unfledged doves; but they are sound, except the crying.

“Deliver unto us the last words; for the last of the preacher, as of the hanged, are usually the best.”

Then did William repeat the concluding words of the discourse, being these:—

“‘As years are running past us, let us throw something on them which they cannot shake off in the dust and hurry of the world, but must carry with them to that great year of all, whereunto the lesser of this mortal life do tend and are subservient.’”

Sir Thomas, after a pause, and after having bent his knee under the table, as though there had been the church-cushion, said unto us,—

“Here he spake through a glass, darkly, as blessed Paul hath it.”

Then turning toward Willy,—

“And nothing more?”

“Nothing but the glory,” quoth Willy, “at which there is always such a clatter of feet upon the floor, and creaking of benches, and rustling of gowns, and bustle of bonnets, and justle of cushions, and dust of mats, and treading of toes, and punching of elbows, from the spitefuller, that one wishes to be fairly out of it, after the scramble for the peace of God is at an end—”

Sir Thomas threw himself back upon his armchair, and exclaimed in wonderment, “How!”

William Shakspeare.

“—and in the midst of the service again, were it possible. For nothing is painfuller than to have the pail shaken off the head when it is brim-full of the waters of life, and we are walking staidly under it.”

Sir Thomas.

“Had the learned Doctor preached again in the evening, pursuing the thread of his discourse, he might, peradventure, have made up the deficiencies I find in him.”

William Shakspeare.

“He had not that opportunity.”

Sir Thomas.

“The more’s the pity.”

William Shakspeare.

“The evening admonition, delivered by him unto the household—”

Sir Thomas.

“What! and did he indeed shew wind enough for that? Prithee out with it, if thou didst put it into thy tablets.”

William Shakspeare.

“Alack, sir! there were so many Latin words, I fear me I should be at fault in such attempt.”

Sir Thomas.

“Fear not; we can help thee out between us, were there a dozen or a score.”

William Shakspeare.

“Bating those latinities, I do verily think I could tie up again most of the points in his doublet.”

Sir Thomas.

“At him then! What was his bearing?”

William Shakspeare.

“In dividing his matter, he spooned out and apportioned the commons in his discourse, as best suited the quality, capacity, and constitution of his hearers. To those in priests’ orders he delivered a sort of catechism.”

Sir Silas.

“He catechise grown men! He catechise men in priests’ orders!—being no bishop, nor bishop’s ordinary!”

William Shakspeare.

“He did so; it may be at his peril.”

Sir Thomas.

“And what else? for catechisms are baby’s pap.”

William Shakspeare.

“He did not catechise, but he admonished the richer gentlemen with gold tassels for their top-knots.”

Sir Silas.

“I thought as much. It was no better in my time. Admonitions fell gently upon those gold tassels; and they ripened degrees as glass and sunshine ripen cucumbers. We priests, forsooth, are catechised! The worst question to any gold tasseller is, ‘How do you do?’ Old Alma Mater coaxes and would be coaxed. But let her look sharp, or spectacles may be thrust upon her nose that shall make her eyes water. Aristotle could make out no royal road to wisdom; but this old woman of ours will shew you one, an you tip her.

“Tilley valley! [124a] catechise priests, indeed!”

Sir Thomas.

“Peradventure he did it discreetly. Let us examine and judge him. Repeat thou what he said unto them.”

William Shakspeare.

“‘Many,’ said he, ‘are ingenuous, many are devout, some timidly, some strenuously, but nearly all flinch, and rear, and kick, at the slightest touch, or least inquisitive suspicion of an unsound part in their doctrine. And yet, my brethren, we ought rather to flinch and feel sore at our own searching touch, our own serious inquisition into ourselves. Let us preachers, who are sufficiently liberal in bestowing our advice upon others, inquire of ourselves whether the exercise of spiritual authority may not be sometimes too pleasant, tickling our breasts with a plume from Satan’s wing, and turning our heads with that inebriating poison which he hath been seen to instil into the very chalice of our salvation. Let us ask ourselves in the closet whether, after we have humbled ourselves before God in our prayers, we never rise beyond the due standard in the pulpit; whether our zeal for the truth be never over-heated by internal fires less holy; whether we never grow stiffly and sternly pertinacious, at the very time when we are reproving the obstinacy of others; and whether we have not frequently so acted as if we believed that opposition were to be relaxed and borne away by self-sufficiency and intolerance. Believe me, the wisest of us have our catechism to learn; and these, my dear friends, are not the only questions contained in it. No Christian can hate; no Christian can malign. Nevertheless, do we not often both hate and malign those unhappy men who are insensible to God’s mercies? And I fear this unchristian spirit swells darkly, with all its venom, in the marble of our hearts, not because our brother is insensible to these mercies, but because he is insensible to our faculty of persuasion, turning a deaf ear unto our claim upon his obedience, or a blind or sleepy eye upon the fountain of light, whereof we deem ourselves the sacred reservoirs. There is one more question at which ye will tremble when ye ask it in the recesses of your souls; I do tremble at it, yet must utter it. Whether we do not more warmly and erectly stand up for God’s word because it came from our mouths, than because it came from his? Learned and ingenious men may indeed find a solution and excuse for all these propositions; but the wise unto salvation will cry, “Forgive me, O my God, if, called by thee to walk in thy way, I have not swept this dust from the sanctuary!”’”

Sir Thomas.

“All this, methinks, is for the behoof of clerks and ministers.”

William Shakspeare.

“He taught them what they who teach others should learn and practise. Then did he look toward the young gentlemen of large fortune; and lastly his glances fell upon us poorer folk, whom he instructed in the duty we owe to our superiors.”

Sir Thomas.

“Ay, there he had a host.”

William Shakspeare.

“In one part of his admonition he said,—

“‘Young gentlemen! let not the highest of you who hear me this evening be led into the delusion, for such it is, that the founder of his family was originally a greater or a better man than the lowest here. He willed it, and became it. He must have stood low; he must have worked hard,—and with tools, moreover, of his own invention and fashioning. He waved and whistled off ten thousand strong and importunate temptations; he dashed the dice-box from the jewelled hand of Chance, the cup from Pleasure’s, and trod under foot the sorceries of each; he ascended steadily the precipices of Danger, and looked down with intrepidity from the summit; he overawed Arrogance with Sedateness; he seized by the horn and overleaped low Violence; and he fairly swung Fortune round.

“‘The very high cannot rise much higher; the very low may,—the truly great must have done it.

“‘This is not the doctrine, my friends, of the silkenly and lawnly religious; it wears the coarse texture of the fisherman, and walks uprightly and straightforward under it. I am speaking now more particularly to you among us upon whom God hath laid the incumbrances of wealth, the sweets whereof bring teazing and poisonous things about you, not easily sent away. What now are your pretensions under sacks of money? or your enjoyments under the shade of genealogical trees? Are they rational? Are they real? Do they exist at all? Strange inconsistency! to be proud of having as much gold and silver laid upon you as a mule hath, and yet to carry it less composedly! The mule is not answerable for the conveyance and discharge of his burden,—you are. Stranger infatuation still! to be prouder of an excellent thing done by another than by yourselves, supposing any excellent thing to have actually been done; and, after all, to be more elated on his cruelties than his kindnesses, by the blood he hath spilt than by the benefits he had conferred; and to acknowledge less obligation to a well-informed and well-intentioned progenitor than to a lawless and ferocious barbarian. Would stocks and stumps, if they could utter words, utter such gross stupidity? Would the apple boast of his crab origin, or the peach of his prune? Hardly any man is ashamed of being inferior to his ancestors, although it is the very thing at which the great should blush, if, indeed, the great in general descended from the worthy. I did expect to see the day, and although I shall not see it, it must come at last, when he shall be treated as a madman or an impostor who dares to claim nobility or precedency and cannot shew his family name in the history of his country. Even he who can shew it, and who cannot write his own under it in the same or as goodly characters, must submit to the imputation of degeneracy, from which the lowly and obscure are exempt.

“‘He alone who maketh you wiser maketh you greater; and it is only by such an implement that Almighty God himself effects it. When he taketh away a man’s wisdom he taketh away his strength, his power over others and over himself. What help for him then? He may sit idly and swell his spleen, saying,—Who is this? who is that? and at the question’s end the spirit of inquiry dies away in him. It would not have been so if, in happier hour, he had said within himself, Who am I? what am I? and had prosecuted the search in good earnest.

“‘When we ask who this man is, or who that man is, we do not expect or hope for a plain answer; we should be disappointed at a direct, or a rational, or a kind one. We desire to hear that he was of low origin, or had committed some crime, or been subjected to some calamity. Whoever he be, in general we disregard or despise him, unless we discover that he possesseth by nature many qualities of mind and body which he never brings into use, and many accessories of situation and fortune which he brings into abuse every day. According to the arithmetic in practice, he who makes the most idlers and the most ingrates is the most worshipful. But wiser ones than the scorers in this school will tell you how riches and power were bestowed by Providence that generosity and mercy should be exercised; for, if every gift of the Almighty were distributed in equal portions to every creature, less of such virtues would be called into the field; consequently there would be less of gratitude, less of submission, less of devotion, less of hope, and, in the total, less of content.’”

Here he ceased, and Sir Thomas nodded, and said,—

“Reasonable enough! nay, almost too reasonable!”

“But where are the apostles? Where are the disciples? Where are the saints? Where is hell-fire?”

“Well! patience! we may come to it yet. Go on, Will!”

With such encouragement before him, did Will Shakspeare take breath and continue:—

“‘We mortals are too much accustomed to behold our superiors in rank and station as we behold the leaves in the forest. While we stand under these leaves, our protection and refuge from heat and labour, we see only the rougher side of them, and the gloominess of the branches on which they hang. In the midst of their benefits we are insensible to their utility and their beauty, and appear to be ignorant that if they were placed less high above us we should derive from them less advantage.’”

Sir Thomas.

“Ay; envy of superiority made the angels kick and run restive.”

William Shakspeare.

“May it please your worship! with all my faults, I have ever borne due submission and reverence toward my superiors.”

Sir Thomas.

“Very right! very scriptural! But most folks do that. Our duty is not fulfilled unless we bear absolute veneration; unless we are ready to lay down our lives and fortunes at the foot of the throne, and every thing else at the foot of those who administer the laws under virgin majesty.”

William Shakspeare.

“Honoured sir! I am quite ready to lay down my life and fortune, and all the rest of me, before that great virgin.”

Sir Silas.

“Thy life and fortune, to wit!

“What are they worth? A June cob-nut, maggot and all.”

Sir Thomas.

“Silas, we will not repudiate nor rebuff his Magdalen, that bringeth a pot of ointment. Rather let us teach and tutor than twit. It is a tractable and conducible youth, being in good company.”

Sir Silas.

“Teach and tutor! Hold hard, sir! These base varlets ought to be taught but two things: to bow as beseemeth them to their betters, and to hang perpendicular. We have authority for it, that no man can add an inch to his stature; but by aid of the sheriff I engage to find a chap who shall add two or three to this whoreson’s.” [133a]

Sir Thomas.

“Nay, nay, now, Silas! the lad’s mother was always held to be an honest woman.”

Sir Silas.

“His mother may be an honest woman for me.”

William Shakspeare.

“No small privilege, by my faith! for any woman in the next parish to thee, Master Silas!”

Sir Silas.

“There again! out comes the filthy runlet from the quagmire, that but now lay so quiet with all its own in it.”

William Shakspeare.

“Until it was trodden on by the ass that could not leap over it. These, I think, are the words of the fable.”

Sir Thomas.

“They are so.”

Sir Silas.

“What fable?”

Sir Thomas.

“Tush! don’t press him too hard; he wants not wit, but learning.”

Sir Silas.

“He wants a rope’s-end; and a rope’s-end is not enough for him, unless we throw in the other.”

Sir Thomas.

“Peradventure he may be an instrument, a potter’s clay, a type, a token.

“I have seen many young men, and none like unto him. He is shallow but clear; he is simple, but ingenuous.”

Sir Silas.

“Drag the ford again, then. In my mind he is as deep as the big tankard; and a mouthful of rough burrage will be the beginning and end of it.”

Sir Thomas.

“No fear of that. Neither, if rightly reported by the youngster, is there so much doctrine in the doctor as we expected. He doth not dwell upon the main; he is worldly; he is wise in his generation,—he says things out of his own head.

“Silas, that can’t hold! We want props—fulcrums, I think you called ’em to the farmers; or was it stimulums?”

Sir Silas.

“Both very good words.”

Sir Thomas.

“I should be mightily pleased to hear thee dispute with that great don.”

Sir Silas.

“I hate disputations. Saint Paul warns us against them. If one wants to be thirsty, the tail of a stockfish is as good for it as the head of a logician.

“The doctor there, at Oxford, is in flesh and mettle; but let him be sleek and gingered as he may, clap me in St. Mary’s pulpit, cassock me, lamb-skin me, give me pink for my colours, glove me to the elbow, heel-piece me half an ell high, cushion me before and behind, bring me a mug of mild ale and a rasher of bacon, only just to con over the text withal; then allow me fair play, and as much of my own way as he had, and the devil take the hindermost. I am his man at any time.”

Sir Thomas.

“I am fain to believe it. Verily, I do think, Silas, thou hast as much stuff in thee as most men. Our beef and mutton at Charlecote rear other than babes and sucklings.

“I like words taken, like thine, from black-letter books. They look stiff and sterling, and as though a man might dig about ’em for a week, and never loosen the lightest.

“Thou hast alway at hand either saint or devil, as occasion needeth, according to the quality of the sinner, and they never come uncalled for. Moreover, Master Silas, I have observed that thy hell-fire is generally lighted up in the pulpit about the dog-days.”

Then turned the worthy knight unto the youth, saying,—

“’T were well for thee, William Shakspeare, if the learned doctor had kept thee longer in his house, and had shewn unto thee the danger of idleness, which hath often led unto deer-stealing and poetry. In thee we already know the one, although the distemper hath eaten but skin-deep for the present; and we have the testimony of two burgesses on the other. The pursuit of poetry, as likewise of game, is unforbidden to persons of condition.”

William Shakspeare.

“Sir, that of game is the more likely to keep them in it.”

Sir Thomas.

“It is the more knightly of the two; but poetry hath also her pursuers among us. I myself, in my youth, had some experience that way; and I am fain to blush at the reputation I obtained. His honour, my father, took me to London at the age of twenty; and, sparing no expense in my education, gave fifty shillings to one Monsieur Dubois to teach me fencing and poetry, in twenty lessons. In vacant hours he taught us also the laws of honour, which are different from ours.

“In France you are unpolite unless you solicit a judge or his wife to favour your cause; and you inevitably lose it. In France there is no want of honour where there is no want of courage; you may lie, but you must not hear that you lie. I asked him what he thought then of lying; and he replied,—

“‘C’est selon.’

“‘And suppose you should overhear the whisper?’

“‘Ah, parbleu! Cela m’irrite; cela me pousse au bout.’

“I was going on to remark that a real man of honour could less bear to lie than to hear it; when he cried, at the words real man of honour,—

“‘Le voilà, Monsieur! le voilà!’ and gave himself such a blow on the breast as convinced me the French are a brave people.

“He told us that nothing but his honour was left him, but that it supplied the place of all he had lost. It was discovered some time afterward that M. Dubois had been guilty of perjury, had been a spy, and had lost nothing but a dozen or two of tin patty-pans, hereditary in his family, his father having been a cook on his own account.

“William, it is well at thy time of life that thou shouldst know the customs of far countries, particularly if it should be the will of God to place thee in a company of players. Of all nations in the world, the French best understand the stage. If thou shouldst ever write for it, which God forbid, copy them very carefully. Murders on their stage are quite decorous and cleanly. Few gentlemen and ladies die by violence who would not have died by exhaustion. ‘For they rant and rave until their voice fails them, one after another; and those who do not die of it die consumptive. They cannot bear to see cruelty; they would rather see any image than their own.’ These are not my observations, but were made by Sir Everard Starkeye, who likewise did remark to Monsieur Dubois, that ‘cats, if you hold them up to the looking-glass, will scratch you terribly; and that the same fierce animal, as if proud of its cleanly coat and velvety paw, doth carefully put aside what other animals of more estimation take no trouble to conceal.’

“‘Our people,’ said Sir Everard, ‘must see upon the stage what they never could have imagined; so the best men in the world would earnestly take a peep of hell through a chink, whereas the worser would skulk away.’

“Do not thou be their caterer, William! Avoid the writing of comedies and tragedies. To make people laugh is uncivil, and to make people cry is unkind. And what, after all, are these comedies and these tragedies? They are what, for the benefit of all future generations, I have myself described them,—

Furthermore, let me warn thee against the same on account of the vast charges thou must stand at. We Englishmen cannot find it in our hearts to murder a man without much difficulty, hesitation, and delay. We have little or no invention for pains and penalties; it is only our acutest lawyers who have wit enough to frame them. Therefore it behooveth your tragedy-man to provide a rich assortment of them, in order to strike the auditor with awe and wonder. And a tragedy-man, in our country, who cannot afford a fair dozen of stabbed males, and a trifle under that mark of poisoned females, and chains enow to moor a whole navy in dock, is but a scurvy fellow at the best. Thou wilt find trouble in purveying these necessaries; and then must come the gim-cracks for the second course,—gods, goddesses, fates, furies, battles, marriages, music, and the maypole. Hast thou within thee wherewithal?”

“Sir!” replied Billy, with great modesty, “I am most grateful for these ripe fruits of your experience. To admit delightful visions into my own twilight chamber is not dangerous nor forbidden. Believe me, sir, he who indulges in them will abstain from injuring his neighbour; he will see no glory in peril, and no delight in strife.

“The world shall never be troubled by any battles and marriages of mine, and I desire no other music and no other maypole than have lightened my heart at Stratford.”

Sir Thomas, finding him well-conditioned and manageable, proceeded:—

“Although I have admonished thee of sundry and insurmountable impediments, yet more are lying in the pathway. We have no verse for tragedy. One in his hurry hath dropped rhyme, and walketh like unto the man who wanteth the left-leg stocking. Others can give us rhyme indeed, but can hold no longer after the tenth or eleventh syllable. Now Sir Everard Starkeye, who is a pretty poet, did confess to Monsieur Dubois the potency of the French tragic verse, which thou never canst hope to bring over.

“‘I wonder, Monsieur Dubois!’ said Sir Everard, ‘that your countrymen should have thought it necessary to transport their heavy artillery into Italy. No Italian could stand a volley of your heroic verses from the best and biggest pieces. With these brought into action, you never could have lost the battle of Pavia.’

“Now my friend Sir Everard is not quite so good a historian as he is a poet; and Monsieur Dubois took advantage of him.

“‘Pardon! Monsieur Sir Everard!’ said Monsieur Dubois, smiling at my friend’s slip, ‘We did not lose the battle of Pavia. We had the misfortune to lose our king, who delivered himself up, as our kings always do, for the good and glory of his country.’

“‘How was this?’ said Sir Everard, in surprise.

“‘I will tell you, Monsieur Sir Everard!’ said Monsieur Dubois. ‘I had it from my own father, who fought in the battle, and told my mother, word for word.

“‘The king seeing his household troops, being only one thousand strong, surrounded by twelve regiments, the best Spanish troops, amounting to eighteen thousand four hundred and forty-two, although he doubted not of victory, yet thought he might lose many brave men before the close of the day, and rode up instantly to King Charles, and said,—

“‘“My brother! I am loath to lose so many of those brave men yonder. Whistle off your Spanish pointers, and I agree to ride home with you.”

“‘And so he did. But what did King Charles? Abusing French loyalty, he made our Francis his prisoner, would you believe it? and treated him worse than ever badger was treated at the bottom of any paltry stable-yard, putting upon his table beer and Rhenish wine and wild boar.’

“I have digressed with thee, young man,” continued the knight, much to the improvement of my knowledge, I do reverentially confess, as it was of the lad’s. “We will now,” said he, “endeavour our best to sober thee, finding that Doctor Glaston hath omitted it.”

“Not entirely omitted it,” said William, gratefully; “he did after dinner all that could be done at such a time toward it. The doctor could, however, speak only of the Greeks and Romans, and certainly what he said of them gave me but little encouragement.”

Sir Thomas.

“What said he?”

William Shakspeare.

“He said, ‘The Greeks conveyed all their wisdom into their theatre,—their stages were churches and parliament-houses; but what was false prevailed over what was true. They had their own wisdom, the wisdom of the foolish. Who is Sophocles, if compared to Doctor Hammersley of Oriel? or Euripides, if compared to Doctor Prichard of Jesus? Without the Gospel, light is darkness; and with it, children are giants.

“‘William, I need not expatiate on Greek with thee, since thou knowest it not, but some crumbs of Latin are picked up by the callowest beaks. The Romans had, as thou findest, and have still, more taste for murder than morality, and, as they could not find heroes among them, looked for gladiators. Their only very high poet employed his elevation and strength to dethrone and debase the Deity. They had several others, who polished their language and pitched their instruments with admirable skill; several who glued over their thin and flimsy gaberdines many bright feathers from the widespread downs of Ionia, and the richly cultivated rocks of Attica.

“‘Some of them have spoken from inspiration; for thou art not to suppose that from the heathen were withheld all the manifestations of the Lord. We do agree at Oxford that the Pollio of Virgil is our Saviour. True, it is the dullest and poorest poem that a nation not very poetical hath bequeathed unto us; and even the versification, in which this master excelled, is wanting in fluency and sweetness. I can only account for it from the weight of the subject. Two verses, which are fairly worth two hundred such poems, are from another pagan; he was forced to sigh for the church without knowing her. He saith,—

This, if adumbrating the church, is the most beautiful thought that ever issued from the heart of man; but if addressed to a wanton, as some do opine, is filth from the sink, nauseating and insufferable.

“‘William! that which moveth the heart most is the best poetry; it comes nearest unto God, the source of all power.’”

Sir Thomas.

“Yea; and he appeareth unto me to know more of poetry than of divinity. Those ancients have little flesh upon the body poetical, and lack the savour that sufficeth. The Song of Solomon drowns all their voices: they seem but whistlers and guitar-players compared to a full-cheeked trumpeter; they standing under the eaves in some dark lane, he upon a well-caparisoned stallion, tossing his mane and all his ribbons to the sun. I doubt the doctor spake too fondly of the Greeks; they were giddy creatures. William, I am loath to be hard on them; but they please me not. There are those now living who could make them bite their nails to the quick, and turn green as grass with envy.”

William Shakspeare.

“Sir, one of those Greeks, methinks, thrown into the pickle-pot, would be a treasure to the housewife’s young jerkins.”

Sir Thomas.

“Simpleton! simpleton! but thou valuest them justly. Now attend. If ever thou shouldst hear, at Oxford or London, the verses I am about to repeat, prithee do not communicate them to that fiery spirit Mat Atterend. It might not be the battle of two hundreds, but two counties; a sort of York and Lancaster war, whereof I would wash my hands. Listen!”

And now did Sir Thomas clear his voice, always high and sonorous, and did repeat from the stores of his memory these rich and proud verses,—

At which noble conceits, so far above what poor Bill had ever imagined, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and exclaimed,—

“The world itself must be reduced to that condition before such glorious verses die! Chloe and Clove! Why, sir! Chloe wants but a V toward the tail to become the very thing! Never tell me that such matters can come about of themselves. And how truly is it said that we mean men deal in dog-roses.

“Sir, if it were permitted me to swear on that holy Bible, I would swear I never until this day heard that dog-roses were our provender; and yet did I, no longer ago than last summer, write, not indeed upon a dog-rose, but upon a sweet-briar, what would only serve to rinse the mouth withal after the clove.”

Sir Thomas.

“Repeat the same, youth. We may haply give thee our counsel thereupon.”

Willy took heart, and lowering his voice, which hath much natural mellowness, repeated these from memory:—

Sir Thomas said, with kind encouragement, “He who beginneth so discreetly with a dog-rose, may hope to encompass a damask-rose ere he die.”

Willy did now breathe freely. The commendation of a knight and magistrate worked powerfully within him; and Sir Thomas said furthermore,—

“These short matters do not suit me. Thou mightest have added some moral about life and beauty,—poets never handle roses without one; but thou art young, and mayest get into the train.”

Willy made the best excuse he could; and no bad one it was, the knight acknowledged; namely, that the sweet-briar was not really dead, although left for dead.

“Then,” said Sir Thomas, “as life and beauty would not serve thy turn, thou mightest have had full enjoyment of the beggar, the wayside, the thieves, and the good Samaritan,—enough to tapestry the bridal chamber of an empress.”

William bowed respectfully, and sighed.

“Ha! thou hast lost them, sure enough, and it may not be quite so fair to smile at thy quandary,” quoth Sir Thomas.

“I did my best the first time,” said Willy, “and fell short the second.”

“That, indeed, thou must have done,” said Sir Thomas. “It is a grievous disappointment, in the midst of our lamentations for the dead, to find ourselves balked. I am curious to see how thou couldst help thyself. Don’t be abashed; I am ready for even worse than the last.”

Bill hesitated, but obeyed:—

Sir Thomas looked somewhat less pleased at the conclusion of these verses than at the conclusion of the former, and said, gravely,—

“Young man! methinks it is betimes that thou talkest of having a muse to thyself; or even in common with others. It is only great poets who have muses; I mean to say who have the right to talk in that fashion. The French, I hear, Phœbus it and muse-me it right and left; and boggle not to throw all nine, together with mother and master, into the compass of a dozen lines or thereabout. And your Italian can hardly do without ’em in the multiplication-table. We Englishmen do let them in quietly, shut the door, and say nothing of what passes. I have read a whole book of comedies, and ne’er a muse to help the lamest.”

William Shakspeare.

“Wonderful forbearance! I marvel how the poet could get through.”

Sir Thomas.

“By God’s help. And I think we did as well without ’em; for it must be an unabashable man that ever shook his sides in their company. They lay heavy restraint both upon laughing and crying. In the great master Virgil of Rome, they tell me they come in to count the ships, and having cast up the sum total, and proved it, make off again. Sure token of two things,—first, that he held ’em dog-cheap; secondly, that he had made but little progress (for a Lombard born) in book-keeping at double entry.

“He, and every other great genius, began with small subject-matters, gnats and the like. I myself, similar unto him, wrote upon fruit. I would give thee some copies for thy copying, if I thought thou wouldst use them temperately, and not render them common, as hath befallen the poetry of some among the brightest geniuses. I could shew thee how to say new things, and how to time the same. Before my day, nearly all the flowers and fruits had been gathered by poets, old and young, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop on the wall; roses went up to Solomon, apples to Adam, and so forth.

“Willy! my brave lad! I was the first that ever handled a quince, I’ll be sworn.

“Hearken!

“Now, Willy, there is not one poet or lover in twenty who careth for consequences. Many hint to the lady what to do, few what not to do although it would oftentimes, as in this case, go to one’s heart to see the upshot.”

“Ah, sir,” said Bill, in all humility, “I would make bold to put the parings of that quince under my pillow, for sweet dreams and insights, if Doctor Glaston had given me encouragement to continue the pursuit of poetry. Of a surety it would bless me with a bedful of churches and crucifixions, duly adumbrated.”

Whereat Sir Thomas, shaking his head, did inform him,—

“It was in the golden age of the world, as pagans call it, that poets of condition sent fruits and flowers to their beloved, with posies fairly penned. We, in our days, have done the like. But manners of late are much corrupted on the one side, if not on both.

“Willy! it hath been whispered that there be those who would rather have a piece of brocade or velvet for a stomacher than the touchingest copy of verses, with a bleeding heart at the bottom.”

William Shakspeare.

“Incredible!”

Sir Thomas.

“’T is even so!”

William Shakspeare.

“They must surely be rotten fragments of the world before the flood,—saved out of it by the devil.”

Sir Thomas.

“I am not of that mind.

“Their eyes, mayhap, fell upon some of the bravery cast ashore from the Spanish Armada. In ancienter days, a few pages of good poetry outvalued a whole ell of the finest Genoa.”

William Shakspeare.

“When will such days return?”

Sir Thomas.

“It is only within these few years that corruption and avarice have made such ghastly strides. They always did exist, but were gentler.

“My youth is waning, and has been nigh upon these seven years, I being now in my forty-eighth.”

William Shakspeare.

“I have understood that the god of poetry is in the enjoyment of eternal youth; I was ignorant that his sons were.”

Sir Thomas.

“No, child! we are hale and comely, but must go the way of all flesh.”

William Shakspeare.

“Must it, can it, be?”

Sir Thomas.

“Time was, my smallest gifts were acceptable, as thus recorded:—

William was now quite unable to contain himself, and seemed utterly to have forgotten the grievous charge against him; to such a pitch did his joy o’erleap his jeopardy.

Master Silas in the meantime was much disquieted; and first did he strip away all the white feather from every pen in the inkpot, and then did he mend them, one and all, and then did he slit them with his thumb-nail, and then did he pare and slash away at them again and then did he cut off the tops, until at last he left upon them neither nib nor plume, nor enough of the middle to serve as quill to a virginal. It went to my heart to see such a power of pens so wasted; there could not be fewer than five. Sir Thomas was less wary than usual, being overjoyed. For great poets do mightly affect to have little poets under them; and little poets do forget themselves in great company, as fiddlers do, who hail fellow well met even with lords.

Sir Thomas did not interrupt our Bill’s wild gladness. I never thought so worshipful a personage could bear so much. At last he said unto the lad,—

“I do bethink me, if thou hearest much more of my poetry, and the success attendant thereon, good Doctor Glaston would tear thy skirt off ere he could drag thee back from the occupation.”

William Shakspeare.

“I fear me, for once, all his wisdom would sluice out in vain.”

Sir Thomas.

“It was reported to me that when our virgin queen’s highness (her Dear Dread’s [157a] ear not being then poisoned) heard these verses, she said before her courtiers, to the sore travail of some, and heart’s content of others,—

“‘We need not envy our young cousin James of Scotland his ass’s bite of a thistle, having such flowers as these gillyflowers on the chimney-stacks of Charlecote.’

“I could have told her highness that all this poetry, from beginning to end, was real matter of fact, well and truly spoken by mine own self. I had only to harness the rhymes thereunto, at my leisure.”

William Shakspeare.

“None could ever doubt it. Greeks and Trojans may fight for the quince; neither shall have it

Sir Thomas.

“Nay, nay, nay! do not trespass too soon upon heroics. Thou seest thou canst not hold thy wind beyond eight lines. What wouldst thou do under the heavy mettle that should have wrought such wonders at Pavia, if thou findest these petards so troublesome in discharging? Surely, the good doctor, had he entered at large on the subject, would have been very particular in urging this expostulation.”

William Shakspeare.

“Sir, to my mortification I must confess that I took to myself the counsel he was giving to another; a young gentleman who, from his pale face, his abstinence at table, his cough, his taciturnity, and his gentleness, seemed already more than half poet. To him did Doctor Glaston urge, with all his zeal and judgment, many arguments against the vocation; telling him that, even in college, he had few applauders, being the first, and not the second or third, who always are more fortunate; reminding him that he must solicit and obtain much interest with men of rank and quality, before he could expect their favour; and that without it the vein chilled, the nerve relaxed, and the poet was left at next door to the bellman. ‘In the coldness of the world,’ said he, ‘in the absence of ready friends and adherents, to light thee upstairs to the richly tapestried chamber of the muses, thy spirits will abandon thee, thy heart will sicken and swell within thee; overladen, thou wilt make, O Ethelbert! a slow and painful progress, and ere the door open, sink. Praise giveth weight unto the wanting, and happiness giveth elasticity unto the heavy. As the mightiest streams of the unexplored world, America, run languidly in the night, [159a] and await the sun on high to contend with him in strength and grandeur, so doth genius halt and pause in the thraldom of outspread darkness, and move onward with all his vigour then only when creative light and jubilant warmth surround him.’

“Ethelbert coughed faintly; a tinge of red, the size of a rose-bud, coloured the middle of his cheek; and yet he seemed not to be pained by the reproof. He looked fondly and affectionately at his teacher, who thus proceeded:

“‘My dear youth, do not carry the stone of Sisyphus on thy shoulder to pave the way to disappointment. If thou writest but indifferent poetry none will envy thee, and some will praise thee; but nature, in her malignity, hath denied unto thee a capacity for the enjoyment of such praise. In this she hath been kinder to most others than to thee; we know wherein she hath been kinder to thee than to most others. If thou writest good poetry many will call it flat, many will call it obscure, many will call it inharmonious; and some of these will speak as they think; for, as in giving a feast to great numbers, it is easier to possess the wine than to procure the cups, so happens it in poetry; thou hast the beverage of thy own growth, but canst not find the recipients. What is simple and elegant to thee and me, to many an honest man is flat and sterile; what to us is an innocently sly allusion, to as worthy a one as either of us is dull obscurity; and that moreover which swims upon our brain, and which throbs against our temples, and which we delight in sounding to ourselves when the voice has done with it, touches their ear, and awakens no harmony in any cell of it. Rivals will run up to thee and call thee a plagiary, and, rather than that proof should be wanting, similar words to some of thine will be thrown in thy teeth out of Leviticus and Deuteronomy.

“‘Do you desire calm studies? Do you desire high thoughts? Penetrate into theology. What is nobler than to dissect and discern the opinions of the gravest men upon the subtlest matters? And what glorious victories are those over Infidelity and Scepticism! How much loftier, how much more lasting in their effects, than such as ye are invited unto by what this ingenious youth hath contemptuously and truly called

And what a delightful and edifying sight it is, to see hundreds of the most able doctors, all stripped for the combat, each closing with his antagonist, and tugging and tearing, tooth and nail, to lay down and establish truths which have been floating in the air for ages, and which the lower order of mortals are forbidden to see, and commanded to embrace. And then the shouts of victory! And then the crowns of amaranth held over their heads by the applauding angels! Besides, these combats have other great and distinct advantages. Whereas, in the carnal, the longer ye contend the more blows do ye receive; in these against Satan, the more fiercely and pertinaciously ye drive at him, the slacker do ye find him; every good hit makes him redden and rave with anger, but diminishes its effect.

“‘My dear friends, who would not enter a service in which he may give blows to his mortal enemy, and receive none; and in which not only the eternal gain is incalculable, but also the temporal, at four-and-twenty, may be far above the emolument of generals, who, before the priest was born, had bled profusely for their country, established her security, brightened her glory, and augmented her dominions?’”

At this pause did Sir Thomas turn unto Sir Silas, and asked,—

“What sayest thou, Silas?”

Whereupon did Sir Silas make answer,—

“I say it is so, and was so, and should be so, and shall be so. If the queen’s brother had not sopped the priests and bishops out of the Catholic cup, they could have held the Catholic cup in their own hands, instead of yielding it into his. They earned their money; if they sold their consciences for it, the business is theirs, not ours. I call this facing the devil with a vengeance. We have their coats; no matter who made ’em,—we have ’em, I say, and we will wear ’em; and not a button, tag, or tassel, shall any man tear away.”

Sir Thomas then turned to Willy, and requested him to proceed with the doctor’s discourse, who thereupon continued:—

“‘Within your own recollections, how many good, quiet, inoffensive men, unendowed with any extraordinary abilities, have been enabled, by means of divinity, to enjoy a long life in tranquillity and affluence?’

“Whereupon did one of the young gentlemen smile, and, on small encouragement from Doctor Glaston to enounce the cause thereof, he repeated these verses, which he gave afterward unto me:—

“On this being concluded, Doctor Glaston said he shrewdly suspected an indigestion on the part of Mr. Thomas Flooke, caused by sitting up late and studying hard with Mr. Dean; and he protested that theology itself should not carry us into the rawness of the morning air, particularly in such critical months as March and October, in one of which the sap rises, in the other sinks, and there are many stars very sinister.”

Sir Thomas shook his head, and declared he would not be uncharitable to rector, or dean, or doctor, but that certain surmises swam uppermost. He then winked at Master Silas, who said, incontinently,—

“You have it, Sir Thomas! The blind buzzards! with their stars and saps!”

“Well, but Silas! you yourself have told us over and over again, in church, that there are arcana.”

“So there are,—I uphold it,” replied Master Silas; “but a fig for the greater part, and a fig-leaf for the rest. As for these signs, they are as plain as any page in the Revelation.”

Sir Thomas, after short pondering, said, scoffingly,—

“In regard to the rawness of the air having any effect whatsoever on those who discourse orthodoxically on theology, it is quite as absurd as to imagine that a man ever caught cold in a Protestant church. I am rather of opinion that it was a judgment on the rector for his evil-mindedness toward the cook, the Lord foreknowing that he was about to be wilful and vengeful in that quarter. It was, however, more advisedly that he took other pullets, on his own view of the case, although it might be that the same pullets would suit him again as well as ever, when his appetite should return; for it doth not appear that they were loath to lay, but laid somewhat unsatisfactorily.

“Now, youth,” continued his worship, “if in our clemency we should spare thy life, study this higher elegiacal strain which thou hast carried with thee from Oxford; it containeth, over and above an unusual store of biography, much sound moral doctrine, for those who are heedful in the weighing of it. And what can be more affecting than—

And what an insight into character! Store it up; store it up! Small appetite, particular; good dean, generick.”

Hereupon did Master Silas jerk me with his indicative joint, the elbow to wit, and did say in my ear,—

“He means deanery. Give me one of those bones so full of marrow, and let my lord bishop have all the meat over it, and welcome. If a dean is not on his stilts, he is not on his stumps; he stands on his own ground; he is a noli-metangeretarian.”

“What art thou saying of those sectaries, good Master Silas?” quoth Sir Thomas, not hearing him distinctly.

“I was talking of the dean,” replied Master Silas. “He was the very dean who wrote and sang that song called the Two Jacks.”

“Hast it?” asked he.

Master Silas shook his head, and, trying in vain to recollect it, said at last,—

“After dinner it sometimes pops out of a filbert-shell in a crack; and I have known it float on the first glass of Herefordshire cider; it also hath some affinity with very stiff and old bottled beer; but in a morning it seemeth unto me like a remnant of over-night.”

“Our memory waneth, Master Silas!” quoth Sir Thomas, looking seriously. “If thou couldst repeat it, without the grimace of singing, it were not ill.”

Master Silas struck the table with his fist, and repeated the first stave angrily; but in the second he forgot the admonition of Sir Thomas, and did sing outright,—

“In the first stave, gramercy! there is an awful verity,” quoth Sir Thomas; “but I wonder that a dean should let his skewer slip out, and his fat catch fire so wofully, in the second. Light stuff, Silas, fit only for ale-houses.”

Master Silas was nettled in the nose, and answered,—

“Let me see the man in Warwickshire, and in all the counties round, who can run at such a rate with so light a feather in the palm of his hand. I am no poet, thank God! but I know what folks can do, and what folks cannot do.”

“Well, Silas,” replied Sir Thomas, “after thy thanksgiving for being no poet, let us have the rest of the piece.”

“The rest!” quoth Master Silas. “When the ale hath done with its humming, it is time, methinks, to dismiss it. Sir, there never was any more; you might as well ask for more after Amen or the see of Canterbury.”

Sir Thomas was dissatisfied, and turned off the discourse; and peradventure he grew more inclined to be gracious unto Willy from the slight rub his chaplain had given him, were it only for the contrariety. When he had collected his thoughts he was determined to assert his supremacy on the score of poetry.

“Deans, I perceive, like other quality,” said he, “cannot run on long together. My friend, Sir Everard Starkeye, could never overleap four bars. I remember but one composition of his, on a young lady who mocked at his inconsistency, in calling her sometimes his Grace and at other times his Muse.

And when we laughed at him for turning his back upon her after the fourth verse, all he could say for himself was, that he would rather a game at all fours with Fanny, than ombre and picquet with the finest furbelows in Christendom. Men of condition do usually want a belt in the course.”

Whereunto said Master Silas,—

“Men out of condition are quite as liable to lack it, methinks.”

“Silas! Silas!” replied the knight, impatiently, “prithee keep to thy divinity, thy strong hold upon Zion; thence none that faces thee can draw thee without being bitten to the bone. Leave poetry to me.”

“With all my heart,” quoth Master Silas, “I will never ask a belt from her, until I see she can afford to give a shirt. She has promised a belt, indeed,—not one, however, that doth much improve the wind,—to this lad here, and will keep her word; but she was forced to borrow the pattern from a Carthusian friar, and somehow it slips above the shoulder.”

“I am by no means sure of that,” quoth Sir Thomas. “He shall have fair play. He carrieth in his mind many valuable things, whereof it hath pleased Providence to ordain him the depository. He hath laid before us certain sprigs of poetry from Oxford, trim as pennyroyal, and larger leaves of household divinity, the most mildly-savoured,—pleasant in health and wholesome in sickness.”

“I relish not such mutton-broth divinity,” said Master Silas. “It makes me sick in order to settle my stomach.”

“We may improve it,” said the knight, “but first let us hear more.”

Then did William Shakspeare resume Dr. Glaston’s discourse.

“‘Ethelbert! I think thou walkest but little; otherwise I should take thee with me, some fine fresh morning, as far as unto the first hamlet on the Cherwell. There lies young Wellerby, who, the year before, was wont to pass many hours of the day poetising amid the ruins of Godstow nunnery. It is said that he bore a fondness toward a young maiden in that place, formerly a village, now containing but two old farm-houses. In my memory there were still extant several dormitories. Some love-sick girl had recollected an ancient name, and had engraven on a stone with a garden-nail, which lay in rust near it,—

“POORE ROSAMUND.”

I entered these precincts, and beheld a youth of manly form and countenance, washing and wiping a stone with a handful of wet grass; and on my going up to him, and asking what he had found, he shewed it to me. The next time I saw him was near the banks of the Cherwell. He had tried, it appears, to forget or overcome his foolish passion, and had applied his whole mind unto study. He was foiled by his competitor; and now he sought consolation in poetry. Whether this opened the wounds that had closed in his youthful breast, and malignant Love, in his revenge, poisoned it; or whether the disappointment he had experienced in finding others preferred to him, first in the paths of fortune, then in those of the muses,—he was thought to have died broken-hearted.

“‘About half a mile from St. John’s College is the termination of a natural terrace, with the Cherwell close under it, in some places bright with yellow and red flowers glancing and glowing through the stream, and suddenly in others dark with the shadows of many different trees, in broad, overbending thickets, and with rushes spear-high, and party-coloured flags.

“‘After a walk in Midsummer, the emersion of our hands into the cool and closing grass is surely not the least among our animal delights. I was just seated, and the first sensation of rest vibrated in me gently, as though it were music to the limbs, when I discovered by a hollow in the herbage that another was near. The long meadow-sweet and blooming burnet half concealed from me him whom the earth was about to hide totally and for ever.

“‘Master Batchelor,’ said I, ‘it is ill-sleeping by the water-side.’

“‘No answer was returned. I arose, went to the place, and recognised poor Wellerby. His brow was moist, his cheek was warm. A few moments earlier, and that dismal lake whereunto and wherefrom the waters of life, the buoyant blood, ran no longer, might have received one vivifying ray reflected from my poor casement. I might not indeed have comforted—I have often failed; but there is one who never has; and the strengthener of the bruised reed should have been with us.

“‘Remembering that his mother did abide one mile further on, I walked forward to the mansion, and asked her what tidings she lately had received of her son. She replied that, having given up his mind to light studies, the fellows of the college would not elect him. The master had warned him beforehand to abandon his selfish poetry, take up manfully the quarterstaff of logic, and wield it for St. John’s, come who would into the ring. “‘We want our man,’” said he to me, “‘and your son hath failed us in the hour of need. Madam, he hath been foully beaten in the schools by one he might have swallowed, with due exercise.’”

“‘“I rated him, told him I was poor, and he knew it. He was stung, and threw himself upon my neck, and wept. Twelve days have passed since, and only three rainy ones. I hear he has been seen upon the knoll yonder; but hither he hath not come. I trust he knows at last the value of time, and I shall be heartily glad to see him after this accession of knowledge. Twelve days, it is true, are rather a chink than a gap in time; yet, O gentle sir, they are that chink which makes the vase quite valueless. There are light words which may never be shaken off the mind they fall on. My child, who was hurt by me, will not let me see the marks.”

“‘“Lady,” said I, “none are left upon him. Be comforted! thou shalt see him this hour. All that thy God hath not taken is yet thine.” She looked at me earnestly, and would have then asked something, but her voice failed her. There was no agony, no motion, save in the lips and cheeks. Being the widow of one who fought under Hawkins, she remembered his courage and sustained the shock, saying calmly, “God’s will be done! I pray that he find me as worthy as he findeth me willing to join them.”

“‘Now, in her unearthly thoughts she had led her only son to the bosom of her husband; and in her spirit (which often is permitted to pass the gates of death with holy love) she left them both with their Creator.

“‘The curate of the village sent those who should bring home the body; and some days afterward he came unto me, beseeching me to write the epitaph. Being no friend to stonecutters’ charges, I entered not into biography, but wrote these few words:—

JOANNES WELLERBY, LITERARUM QUÆSIVIT GLORIAM, VIDET DEI.’”

“Poor tack! poor tack!” sourly quoth Master Silas. “If your wise doctor could say nothing more about the fool, who died like a rotten sheep among the darnels, his Latin might have held out for the father, and might have told people he was as cool as a cucumber at home, and as hot as pepper in battle. Could he not find room enough on the whinstone, to tell the folks of the village how he played the devil among the dons, burning their fingers when they would put thumbscrews upon us, punching them in the weasand as a blacksmith punches a horse-shoe, and throwing them overboard like bilgewater?

“Has Oxford lost all her Latin? Here is no capitani filius; no more mention of family than a Welchman would have allowed him; no hîc jacet; and, worse than all, the devil a tittle of spe redemptionis, or anno Domini.”

“Willy!” quoth Sir Thomas, “I shrewdly do suspect there was more, and that thou hast forgotten it.”

“Sir!” answered Willy, “I wrote not down the words, fearing to mis-spell them, and begged them of the doctor, when I took my leave of him on the morrow; and verily he wrote down all he had repeated. I keep them always in the tin-box in my waistcoat-pocket, among the eel-hooks, on a scrap of paper a finger’s length and breadth, folded in the middle to fit. And when the eels are running, I often take it out and read it before I am aware. I could as soon forget my own epitaph as this.”

“Simpleton!” said Sir Thomas, with his gentle, compassionate smile; “but thou hast cleared thyself.”

Sir Silas.

“I think the doctor gave one idle chap as much solid pudding as he could digest, with a slice to spare for another.”

William Shakspeare.

“And yet after this pudding the doctor gave him a spoonful of custard, flavoured with a little bitter, which was mostly left at the bottom for the other idle chap.”

Sir Thomas not only did endure this very goodnaturedly, but deigned even to take in good part the smile upon my countenance, as though he were a smile collector, and as though his estate were so humble that he could hold his laced bonnet (in all his bravery) for bear and fiddle.

He then said unto Willy,

“Place likewise this custard before us.”

“There is but little of it; the platter is shallow,” replied he; “’t was suited to Master Ethelbert’s appetite. The contents were these:

“‘The things whereon thy whole soul brooded in its innermost recesses, and with all its warmth and energy, will pass unprized and unregarded, not only throughout thy lifetime but long after. For the higher beauties of poetry are beyond the capacity, beyond the vision of almost all. Once perhaps in half a century a single star is discovered, then named and registered, then mentioned by five studious men to five more; at last some twenty say, or repeat in writing, what they have heard about it. Other stars await other discoveries. Few and solitary and wide asunder are those who calculate their relative distances, their mysterious influences, their glorious magnitude, and their stupendous height. ’T is so, believe me, and ever was so, with the truest and best poetry. Homer, they say, was blind; he might have been ere he died,—that he sat among the blind, we are sure.

“‘Happy they who, like this young lad from Stratford, write poetry on the saddle-bow when their geldings are jaded, and keep the desk for better purposes.’

“The young gentlemen, like the elderly, all turned their faces toward me, to my confusion, so much did I remark of sneer and scoff at my cost. Master Ethelbert was the only one who spared me. He smiled and said,—

“‘Be patient! From the higher heavens of poetry, it is long before the radiance of the brightest star can reach the world below. We hear that one man finds out one beauty, another man finds out another, placing his observatory and instruments on the poet’s grave. The worms must have eaten us before it is rightly known what we are. It is only when we are skeletons that we are boxed and ticketed, and prized and shewn. Be it so! I shall not be tired of waiting.’”

“Reasonable youth!” said Sir Thomas; “yet both he and Glaston walk rather a-straddle, methinks. They might have stepped up to thee more straightforwardly, and told thee the trade ill suiteth thee, having little fire, little fantasy, and little learning. Furthermore, that one poet, as one bull, sufficeth for two parishes, and that where they are stuck too close together they are apt to fire, like haystacks. I have known it myself; I have had my malignants and scoffers.”

William Shakspeare.

“I never could have thought it!”

Sir Thomas.

“There again! Another proof of thy inexperience.”

William Shakspeare.

“Mat Atterend! Mat Atterend! where wert thou sleeping?”

Sir Thomas.

“I shall now from my own stores impart unto thee what will avail to tame thee, shewing the utter hopelessness of standing on that golden weathercock which supporteth but one at a time.

“The passion for poetry wherewith Monsieur Dubois would have inspired me, as he was bound to do, being paid beforehand, had cold water thrown upon it by that unlucky one, Sir Everard. He ridiculed the idea of male and female rhymes, and the necessity of trying them as rigidly by the eye as by the ear,—saying to Monsieur Dubois that the palate, in which the French excel all mortals, ought also to be consulted in their acceptance or rejection. Monsieur Dubois told us that if we did not wish to be taught French verse, he would teach us English. Sir Everard preferred the Greek; but Monsieur Dubois would not engage to teach the mysteries of that poetry in fewer than thirty lessons,—having (since his misfortunes) forgotten the letters and some other necessaries.

“The first poem I ever wrote was in the character of a shepherd, to Mistress Anne Nanfan, daughter of Squire Fulke Nanfan, of Worcestershire, at that time on a visit to the worshipful family of Compton at Long Compton.

“We were young creatures,—I but twenty-four and seven months (for it was written on the 14th of May), and she well-nigh upon a twelve-month younger. My own verses, the first, are neither here nor there; indeed, they were imbedded in solid prose, like lampreys and ram’s-horns [181a] in our limestone, and would be hard to get out whole. What they are may be seen by her answer, all in verse:—

“I know not how it happeneth; but a poet doth open before a poet, albeit of baser sort. It is not that I hold my poetry to be better than some other in time past, it is because I would shew thee that I was virtuous and wooed virtuously, that I repeat it. Furthermore, I wished to leave a deep impression on the mother’s mind that she was exceedingly wrong in doubting my innocence.”

William Shakspeare.

“Gracious Heaven! and was this too doubted?”

Sir Thomas.

“Maybe not; but the whole race of men, the whole male sex, wanted and found in me a protector. I shewed her what I was ready to do.”

William Shakspeare.

“Perhaps, sir, it was for that very thing that she put the daughter back and herself forward.”

Sir Thomas.

“I say not so; but thou mayest know as much as befitteth, by what follows:—