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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare
+by Walter Savage Landor
+(#3 in our series by Walter Savage Landor)
+
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+Title: Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare
+
+Author: Walter Savage Landor
+
+Release Date: February, 2004  [EBook #5112]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on April 30, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, CITATION ETC. OF W. SHAKSPEARE ***
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1891 Chatto & Windus edition by David Price,
+email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+
+
+CITATION AND EXAMINATION OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
+EUSEBY TREEN JOSEPH CARNABY AND SILAS GOUGH CLERK
+BEFORE THE WORSHIPFUL
+SIR THOMAS LUCY KNIGHT
+TOUCHING DEER-STEELING
+On the Nineteenth Day of September in the Year of Grace 1582
+NOW FIRST PUBLISHED FROM ORIGINAL PAPERS
+
+
+
+
+EDITOR'S PREFACE.
+
+
+
+"It was an ancestor of my husband who BROUGHT OUT the famous
+Shakspeare."
+
+These words were really spoken, and were repeated in conversation as
+most ridiculous.  Certainly such was very far from the lady's
+intention; and who knows to what extent they are true?
+
+
+The frolic of Shakspeare in deer-stealing was the cause of his
+Hegira; and his connection with players in London was the cause of
+his writing plays.  Had he remained in his native town, his ambition
+had never been excited by the applause of the intellectual, the
+popular, and the powerful, which, after all, was hardly sufficient
+to excite it.  He wrote from the same motive as he acted,--to earn
+his daily bread.  He felt his own powers; but he cared little for
+making them felt by others more than served his wants.
+
+The malignant may doubt, or pretend to doubt, the authenticity of
+the Examination here published.  Let us, who are not malignant, be
+cautious of adding anything to the noisome mass of incredulity that
+surrounds us; let us avoid the crying sin of our age, in which the
+"Memoirs of a Parish Clerk," edited as they were by a pious and
+learned dignitary of the Established Church, are questioned in
+regard to their genuineness; and even the privileges of Parliament
+are inadequate to cover from the foulest imputation--the imputation
+of having exercised his inventive faculties--the elegant and
+accomplished editor of Eugene Aram's apprehension, trial, and
+defence.
+
+Indeed, there is little of real history, excepting in romances.
+Some of these are strictly true to nature; while histories in
+general give a distorted view of her, and rarely a faithful record
+either of momentous or of common events.
+
+Examinations taken from the mouth are surely the most trustworthy.
+Whoever doubts it may be convinced by Ephraim Barnett.
+
+The Editor is confident he can give no offence to any person who may
+happen to bear the name of Lucy.  The family of Sir Thomas became
+extinct nearly half a century ago, and the estates descended to the
+Rev. Mr. John Hammond, of Jesus College, in Oxford, a respectable
+Welsh curate, between whom and him there existed at his birth
+eighteen prior claimants.  He took the name of Lucy.
+
+The reader will form to himself, from this "Examination of
+Shakspeare," more favourable opinion of Sir Thomas than is left upon
+his mind by the dramatist in the character of Justice Shallow.  The
+knight, indeed, is here exhibited in all his pride of birth and
+station, in all his pride of theologian and poet; he is led by the
+nose, while he believes that nobody can move him, and shows some
+other weaknesses, which the least attentive observer will discover;
+but he is not without a little kindness at the bottom of the heart,-
+-a heart too contracted to hold much, or to let what it holds
+ebulliate very freely.  But, upon the whole, we neither can utterly
+hate nor utterly despise him.  Ungainly as he is. -
+
+
+Circum praecordia ludit.
+
+
+The author of the "Imaginary Conversations" seems, in his "Boccacio
+and Petrarca," to have taken his idea of Sir Magnus from this
+manuscript.  He, however, has adapted that character to the times;
+and in Sir Magnus the coward rises to the courageous, the unskilful
+in arms becomes the skilful, and war is to him a teacher of
+humanity.  With much superstition, theology never molests him;
+scholarship and poetry are no affairs of his.  He doubts of himself
+and others, and is as suspicious in his ignorance as Sir Thomas is
+confident.
+
+With these wide diversities, there are family features, such as are
+likely to display themselves in different times and circumstances,
+and some so generically prevalent as never to lie quite dormant in
+the breed.  In both of them there is parsimony, there is arrogance,
+there is contempt of inferiors, there is abject awe of power, there
+is irresolution, there is imbecility.  But Sir Magnus has no
+knowledge, and no respect for it.  Sir Thomas would almost go thirty
+miles, even to Oxford, to see a fine specimen of it, although, like
+most of those who call themselves the godly, he entertains the most
+undoubting belief that he is competent to correct the errors of the
+wisest and most practised theologian.
+
+
+
+EDITOR'S APOLOGY.
+
+
+
+A part only of the many deficiencies which the reader will discover
+in this book is attributable to the Editor.  These, however, it is
+his duty to account for, and he will do it as briefly as he can.
+
+The fac-similes (as printers' boys call them, meaning specimens) of
+the handwriting of nearly all the persons introduced, might perhaps
+have been procured had sufficient time been allowed for another
+journey into Warwickshire.  That of Shakspeare is known already in
+the signature to his will, but deformed by sickness; that of Sir
+Thomas Lucy is extant at the bottom of a commitment of a female
+vagrant, for having a sucking child in her arms on the public road;
+that of Silas Gough is affixed to the register of births and
+marriages, during several years, in the parishes of Hampton Lucy and
+Charlecote, and certifies one death,--Euseby Treen's; surmised, at
+least, to be his by the letters "E. T." cut on a bench seven inches
+thick, under an old pollard-oak outside the park paling of
+Charlecote, toward the northeast.  For this discovery the Editor is
+indebted to a most respectable, intelligent farmer in the adjoining
+parish of Wasperton, in which parish Treen's elder brother lies
+buried.  The worthy farmer is unwilling to accept the large portion
+of fame justly due to him for the services he has thus rendered to
+literature in elucidating the history of Shakspeare and his times.
+In possession of another agricultural gentleman there was recently a
+very curious piece of iron, believed by many celebrated antiquaries
+to have constituted a part of a knight's breast-plate.  It was
+purchased for two hundred pounds by the trustees of the British
+Museum, among whom, the reader will be grieved to hear, it produced
+dissension and coldness; several of them being of opinion that it
+was merely a gorget, while others were inclined to the belief that
+it was the forepart of a horse-shoe.  The Committee of Taste and the
+Heads of the Archaeological Society were consulted.  These learned,
+dispassionate, and benevolent men had the satisfaction of
+conciliating the parties at variance,--each having yielded somewhat
+and every member signing, and affixing his seal to the signature,
+that, if indeed it be the forepart of a horse-shoe, it was probably
+Ismael's,--there being a curved indentation along it, resembling the
+first letter of his name, and there being no certainty or record
+that he died in France, or was left in that country by Sir Magnus.
+
+The Editor is unable to render adequate thanks to the Rev. Stephen
+Turnover for the gratification he received in his curious library by
+a sight of Joseph Carnaby's name at full length, in red ink, coming
+from a trumpet in the mouth of an angel.  This invaluable document
+is upon an engraving in a frontispiece to the New Testament.  But
+since unhappily he could procure no signature of Hannah Hathaway,
+nor of her mother, and only a questionable one of Mr. John
+Shakspeare, the poet's father,--there being two, in two very
+different hands,--both he and the publisher were of opinion that the
+graphical part of the volume would be justly censured as extremely
+incomplete, and that what we could give would only raise
+inextinguishable regret for that which we could not.  On this
+reflection all have been omitted.
+
+The Editor is unwilling to affix any mark of disapprobation on the
+very clever engraver who undertook the sorrel mare; but as in the
+memorable words of that ingenious gentleman from Ireland whose
+polished and elaborate epigrams raised him justly to the rank of
+prime minister, -
+
+
+"White was not SO VERY white," -
+
+
+in like manner it appeared to nearly all the artists he consulted
+that the sorrel mare was not SO SORREL in print.
+
+There is another and a graver reason why the Editor was induced to
+reject the contribution of his friend the engraver; and this is, a
+neglect of the late improvements in his art, he having, unadvisedly
+or thoughtlessly, drawn in the old-fashioned manner lines at the two
+sides and at the top and bottom of his print, confining it to such
+limits as paintings are confined in by their frames.  Our spirited
+engravers, it is well-known, disdain this thraldom, and not only
+give unbounded space to their scenery, but also melt their figures
+in the air,--so advantageously, that, for the most part, they
+approach the condition of cherubs.  This is the true aerial
+perspective, so little understood heretofore.  Trees, castles,
+rivers, volcanoes, oceans, float together in absolute vacancy; the
+solid earth is represented, what we know it actually is, buoyant as
+a bubble, so that no wonder if every horse is endued with all the
+privileges of Pegasus, save and except our sorrel.  Malicious
+carpers, insensible or invidious of England's glory, deny her in
+this beautiful practice the merit of invention, assigning it to the
+Chinese in their tea-cups and saucers; but if not absolutely new and
+ours, it must be acknowledged that we have greatly improved and
+extended the invention.
+
+Such are the reasons why the little volume here laid before the
+public is defective in those decorations which the exalted state of
+literature demands.  Something of compensation is supplied by a
+Memorandum of Ephraim Barnett, written upon the inner cover, and
+printed below.
+
+The Editor, it will be perceived, is but little practised in the
+ways of literature; much less is he gifted with that prophetic
+spirit which can anticipate the judgment of the public.  It may be
+that he is too idle or too apathetic to think anxiously or much
+about the matter; and yet he has been amused, in his earlier days,
+at watching the first appearance of such few books as he believed to
+be the production of some powerful intellect.  He has seen people
+slowly rise up to them, like carp in a pond when food is thrown into
+it; some of which carp snatch suddenly at a morsel, and swallow it;
+others touch it gently with their barb, pass deliberately by, and
+leave it; others wriggle and rub against it more disdainfully;
+others, in sober truth, know not what to make of it, swim round and
+round it, eye it on the sunny side, eye it on the shady, approach
+it, question it, shoulder it, flap it with the tail, turn it over,
+look askance at it, take a pea-shell or a worm instead of it, and
+plunge again their heads into the comfortable mud.  After some
+seasons the same food will suit their stomachs better.
+
+
+
+EXAMINATION, ETC., ETC.
+
+
+
+About one hour before noontide the youth WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE, accused
+of deer-stealing, and apprehended for that offence, was brought into
+the great hall at Charlecote, where, having made his obeisance, it
+was most graciously permitted him to stand.
+
+The worshipful Sir Thomas Lucy, Knight, seeing him right opposite,
+on the farther side of the long table, and fearing no disadvantage,
+did frown upon him with great dignity; then, deigning ne'er a word
+to the culprit, turned he his face toward his chaplain, Sir Silas
+Gough, who stood beside him, and said unto him most courteously, and
+unlike unto one who in his own right commandeth, -
+
+"Stand out of the way!  What are those two varlets bringing into the
+room?"
+
+"The table, sir," replied Master Silas, "upon the which the
+consumption of the venison was perpetrated."
+
+The youth, William Shakspeare, did thereupon pray and beseech his
+lordship most fervently, in this guise:-
+
+"Oh, sir! do not let him turn the tables against me, who am only a
+simple stripling, and he an old codger."
+
+But Master Silas did bite his nether lip, and did cry aloud, -
+
+"Look upon those deadly spots!"
+
+And his worship did look thereupon most staidly, and did say in the
+ear of Master Silas, but in such wise that it reached even unto
+mine,
+
+"Good honest chandlery, methinks!"
+
+"God grant it may turn out so!" ejaculated Master Silas.
+
+The youth, hearing these words, said unto him, -
+
+"I fear, Master Silas, gentry like you often pray God to grant what
+HE would rather not; and now and then what YOU would rather not."
+
+Sir Silas was wroth at this rudeness of speech about God in the face
+of a preacher, and said, reprovingly, -
+
+"Out upon thy foul mouth, knave! upon which lie slaughter and
+venison."
+
+Whereupon did William Shakspeare sit mute awhile, and discomfited;
+then turning toward Sir Thomas, and looking and speaking as one
+submiss and contrite, he thus appealed unto him:-
+
+"Worshipful sir! were there any signs of venison on my mouth, Master
+Silas could not for his life cry out upon it, nor help kissing it as
+'twere a wench's."
+
+Sir Thomas looked upon him with most lordly gravity and wisdom, and
+said unto him, in a voice that might have come from the bench:
+
+"Youth, thou speakest irreverently;" and then unto Master Silas:
+"Silas! to the business on hand.  Taste the fat upon yon boor's
+table, which the constable hath brought hither, good Master Silas!
+And declare upon oath, being sworn in my presence, first, whether
+said fat do proceed of venison; secondly, whether said venison be of
+buck or doe."
+
+Whereupon the reverend Sir Silas did go incontinently, and did bend
+forward his head, shoulders, and body, and did severally taste four
+white solid substances upon an oaken board; said board being about
+two yards long, and one yard four inches wide,--found in, and
+brought thither from, the tenement or messuage of Andrew Haggit, who
+hath absconded.  Of these four white solid substances, two were
+somewhat larger than a groat, and thicker; one about the size of
+King Henry the Eighth's shilling, when our late sovereign lord of
+blessed memory was toward the lustiest; and the other, that is to
+say the middlemost, did resemble in some sort, a mushroom, not over
+fresh, turned upward on its stalk.
+
+"And what sayest thou, Master Silas?" quoth the knight.
+
+In reply whereunto Sir Silas thus averred:-
+
+
+"Venison! o' my conscience!
+Buck! or burn me alive!
+
+
+The three splashes in the circumference are verily and indeed
+venison; buck, moreover,--and Charlecote buck, upon my oath!"
+
+Then carefully tasting the protuberance in the centre, he spat it
+out, crying, -
+
+"Pho! pho! villain! villain!" and shaking his fist at the culprit.
+
+Whereat the said culprit smiled and winked, and said off-hand, -
+
+"Save thy spittle, Silas!  It would supply a gaudy mess to the
+hungriest litter; but it would turn them from whelps into wolvets.
+'T is pity to throw the best of thee away.  Nothing comes out of thy
+mouth that is not savoury and solid, bating thy wit, thy sermons,
+and thy promises."
+
+It was my duty to write down the very words, irreverent as they are,
+being so commanded.  More of the like, it is to be feared, would
+have ensued, but that Sir Thomas did check him, saying, shrewdly, -
+
+"Young man!  I perceive that if I do not stop thee in thy courses,
+thy name, being involved in thy company's, may one day or other
+reach across the county; and folks may handle it and turn it about,
+as it deserveth, from Coleshill to Nuneaton, from Bromwicham to
+Brownsover.  And who knoweth but that, years after thy death, the
+very house wherein thou wert born may be pointed at, and commented
+on, by knots of people, gentle and simple!  What a shame for an
+honest man's son!  Thanks to me, who consider of measures to prevent
+it!  Posterity shall laud and glorify me for plucking thee clean out
+of her head, and for picking up timely a ticklish skittle, that
+might overthrow with it a power of others just as light.  I will rid
+the hundred of thee, with God's blessing!--nay, the whole shire.  We
+will have none such in our county; we justices are agreed upon it,
+and we will keep our word now and forevermore.  Woe betide any that
+resembles thee in any part of him!"
+
+Whereunto Sir Silas added, -
+
+"We will dog him, and worry him, and haunt him, and bedevil him; and
+if ever he hear a comfortable word, it shall be in a language very
+different from his own."
+
+"As different as thine is from a Christian's," said the youth.
+
+"Boy! thou art slow of apprehension," said Sir Thomas, with much
+gravity; and taking up the cue, did rejoin, -
+
+"Master Silas would impress upon thy ductile and tender mind the
+danger of evil doing; that we, in other words that justice is
+resolved to follow him up, even beyond his country, where he shall
+hear nothing better than the Italian or the Spanish, or the black
+language, or the language of Turk or Troubadour, or Tartar or
+Mongol.  And, forsooth, for this gentle and indirect reproof, a
+gentleman in priest's orders is told by a stripling that he lacketh
+Christianity!  Who then shall give it?"
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"Who, indeed? when the founder of the feast leaveth an invited guest
+so empty!  Yea, sir, the guest was invited, and the board was
+spread.  The fruits that lay upon it be there still, and fresh as
+ever; and the bread of life in those capacious canisters is
+unconsumed and unbroken,"
+
+SIR SILAS (aside).
+
+"The knave maketh me hungry with his mischievous similitudes."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"Thou hast aggravated thy offence, Wil Shakspeare!  Irreverent
+caitiff! is this a discourse for my chaplain and clerk?  Can he or
+the worthy scribe Ephraim (his worship was pleased to call me
+worthy) write down such words as those, about litter and wolvets,
+for the perusal and meditation of the grand jury?  If the whole
+corporation of Stratford had not unanimously given it against thee,
+still his tongue would catch thee, as the evet catcheth a gnat.
+Know, sirrah, the reverend Sir Silas, albeit ill appointed for
+riding, and not over-fond of it, goeth to every house wherein is a
+venison feast for thirty miles round.  Not a buck's hoof on any
+stable-door but it awakeneth his recollections like a red letter."
+
+This wholesome reproof did bring the youth back again to his right
+senses; and then said he, with contrition, and with a wisdom beyond
+his years, and little to be expected from one who had spoken just
+before so unadvisedly and rashly, -
+
+"Well do I know it, your worship!  And verily do I believe that a
+bone of one being shovelled among the soil upon his coffin would
+forthwith quicken {8a} him.  Sooth to say, there is ne'er a
+buckhound in the county but he treateth him as a godchild, patting
+him on the head, soothing his velvety ear between thumb and
+forefinger, ejecting tick from tenement, calling him 'fine fellow,'
+'noble lad,' and giving him his blessing, as one dearer to him than
+a king's debt to a debtor, {8b} or a bastard to a dad of eighty.
+This is the only kindness I ever heard of Master Silas toward his
+fellow-creatures.  Never hold me unjust, Sir Knight, to Master
+Silas.  Could I learn other good of him, I would freely say it; for
+we do good by speaking it, and none is easier.  Even bad men are not
+bad men while they praise the just.  Their first step backward is
+more troublesome and wrenching to them than the first forward."
+
+"In God's name, where did he gather all this?" whispered his worship
+to the chaplain, by whose side I was sitting.  "Why, he talks like a
+man of forty-seven, or more!"
+
+"I doubt his sincerity, sir!" replied the chaplain.  "His words are
+fairer now--"
+
+"Devil choke him for them!" interjected he, with an undervoice.
+
+"--and almost book-worthy; but out of place.  What the scurvy cur
+yelped against me, I forgive him as a Christian.  Murrain upon such
+varlet vermin!  It is but of late years that dignities have come to
+be reviled.  The other parts of the Gospel were broken long before,-
+-this was left us; and now this likewise is to be kicked out of
+doors, amid the mutterings of such mooncalves as him yonder."
+
+"Too true, Silas!" said the knight, sighing deeply.  "Things are not
+as they were in our glorious wars of York and Lancaster.  The knaves
+were thinned then,--two or three crops a year of that rank squitch-
+grass which it has become the fashion of late to call the people.
+There was some difference then between buff doublets and iron mail,
+and the rogues felt it.  Well-a-day! we must bear what God willeth,
+and never repine, although it gives a man the heart-ache.  We are
+bound in duty to keep these things for the closet, and to tell God
+of them only when we call upon his holy name, and have him quite by
+ourselves."
+
+Sir Silas looked discontented and impatient, and said, snappishly, -
+
+"Cast we off here, or we shall be at fault.  Start him, sir!--
+prithee, start him."
+
+Again his worship, Sir Thomas, did look gravely and grandly, and
+taking a scrap of paper out of the Holy Book then lying before him,
+did read distinctly these words:-
+
+"Providence hath sent Master Silas back hither, this morning, to
+confound thee in thy guilt."
+
+Again, with all the courage and composure of an innocent man, and
+indeed with more than what an innocent man ought to possess in the
+presence of a magistrate, the youngster said, pointing toward Master
+Silas, -
+
+"The first moment he ventureth to lift up his visage from the table,
+hath Providence marked him miraculously.  I have heard of black
+malice.  How many of our words have more in them than we think of!
+Give a countryman a plough of silver, and he will plough with it all
+the season, and never know its substance.  'T is thus with our daily
+speech.  What riches lie hidden in the vulgar tongue of the poorest
+and most ignorant!  What flowers of Paradise lie under our feet,
+with their beauties and parts undistinguished and undiscerned, from
+having been daily trodden on!  O, sir, look you!--but let me cover
+my eyes!  Look at his lips!  Gracious Heaven! they were not thus
+when he entered.  They are blacker now than Harry Tewe's bull-
+bitch's!"
+
+Master Silas did lift up his eyes in astonishment and wrath; and his
+worship, Sir Thomas, did open his wider and wider, and cried by fits
+and starts:-
+
+"Gramercy! true enough! nay, afore God, too true by half!  I never
+saw the like!  Who would believe it?  I wish I were fairly rid of
+this examination,--my hands washed clean thereof!  Another time,--
+anon!  We have our quarterly sessions; we are many together.  At
+present I remand--"
+
+And now, indeed, unless Sir Silas had taken his worship by the
+sleeve, he would may-hap have remanded the lad.  But Sir Silas,
+still holding the sleeve and shaking it, said, hurriedly, -
+
+"Let me entreat your worship to ponder.  What black does the fellow
+talk of?  My blood and bile rose up against the rogue; but surely I
+did not turn black in the face, or in the mouth, as the fellow calls
+it?"
+
+Whether Master Silas had some suspicion and inkling of the cause or
+not, he rubbed his right hand along his face and lips, and, looking
+upon it, cried aloud, -
+
+"Ho, ho! is it off?  There is some upon my finger's end, I find.
+Now I have it,--ay, there it is.  That large splash upon the centre
+of the table is tallow, by my salvation!  The profligates sat up
+until the candle burned out, and the last of it ran through the
+socket upon the board.  We knew it before.  I did convey into my
+mouth both fat and smut!"
+
+"Many of your cloth and kidney do that, good Master Silas, and make
+no wry faces about it," quoth the youngster, with indiscreet
+merriment, although short of laughter, as became him who had already
+stepped too far and reached the mire.
+
+To save paper and time, I shall now, for the most part, write only
+what they all said, not saying that they said it, and just copying
+out in my clearest hand what fell respectively from their mouths.
+
+SIR SILAS.
+
+"I did indeed spit it forth, and emunge my lips, as who should not?"
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"Would it were so!"
+
+SIR SILAS.
+
+"WOULD IT WERE SO! in thy teeth, hypocrite!"
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"And, truly, I likewise do incline to hope and credit it, as thus
+paraphrased and expounded."
+
+WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
+
+"Wait until this blessed day next year, sir, at the same hour.  You
+shall see it forth again at its due season; it would be no miracle
+if it lasted.  Spittle may cure sore eyes, but not blasted mouths
+and scald consciences."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"Why! who taught thee all this?"
+
+Then turned he leisurely toward Sir Silas, and placing his hand
+outspreaden upon the arm of the chaplain, said unto him in a low,
+judicial, hollow voice, -
+
+"Every word true and solemn!  I have heard less wise saws from
+between black covers."
+
+Sir Silas was indignant at this under-rating, as he appeared to
+think it, of the church and its ministry, and answered impatiently,
+with Christian freedom, -
+
+"Your worship surely will not listen to this wild wizard in his
+brothel-pulpit!"
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"Do I live to hear Charlecote Hall called a brothel-pulpit?  Alas,
+then, I have lived too long!"
+
+SIR SILAS.
+
+"We will try to amend that for thee."
+
+William seemed not to hear him, loudly as he spake and pointedly
+unto the youngster, who wiped his eyes, crying, -
+
+"Commit me, sir! in mercy commit me!  Master Ephraim!  Oh, Master
+Ephraim!  A guiltless man may feel all the pangs of the guilty!  Is
+it you who are to make out the commitment?  Dispatch! dispatch.  I
+am a-weary of my life.  If I dared to lie, I would plead guilty."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"Heyday!  No wonder, Master Ephraim, thy entrails are moved and
+wamble.  Dost weep, lad?  Nay, nay; thou bearest up bravely.  Silas,
+I now find, although the example come before me from humble life,
+that what my mother said was true--'t was upon my father's demise--
+'In great grief there are few tears.'"
+
+Upon which did the youth, Willy Shakspeare, jog himself by the
+memory, and repeat these short verses, not wide from the same
+purport:
+
+
+"There are, alas, some depths of woe
+Too vast for tears to overflow."
+
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"Let those who are sadly vexed in spirit mind that notion, whoever
+indited it, and be men.  I always was; but some little griefs have
+pinched me woundily."
+
+Master Silas grew impatient, for he had ridden hard that morning,
+and had no cushion upon his seat, as Sir Thomas had.  I have seen in
+my time that he who is seated on beech-wood hath very different
+thoughts and moralities from him who is seated on goose-feathers
+under doe-skin.  But that is neither here nor there, albeit, an' I
+die, as I must, my heirs, Judith and her boy Elijah, may note it.
+
+Master Silas, as above, looked sourishly, and cried aloud, -
+
+"The witnesses! the witnesses! testimony! testimony!  We shall now
+see whose black goes deepest.  There is a fork to be had that can
+hold the slipperiest eel, and a finger that can strip the slimiest.
+I cry your worship to the witnesses."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"Ay, indeed, we are losing the day; it wastes toward noon, and
+nothing done.  Call the witnesses.  How are they called by name?
+Give me the paper."
+
+The paper being forthwith delivered into his worship's hand by the
+learned clerk, his worship did read aloud the name of Euseby Treen.
+Whereupon did Euseby Treen come forth through the great hall-door
+which was ajar, and answer most audibly, -
+
+"Your worship!"
+
+Straightway did Sir Thomas read aloud, in like form and manner, the
+name of Joseph Carnaby; and in like manner as aforesaid did Joseph
+Carnaby make answer and say, -
+
+"Your worship!"
+
+Lastly did Sir Thomas turn the light of his countenance on William
+Shakspeare, saying, -
+
+"Thou seest these good men deponents against thee, William
+Shakspeare."  And then did Sir Thomas pause.  And pending this pause
+did William Shakspeare look steadfastly in the faces of both; and
+stroking down his own with the hollow of his hand from the jaw-bone
+to the chin-point, said unto his honour, -
+
+"Faith! it would give me much pleasure, and the neighbourhood much
+vantage, to see these two fellows good men.  Joseph Carnaby and
+Euseby Treen!  Why! your worship! they know every hare's form in
+Luddington-field better than their own beds, and as well pretty nigh
+as any wench's in the parish."
+
+Then turned he with jocular scoff unto Joseph Carnaby, thus
+accosting him, whom his shirt, being made stiffer than usual for the
+occasion, rubbed and frayed, -
+
+"Ay, Joseph! smoothen and soothe thy collar-piece again and again!
+Hark ye!  I know what smock that was knavishly cut from."
+
+Master Silas rose up in high choler, and said unto Sir Thomas, -
+
+"Sir! do not listen to that lewd reviler; I wager ten groats I prove
+him to be wrong in his scent.  Joseph Carnaby is righteous and
+discreet."
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"By daylight and before the parson.  Bears and boars are tame
+creatures, and discreet, in the sunshine and after dinner."
+
+EUSEBY TREEN.
+
+"I do know his down-goings and uprisings."
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"The man and his wife are one, saith holy Scripture."
+
+EUSEBY TREEN.
+
+"A sober-paced and rigid man, if such there be.  Few keep Lent like
+unto him."
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"I warrant him, both lent and stolen."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"Peace and silence!  Now, Joseph Carnaby, do thou depose on
+particulars."
+
+JOSEPH CARNABY.
+
+"May it please your worship!  I was returning from Hampton upon
+Allhallowmas eve, between the hours of ten and eleven at night, in
+company with Master Euseby Treen; and when we came to the bottom of
+Mickle Meadow, we heard several men in discourse.  I plucked Euseby
+Treen by the doublet, and whispered in his ear, 'Euseby! Euseby! let
+us slink along in the shadow of the elms and willows.'"
+
+EUSEBY TREEN.
+
+"WILLOWS AND ELM-TREES were the words."
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"See, your worship! what discordances!  They cannot agree in their
+own story."
+
+SIR SILAS.
+
+"The same thing, the same thing, in the main."
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"By less differences than this estates have been lost, hearts
+broken, and England, our country, filled with homeless, helpless,
+destitute orphans.  I protest against it."
+
+SIR SILAS.
+
+"Protest, indeed!  He talks as if he were a member of the House of
+Lords.  They alone can protest."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"Your attorney may OBJECT, not PROTEST, before the lord judge.
+
+"Proceed you, Joseph Carnaby."
+
+JOSEPH CARNABY.
+
+"In the shadow of the willows and elm-trees, then--"
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"No hints, no conspiracies!  Keep to your own story, man, and do not
+borrow his."
+
+SIR SILAS.
+
+"I overrule the objection.  Nothing can be more futile and
+frivolous."
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"So learned a magistrate as your worship will surely do me justice
+by hearing me attentively.  I am young; nevertheless, having more
+than one year written in the office of an attorney, and having heard
+and listened to many discourses and questions on law, I cannot but
+remember the heavy fine inflicted on a gentleman of this county who
+committed a poor man to prison for being in possession of a hare, it
+being proved that the hare was in his possession, and not he in the
+hare's."
+
+SIR SILAS.
+
+"Synonymous term! synonymous term!"
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"In what term sayest thou was it?  I do not remember the case."
+
+SIR SILAS.
+
+"Mere quibble mere equivocation!  Jesuitical!  Jesuitical!"
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"It would be Jesuitical, Sir Silas, if it dragged the law by its
+perversions to the side of oppression and cruelty.  The order of
+Jesuits, I fear, is as numerous as its tenets are lax and
+comprehensive.  I am sorry to see their frocks flounced with English
+serge."
+
+SIR SILAS.
+
+"I don't understand thee, viper!"
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"Cease thou, Will Shakspeare!  Know thy place.  And do thou, Joseph
+Carnaby, take up again the thread of thy testimony."
+
+JOSEPH CARNABY.
+
+"We were still at some distance from the party, when on a sudden
+Euseby hung an --- " {21a}
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"As well write DREW BACK, Master Ephraim and Master Silas!  Be
+circumspecter in speech, Master Joseph Carnaby!  I did not look for
+such rude phrases from that starch-warehouse under thy chin.
+Continue, man!"
+
+JOSEPH CARNABY.
+
+"'Euseby,' said I in his ear, 'what ails thee, Euseby?'  'I wag no
+farther,' quoth he.  'What a number of names and voices!'"
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"Dreadful gang! a number of names and voices!  Had it been any other
+day in the year but Allhallowmas eve!  To steal a buck upon such a
+day!  Well!  God may pardon even that.  Go on, go on.  But the laws
+of our country must have their satisfaction and atonement.  Were it
+upon any other day in the calendar less holy, the buck were nothing,
+or next to nothing, saving the law and our conscience and our good
+report.  Yet we, her Majesty's justices, must stand in the gap, body
+and soul, against evil-doers.  Now do thou, in furtherance of this
+business, give thine aid unto us, Joseph Carnaby!--remembering that
+mine eye from this judgment-seat, and her Majesty's bright and
+glorious one overlooking the whole realm, and the broader of God
+above, are upon thee."
+
+Carnaby did quail a matter at these words about the judgment-seat
+and the broad eye, aptly and gravely delivered by him moreover who
+hath to administer truth and righteousness in our ancient and
+venerable laws, and especially, at the present juncture, in those
+against park-breaking and deer-stealing.  But finally, nought
+discomfited, and putting his hand valiantly atwixt hip and midriff,
+so that his elbow well-nigh touched the taller pen in the ink-pot,
+he went on.
+
+JOSEPH CARNABY.
+
+"'IN THE SHADOW OF THE WILLOWS AND ELM-TREES,' said he, 'AND GET
+NEARER.'  We were still at some distance, maybe a score of furlongs,
+from the party--"
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"Thou hast said it already--all save the score of furlongs."
+
+"Hast room for them, Master Silas?"
+
+"Yea," quoth Master Silas, "and would make room for fifty, to let
+the fellow swing at his ease."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"Hast room, Master Ephraim?"
+
+"'T is done, most worshipful!" said I.  The learned knight did not
+recollect that I could put fifty furlongs in a needle's eye, give me
+pen fine enough.
+
+But far be it from me to vaunt of my penmanship, although there be
+those who do malign it, even in my own township and parish; yet they
+never have unperched me from my calling, and have had hard work to
+take an idle wench or two from under me on Saturday nights.
+
+I memorize thus much, not out of any malice or any soreness about
+me, but that those of my kindred into whose hands it please God
+these papers do fall hereafter, may bear up stoutly in such straits;
+and if they be good at the cudgel, that they, looking first at their
+man, do give it him heartily and unsparingly, keeping within law.
+
+Sir Thomas, having overlooked what we had written, and meditated a
+while thereupon, said unto Joseph, -
+
+"It appeareth by thy testimony that there was a huge and desperate
+gang of them afoot.  Revengeful dogs! it is difficult to deal with
+them.  The laws forbid precipitancy and violence.  A dozen or two
+may return and harm me; not me, indeed, but my tenants and servants.
+I would fain act with prudence, and like unto him who looketh
+abroad.  He must tie his shoe tightly who passeth through mire; he
+must step softly who steppeth over stones; he must walk in the fear
+of the Lord (which, without a brag, I do at this present feel upon
+me), who hopeth to reach the end of the straightest road in safety."
+
+SIR SILAS.
+
+"Tut, tut! your worship!  Her Majesty's deputy hath matchlocks and
+halters at a knight's disposal, or the world were topsyturvy
+indeed."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"My mental ejaculations, and an influx of grace thereupon, have
+shaken and washed from my brain all thy last words, good Joseph!
+Thy companion here, Euseby Treen, said unto thee--ay--"
+
+JOSEPH CARNABY.
+
+"Said unto me, 'What a number of names and voices!  And there be but
+three living men in all!  And look again!  Christ deliver us! all
+the shadows save one go leftward; that one lieth right upon the
+river.  It seemeth a big, squat monster, shaking a little, as one
+ready to spring upon its prey!'"
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"A dead man in his last agonies, no doubt!  Your deer-stealer doth
+boggle at nothing.  He hath alway the knife in doublet and the devil
+at elbow.
+
+"I wot not of any keeper killed or missing.  To lose one's deer and
+keeper too were overmuch.
+
+"Do, in God's merciful name, hand unto me a glass of sack, Master
+Silas!  I wax faintish at the big, squat man.  He hath harmed not
+only me, but mine.  Furthermore, the examination is grown so long."
+
+Then was the wine delivered by Sir Silas into the hand of his
+worship, who drank it off in a beaker of about half a pint,--but
+little to his satisfaction, for he said shortly afterward, -
+
+"Hast thou poured no water into the sack, good Master Silas?  It
+seemeth weaker and washier than ordinary, and affordeth small
+comfort unto the breast and stomach."
+
+"Not I, truly, sir," replied Master Silas "and the bottle is a fresh
+and sound one.  The cork reported on drawing, as the best diver doth
+on sousing from Warwick bridge into Avon.  A rare cork! as bright as
+the glass bottle, and as smooth as the lips of any cow."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"My mouth is out of taste this morning; or the same wine, mayhap,
+hath a different force and flavor in the dining-room and among
+friends.  But to business--what more?"
+
+"Euseby Treen, what may it be?" said I.
+
+"I know," quoth he, "but dare not breathe it."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"I thought I had taken a glass of wine, verily.  Attention to my
+duty as a magistrate is paramount.  I mind nothing else when that
+lies before me.
+
+"Carnaby!  I credit thy honesty, but doubt thy manhood.  Why not
+breathe it, with a vengeance?"
+
+JOSEPH CARNABY.
+
+"It was Euseby who dared not."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"Stand still!  Say nothing yet; mind my orders.  Fair and softly!
+compose thyself."
+
+They all stood silent for some time, and looked very composed,
+awaiting the commands of the knight.  His mind was clearly in such a
+state of devotion that peradventure he might not have descended for
+a while longer to his mundane duties, had not Master Silas told him
+that, under the shadow of his wing, their courage had returned and
+they were quite composed again.
+
+"You may proceed," said the knight.
+
+JOSEPH CARNABY.
+
+"Master Treen did take off his cap and wipe his forehead.  I, for
+the sake of comforting him in this his heaviness, placed my hand
+upon his crown; and truly I might have taken it for a tuft of bents,
+the hair on end, the skin immovable as God's earth!"
+
+Sir Thomas, hearing these words, lifted up his hands above his own
+head, and in the loudest voice he had yet uttered did he cry, -
+
+"Wonderful are thy ways in Israel, O Lord!"
+
+So saying, the pious knight did strike his knee with the palm of his
+right hand; and then gave he a sign, bowing his head and closing his
+eyes, by which Master Carnaby did think he signified his pleasure
+that he should go on deposing.  And he went on thus:-
+
+JOSEPH CARNABY.
+
+"At this moment one of the accomplices cried, 'Willy!  Willy!
+prithee stop! enough in all conscience!  First thou divertedst us
+from our undertaking with thy strange vagaries, thy Italian girls'
+nursery sigh, thy Pucks and pinchings, and thy Windsor whimsies.  No
+kitten upon a bed of marum ever played such antics.  It was summer
+and winter, night and day with us within the hour; and in such
+religion did we think and feel it, we would have broken the man's
+jaw who gainsaid it.  We have slept with thee under the oaks in the
+ancient forest of Arden, and we have wakened from our sleep in the
+tempest far at sea. {29a}  Now art thou for frightening us again out
+of all the senses thou hadst given us, with witches and women more
+murderous than they.'
+
+"Then followed a deeper voice:  'Stouter men and more resolute are
+few; but thou, my lad, hast words too weighty for flesh and bones to
+bear up against.  And who knows but these creatures may pop amongst
+us at last, as the wolf did, sure enough, upon him, the noisy rogue,
+who so long had been crying WOLF! and WOLF!
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"Well spoken, for two thieves; albeit I miss the meaning of the most
+part.  Did they prevail with the scapegrace and stop him?"
+
+JOSEPH CARNABY.
+
+"The last who had spoken did slap him on the shoulder, saying, 'Jump
+into the punt, lad, and across.'  Thereupon did Will Shakspeare jump
+into said punt, and begin to sing a song about a mermaid."
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"Sir! is this credible?  I will be sworn I never saw one; and verily
+do believe that scarcely one in a hundred years doth venture so far
+up the Avon."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"There is something in this.  Thou mayest have sung about one,
+nevertheless.  Young poets take great liberties with all female
+kind; not that mermaids are such very unlawful game for them, and
+there be songs even about worse and staler fish.  Mind ye that!
+Thou hast written songs, and hast sung them, and lewd enough they
+be, God wot!"
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"Pardon me, your worship! they were not mine then.  Peradventure the
+song about the mermaid may have been that ancient one which every
+boy in most parishes has been singing for many years, and, perhaps,
+his father before him; and somebody was singing it then, mayhap, to
+keep up his courage in the night."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"I never heard it."
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"Nobody would dare to sing in the presence of your worship, unless
+commanded,--not even the mermaid herself."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"Canst thou sing it?
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"Verily, I can sing nothing."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"Canst thou repeat it from memory?"
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"It is so long since I have thought about it, that I may fail in the
+attempt."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"Try, however."
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"'The mermaid sat upon the rocks
+   All day long,
+Admiring her beauty and combing her locks,
+   And singing a mermaid song.'"
+
+SIR THOMAS
+
+"What was it? what was it?  I thought as much.  There thou standest,
+like a woodpecker, chattering and chattering, breaking the bark with
+thy beak, and leaving the grub where it was.  This is enough to put
+a saint out of patience."
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"The wishes of your worship possess a mysterious influence,--I now
+remember all.
+
+"'And hear the mermaid's song you may,
+   As sure as sure can be,
+If you will but follow the sun all day,
+   And souse with him into the sea.'"
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"It must be an idle fellow who would take that trouble; besides,
+unless he nicked the time he might miss the monster.  There be many
+who are slow to believe that the mermaid singeth."
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"Ah sir! not only the mermaid singeth, but the merman sweareth, as
+another old song will convince you."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"I would fain be convinced of God's wonders in the great deeps, and
+would lean upon the weakest reed like unto thee to manifest his
+glory.  Thou mayest convince me."
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+1.
+
+"'A wonderful story, my lasses and lads,
+Peradventure you've heard from your grannams or dads,
+Of a merman that came every night to woo
+The spinster of spinsters, our Catherine Crewe.
+
+2.
+
+      "'But Catherine Crewe
+      Is now seventy-two,
+   And avers she hath half forgotten
+The truth of the tale, when you ask her about it,
+And says, as if fain to deny it or flout it,
+   "POOH! THE MERMAN IS DEAD AND ROTTEN."
+
+3.
+
+"'The merman came up as the mermen are wont,
+To the top of the water, and then swam upon 't;
+And Catherine saw him with both her two eyes,
+A lusty young merman full six feet in size.
+
+4.
+
+      "'And Catherine was frighten'd,
+      Her scalp-skin it tighten'd,
+And her head it swam strangely, although on dry land;
+   And the merman made bold
+   Eftsoons to lay hold
+(THIS Catherine well recollects) of her hand.
+
+5.
+
+"'But how could a merman, if ever so good,
+Or if ever so clever, be well understood
+By a simple young creature of our flesh and blood?
+
+6.
+
+      "'Some tell us the merman
+      Can only speak German,
+   In a voice between grunting and snoring;
+But Catherine says he had learned in the wars
+The language, persuasions, and oaths of our tars,
+   And that even his voice was not foreign.
+
+7.
+
+"'Yet when she was asked how he managed to hide
+The green fishy tail, coming out of the tide
+   For night after night above twenty,
+"You troublesome creatures!" old Catherine replied,
+   "IN HIS POCKET; won't that now content ye?"'"
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"I have my doubts yet.  I should have said unto her, seriously,
+'Kate!  Kate!  I am not convinced.'  There may be witchcraft or
+sortilege in it.  I would have made it a star-chamber matter."
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"It was one, sir."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"And now I am reminded by this silly, childish song,--which, after
+all, is not the true mermaid's,--thou didst tell me, Silas, that the
+papers found in the lad's pocket were intended for poetry."
+
+SIR SILAS.
+
+"I wish he had missed his aim, sir, in your park, as he hath missed
+it in his poetry.  The papers are not worth reading; they do not go
+against him in the point at issue."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"We must see that,--they being taken upon his person when
+apprehended."
+
+SIR SILAS.
+
+"Let Ephraim read them, then; it behooveth not me, a Master of Arts,
+to con a whelp's whining."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"Do thou read them aloud unto us, good Master Ephraim."
+
+Whereupon I took the papers which young Willy had not bestowed much
+pains on; and they posed and puzzled me grievously, for they were
+blotted and scrawled in many places, as if somebody had put him out.
+These likewise I thought fit, after long consideration, to write
+better, and preserve, great as the loss of time is when men of
+business take in hand such unseemly matters.  However, they are
+decenter than most, and not without their moral; for example:-
+
+
+"TO THE OWLET.
+
+"Who, O thou sapient, saintly bird!
+Thy shouted warnings ever heard
+      Unbleached by fear?
+The blue-faced blubbering imp, who steals
+Yon turnips, thinks thee at his heels,
+      Afar or near.
+
+"The brawnier churl, who brags at times
+To front and top the rankest crimes, -
+      To paunch a deer,
+Quarter a priest, or squeeze a wench, -
+Scuds from thee, clammy as a tench,
+      He knows not where.
+
+"For this the righteous Lord of all
+Consigns to thee the castle-wall,
+      When, many a year,
+Closed in the chancel-vaults, are eyes
+Rainy or sunny at the sighs
+      Of knight or peer."
+
+
+Sir Thomas, when I had ended, said unto me,
+
+"No harm herein; but are they over?"
+
+I replied, "Yea, sir!"
+
+"I miss the POSY," quoth he; "there is usually a lump of sugar, or a
+smack thereof at the bottom of the glass.  They who are
+inexperienced in poetry do write it as boys do their copies in the
+copy-book, without a flourish at the finis.  It is only the master
+who can do this befittingly."
+
+I bowed unto his worship reverentially, thinking of a surety he
+meant me, and returned my best thanks in set language.  But his
+worship rebuffed them, and told me graciously that he had an eye on
+another of very different quality; that the plain sense of his
+discourse might do for me, the subtler was certainly for himself.
+He added that in his younger days he had heard from a person of
+great parts, and had since profited by it, that ordinary poets are
+like adders,--the tail blunt and the body rough, and the whole
+reptile cold-blooded and sluggish:  "whereas we," he subjoined,
+"leap and caracole and curvet, and are as warm as velvet, and as
+sleek as satin, and as perfumed as a Naples fan, in every part of
+us; and the end of our poems is as pointed as a perch's back-fin,
+and it requires as much nicety to pick it up as a needle{38a} at
+nine groats the hundred."
+
+Then turning toward the culprit, he said mildly unto him, -
+
+"Now why canst thou not apply thyself unto study?  Why canst thou
+not ask advice of thy superiors in rank and wisdom?  In a few years,
+under good discipline, thou mightest rise from the owlet unto the
+peacock.  I know not what pleasant things might not come into the
+youthful head thereupon.
+
+"He was the bird of Venus, {39b} goddess of beauty.  He flew down (I
+speak as a poet, and not in my quality of knight and Christian) with
+half the stars of heaven upon his tail; and his long, blue neck doth
+verily appear a dainty slice out of the solid sky."
+
+Sir Silas smote me with his elbow, and said in my ear, -
+
+"He wanteth not this stuffing; he beats a pheasant out of the
+kitchen, to my mind, take him only at the pheasant's size, and don't
+(upon your life) overdo him.
+
+"Never be cast down in spirit, nor take it too 'grievously to heart,
+if the colour be a suspicion of the pinkish,--no sign of rawness in
+that; none whatever.  It is as becoming to him as to the salmon; it
+is as natural to your pea-chick in his best cookery, as it is to the
+finest October morning,--moist underfoot, when partridge's and
+puss's and renard's scent lies sweetly."
+
+Willie Shakspeare, in the mean time, lifted up his hands above his
+ears half a cubit, and taking breath again, said, audibly, although
+he willed it to be said unto himself alone, -
+
+"O that knights could deign to be our teachers!  Methinks I should
+briefly spring up into heaven, through the very chink out of which
+the peacock took his neck."
+
+Master Silas, who like myself and the worshipful knight, did
+overhear him, said angrily, -
+
+"To spring up into heaven, my lad, it would be as well to have at
+least one foot upon the ground to make the spring withal.  I doubt
+whether we shall leave thee this vantage."
+
+"Nay, nay! thou art hard upon him, Silas," said the knight.
+
+I was turning over the other papers taken from the pocket of the
+culprit on his apprehension, and had fixed my eyes on one, when Sir
+Thomas caught them thus occupied, and exclaimed, -
+
+" Mercy upon us! have we more?"
+
+"Your patience, worshipful sir!" said I; "must I forward?"
+
+"Yea, yea," quoth he, resignedly, "we must go through; we are
+pilgrims in this life."
+
+Then did I read, in a clear voice, the contents of paper the second,
+being as followeth:-
+
+
+"THE MAID'S LAMENT.
+
+"I loved him not; and yet, now he is gone,
+   I feel I am alone.
+I check'd him while he spoke; yet, could he speak,
+   Alas! I would not check.
+For reasons not to love him once I sought,
+   And wearied all my thought
+To vex myself and him:  I now would give
+   My love could he but live
+Who lately lived for me, and when he found
+   'T was vain, in holy ground
+He hid his face amid the shades of death!
+   I waste for him my breath
+Who wasted his for me! but mine returns,
+   And this loin bosom burns
+With stifling heat, heaving it up in sleep,
+   And waking me to weep
+Tears that had melted his soft heart.  For years
+   Wept he as bitter tears!
+MERCIFUL GOD! such was his latest prayer,
+   THESE MAY SHE NEVER SHARE!
+Quieter is his breath, his breast more cold,
+   Than daisies in the mould,
+Where children spell, athwart the churchyard gate,
+   His name and life's brief date.
+Pray for him, gentle souls, whoe'er you be,
+   And, oh! pray too for me!"
+
+
+Sir Thomas had fallen into a most comfortable and refreshing slumber
+ere this lecture was concluded; but the pause broke it, as there be
+many who experience after the evening service in our parish-church.
+Howbeit, he had presently all his wits about him, and remembered
+well that he had been carefully counting the syllables, about the
+time when I had pierced as far as into the middle.
+
+"Young man," said he to Willy, "thou givest short measure in every
+other sack of the load.  Thy uppermost stake is of right length; the
+undermost falleth off, methinks.
+
+"Master Ephraim, canst thou count syllables?  I mean no offence.  I
+may have counted wrongfully myself, not being born nor educated for
+an accountant."
+
+At such order I did count; and truly the suspicion was as just as if
+he had neither been a knight nor a sleeper.
+
+"Sad stuff! sad stuff, indeed!" said Master Silas, "and smelling of
+popery and wax-candles."
+
+"Ay?" said Sir Thomas, "I must sift that."
+
+"If praying for the dead is not popery," said Master Silas, "I know
+not what the devil is.  Let them pray for us; they may know whether
+it will do us any good.  We need not pray for them; we cannot tell
+whether it will do them any.  I call this sound divinity."
+
+"Are our churchmen all agreed thereupon?" asked Sir Thomas.
+
+"The wisest are," replied Master Silas.
+
+"There are some lank rascals who will never agree upon anything but
+upon doubting.  I would not give ninepence for the best gown upon
+the most thrifty of 'em; and their fingers are as stiff and hard
+with their pedlary, knavish writing, as any bishop's are with chalk-
+stones won honestly from the gout."
+
+Sir Thomas took the paper up from the table on which I had laid it,
+and said after a while, -
+
+"The man may only have swooned.  I scorn to play the critic, or to
+ask any one the meaning of a word; but, sirrah!"
+
+Here he turned in his chair from the side of Master Silas, and said
+unto Willy, -
+
+"William Shakspeare! out of this thraldom in regard to popery, I
+hope, by God's blessing, to deliver thee.  If ever thou repeatest
+the said verses, knowing the man to be to all intents and purposes a
+dead man, prythee read the censurable line as thus corrected, -
+
+
+'Pray for our Virgin Queen, gentles! whoe'er you be.'
+
+
+although it is not quite the thing that another should impinge so
+closely on her skirts.
+
+"By this improvement, of me suggested, thou mayest make some amends-
+-a syllable or two--for the many that are weighed in the balance and
+are found wanting."
+
+Then turning unto me, as being conversant by my profession in such
+matters, and the same being not very worthy of learned and staid
+clerks the like of Master Silas, he said, -
+
+"Of all the youths that did ever write in verse, this one verily is
+he who hath the fewest flowers and devices.  But it would be loss of
+time to form a border, in the fashion of a kingly crown, or a
+dragon, or a Turk on horseback, out of buttercups and dandelions.
+
+"Master Ephraim! look at these badgers! with a long leg on one
+quarter and a short leg on the other.  The wench herself might well
+and truly have said all that matter without the poet, bating the
+rhymes and metre.  Among the girls in the country there are many
+such SHILLY-SHALLYS, who give themselves sore eyes and sharp eye-
+water; I would cure them rod in hand."
+
+Whereupon did William Shakspeare say, with great humility, -
+
+"So would I, may it please your worship, an they would let me."
+
+"Incorrigible sluts!  Out upon 'em! and thou art no better than they
+are," quoth the knight.
+
+Master Silas cried aloud, "No better, marry! they at the worst are
+but carted and whipped for the edification of the market-folks.
+{44a}  Not a squire or parson in the country round but comes in his
+best to see a man hanged."
+
+"The edification then is higher by a deal," said William, very
+composedly.
+
+"Troth! is it," replied Master Silas.  "The most poisonous reptile
+has the richest jewel in his head; thou shalt share the richest gift
+bestowed upon royalty, and shalt cure the king's evil." {45a}
+
+"It is more tractable, then, than the church's," quoth William; and,
+turning his face toward the chair, he made an obeisance to Sir
+Thomas, saying, -
+
+"Sir! the more submissive my behaviour is, the more vehement and
+boisterous is Master Silas.  My gentlest words serve only to carry
+him toward the contrary quarter, as the south wind bloweth a ship
+northward."
+
+"Youth," said Sir Thomas, smiling most benignly, "I find, and well
+indeed might I have surmised, thy utter ignorance of winds,
+equinoxes, and tides.  Consider now a little!  With what propriety
+can a wind be called a south wind if it bloweth a vessel to the
+north?  Would it be a south wind that blew it from this hall into
+Warwick market-place?"
+
+"It would be a strong one," said Master Silas unto me, pointing his
+remark, as witty men are wont, with the elbow-pan.
+
+But Sir Thomas, who waited for an answer, and received none,
+continued, -
+
+"Would a man be called a good man who tended and pushed on toward
+evil?"
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"I stand corrected.  I could sail to Cathay or Tartary {46a} with
+half the nautical knowledge I have acquired in this glorious hall.
+
+"The devil impelling a mortal to wrong courses, is thereby known to
+be the devil.  He, on the contrary, who exciteth to good is no
+devil, but an angel of light, or under the guidance of one.  The
+devil driveth unto his own home; so doth the south wind, so doth the
+north wind.
+
+"Alas! alas! we possess not the mastery over our own weak minds when
+a higher spirit standeth nigh and draweth us within his influence."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"Those thy words are well enough,--very well, very good, wise,
+discreet, judicious beyond thy years.  But then that SAILING comes
+in an awkward, ugly way across me,--that CATHAY, that TARTARUS!
+
+"Have a care!  Do thou nothing rashly.  Mind! an thou stealest my
+punt for the purpose, I send the constable after thee or e'er thou
+art half way over."
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"He would make a stock-fish of me an he caught me.  It is hard
+sailing out of his straits, although they be carefully laid down in
+most parishes, and may have taken them from actual survey."
+
+SIR SILAS.
+
+"Sir, we have bestowed on him already well-nigh a good hour of our
+time."
+
+Sir Thomas, who was always fond of giving admonition and reproof to
+the ignorant and erring, and who had found the seeds (little
+mustard-seeds, 't is true, and never likely to arise into the great
+mustard-tree of the Gospel) in the poor lad Willy, did let his heart
+soften a whit tenderer and kindlier than Master Silas did, and said
+unto Master Silas, -
+
+"A good hour of our time!  Yea, Silas! and thou wouldst give HIM
+eternity!"
+
+"What, sir! would you let him go?" said Master Silas.  "Presently we
+shall have neither deer nor dog, neither hare nor coney, neither
+swan nor heron; every carp from pool, every bream from brook, will
+be groped for.  The marble monuments in the church will no longer
+protect the leaden coffins; and if there be any ring of gold on the
+finger of knight or dame, it will be torn away with as little ruth
+and ceremony as the ring from a butchered sow's snout."
+
+"Awful words!  Master Silas," quoth the knight, musing; "but thou
+mistakest my intentions.  I let him not go; howbeit, at worst I
+would only mark him in the ear, and turn him up again after this
+warning, peradventure with a few stripes to boot athwart the
+shoulders, in order to make them shrug a little, and shake off the
+burden of idleness."
+
+Now I, having seen, I dare not say the innocence, but the innocent
+and simple manner of Willy, and pitying his tender years, and having
+an inkling that he was a lad, poor Willy! whom God had endowed with
+some parts, and into whose breast he had instilled that milk of
+loving-kindness by which alone we can be like unto those little
+children of whom is the household and kingdom of our Lord,--I was
+moved, yea, even unto tears.  And now, to bring gentler thoughts
+into the hearts of Master Silas and Sir Thomas, who, in his wisdom,
+deemed it a light punishment to slit an ear or two, or inflict a
+wiry scourging, I did remind his worship that another paper was yet
+unread, at least to them, although I had been perusing it.
+
+This was much pleasanter than the two former, and overflowing with
+the praises of the worthy knight and his gracious lady; and having
+an echo to it in another voice, I did hope thereby to disarm their
+just wrath and indignation.  It was thus couched:-
+
+
+"FIRST SHEPHERD.
+
+"Jesu! what lofty elms are here!
+Let me look through them at the clear,
+Deep sky above, and bless my star
+That such a worthy knight's they are!
+
+"SECOND SHEPHERD.
+
+"Innocent creatures! how those deer
+Trot merrily, and romp and rear!
+
+"FIRST SHEPHERD.
+
+"The glorious knight who walks beside
+His most majestic lady bride,
+
+"SECOND SHEPHERD.
+
+"Under these branches spreading wide,
+
+"FIRST SHEPHERD.
+
+"Carries about so many cares
+Touching his ancestors and heirs,
+That came from Athens and from Rome -
+
+"SECOND SHEPHERD.
+
+"As many of them as are come -
+
+"FIRST SHEPHERD.
+
+"Nought else the smallest lodge can find
+In the vast manors of his mind;
+Envying not Solomon his wit -
+
+"SECOND SHEPHERD.
+
+"No, nor his women not a bit;
+Being well-built and well-behaved
+As Solomon, I trow, or David.
+
+"FIRST SHEPHERD.
+
+"And taking by his jewell'd hand
+The jewel of that lady bland,
+He sees the tossing antlers pass
+And throw quaint shadows o'er the grass;
+While she alike the hour beguiles,
+And looks at him and them, and smiles.
+
+"SECOND SHEPHERD.
+
+"With conscience proof 'gainst Satan's shock,
+Albeit finer than her smock, {50a}
+Marry! her smiles are not of vanity,
+But resting on sound Christianity.
+Faith, you would swear, had nail'd {50b} her ears on
+The book and cushion of the parson."
+
+
+"Methinks the rhyme at the latter end might be bettered," said Sir
+Thomas.  "The remainder is indited not unaptly.  But, young man,
+never having obtained the permission of my honourable dame to praise
+her in guise of poetry, I cannot see all the merit I would fain
+discern in the verses.  She ought first to have been sounded; and it
+being certified that she disapproved not her glorification, then
+might it be trumpeted forth into the world below."
+
+"Most worshipful knight," replied the youngster, "I never could take
+it in hand to sound a dame of quality,--they are all of them too
+deep and too practised for me, and have better and abler men about
+'em.  And surely I did imagine to myself that if it were asked of
+any honourable man (omitting to speak of ladies) whether he would
+give permission to be openly praised, he would reject the
+application as a gross offence.  It appeareth to me that even to
+praise one's self, although it be shameful, is less shameful than to
+throw a burning coal into the incense-box that another doth hold to
+waft before us, and then to snift and simper over it, with maidenly,
+wishful coyness, as if forsooth one had no hand in setting it
+asmoke."
+
+Then did Sir Thomas, in his zeal to instruct the ignorant, and so
+make the lowly hold up their heads, say unto him, -
+
+"Nay, but all the great do thus.  Thou must not praise them without
+leave and license.  Praise unpermitted is plebeian praise.  It is
+presumption to suppose that thou knowest enough of the noble and the
+great to discover their high qualities.  They alone could manifest
+them unto thee.  It requireth much discernment and much time to
+enucleate and bring into light their abstruse wisdom and gravely
+featured virtues.  Those of ordinary men lie before thee in thy
+daily walks; thou mayest know them by converse at their tables, as
+thou knowest the little tame squirrel that chippeth his nuts in the
+open sunshine of a bowling-green.  But beware how thou enterest the
+awful arbours of the great, who conceal their magnanimity in the
+depths of their hearts, as lions do."
+
+He then paused; and observing the youth in deep and earnest
+meditation over the fruits of his experience, as one who tasted and
+who would fain digest them; he gave him encouragement, and relieved
+the weight of his musings by kind interrogation.
+
+"So, then, these verses are thine own?"  The youth answered, -
+
+"Sir, I must confess my fault."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"And who was the shepherd written here Second Shepherd, that had the
+ill manners to interrupt thee?  Methinks, in helping thee to mount
+the saddle, he pretty nigh tossed thee over, {53a} with his jerks
+and quirks."
+
+Without waiting for any answer, his worship continued his
+interrogations.
+
+"But do you woolstaplers call yourselves by the style and title of
+shepherds?"
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"Verily, sir, do we; and I trust by right.  The last owner of any
+place is called the master more properly than the dead and gone who
+once held it.  If that be true (and who doubts it?) we, who have the
+last of the sheep, namely, the wool and skin, and who buy all of all
+the flock, surely may more properly be called shepherds than those
+idle vagrants who tend them only for a season, selling a score or
+purchasing a score, as may happen."
+
+Here Sir Thomas did pause a while, and then said unto Master Silas,
+-
+
+"My own cogitations, and not this stripling, have induced me to
+consider and to conclude a weighty matter for knightly scholarship.
+I never could rightly understand before how Colin Clout, and sundry
+others calling themselves shepherds, should argue like doctors in
+law, physic, and divinity.
+
+"Silas! they were woolstaplers; and they must have exercised their
+wits in dealing with tithe-proctors and parsons, and moreover with
+fellows of colleges from our two learned universities, who have
+sundry lands held under them, as thou knowest, and take the small
+tithes in kind.  Colin Clout, methinks, from his extensive learning,
+might have acquired enough interest with the Queen's Highness to
+change his name for the better, and, furthermore, her royal license
+to carry armorial bearings, in no peril of taint from so unsavoury
+an appellation."
+
+Master Silas did interrupt this discourse, by saying, -
+
+"May it please your worship, the constable is waiting."
+
+Whereat Sir Thomas said, tartly, -
+
+"And let him wait." {55a}
+
+Then to me, -
+
+"I hope we have done with verses, and are not to be befooled by the
+lad's nonsense touching mermaids or worse creatures."
+
+Then to Will, -
+
+"William Shakspeare! we live in a Christian land, a land of great
+toleration and forbearance.  Three score cartsful of fagots a year
+are fully sufficient to clear our English air from every pestilence
+of heresy and witchcraft.  It hath not alway been so, God wot!
+Innocent and guilty took their turns before the fire, like geese and
+capons.  The spit was never cold; the cook's sleeve was ever above
+the elbow.  Countrymen came down from distant villages into towns
+and cities, to see perverters whom they had never heard of, and to
+learn the righteousness of hatred.  When heretics waxed fewer the
+religious began to grumble that God, in losing his enemies, had also
+lost his avengers.
+
+"Do not thou, William Shakspeare, dig the hole for thy own stake.
+If thou canst not make men wise, do not make them merry at thy cost.
+We are not to be paganised any more.  Having struck from our
+calendars, and unnailed from our chapels, many dozens of decent
+saints, with as little compunction and remorse as unlucky lads throw
+frog-spawn and tadpoles out of stagnant ditches, never let us think
+of bringing back among us the daintier divinities they ousted.  All
+these are the devil's imps, beautiful as they appear in what we
+falsely call works of genius, which really and truly are the devil's
+own,--statues more graceful than humanity, pictures more living than
+life, eloquence that raised single cities above empires, poor men
+above kings.  If these are not Satan's works, where are they?  I
+will tell thee where they are likewise.  In holding vain converse
+with false gods.  The utmost we can allow in propriety is to call a
+knight Phoebus, and a dame Diana.  They are not meat for every
+trencher.
+
+"We must now proceed straightforward with the business on which thou
+comest before us.  What further sayest thou, witness?"
+
+EUSEBY TREEN.
+
+"His face was toward me; I saw it clearly.  The graver man followed
+him into the punt, and said, roughly, 'We shall get hanged as sure
+as thou pipest.'
+
+"Whereunto he answered, -
+
+
+'Naturally, as fall upon the ground
+The leaves in winter and the girls in spring.'
+
+
+And then began he again with the mermaid; whereat the graver man
+clapped a hand before his mouth, and swore he should take her in
+wedlock, to have and to hold, if he sang another stave.  'And thou
+shalt be her pretty little bridemaid,' quoth he gaily to the graver
+man, chucking him under the chin."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"And what did Carnaby say unto thee, or what didst thou say unto
+Carnaby?"
+
+EUSEBY TREEN.
+
+"Carnaby said unto me, somewhat tauntingly, 'The big squat man, that
+lay upon thy bread-basket like a nightmare, is a punt at last, it
+seems.'
+
+"'Punt, and more too,' answered I.  'Tarry awhile, and thou shalt
+see this punt (so let me call it) lead them into temptation, and
+swamp them or carry them to the gallows; I would not stay else.'
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"And what didst thou, Joseph Carnaby?"
+
+JOSEPH CARNABY.
+
+"Finding him neither slack nor shy, I readily tarried.  We knelt
+down opposite each other, and said our prayers; and he told me he
+was now comfortable.  'The evil one,' said he, 'hath enough to mind
+yonder:  he shall not hurt us.'
+
+"Never was a sweeter night, had there been but some mild ale under
+it, which any one would have sworn it was made for.  The milky way
+looked like a long drift of hail-stones on a sunny ridge."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"Hast thou done describing?"
+
+JOSEPH CARNABY.
+
+"Yea, an please your worship."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"God's blessing be upon thee, honest Carnaby!  I feared a moon-fall.
+In our days nobody can think about a plum-pudding but the moon comes
+down upon it.  I warrant ye this lad here hath as many moons in his
+poems as the Saracens had in their banners."
+
+WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
+
+"I have not hatched mine yet, sir.  Whenever I do I trust it will be
+worth taking to market."
+
+JOSEPH CARNABY.
+
+"I said all I know of the stars; but Master Euseby can run over half
+a score and upward, here and there.  'Am I right, or wrong?' cried
+he, spreading on the back of my hand all his fingers, stiff as
+antlers and cold as icicles.  'Look up, Joseph! Joseph! there is no
+Lucifer in the firmament!'  I myself did feel queerish and qualmy
+upon hearing that a star was missing, being no master of gainsaying
+it; and I abased my eyes, and entreated of Euseby to do in like
+manner.  And in this posture did we both of us remain; and the
+missing star did not disquiet me; and all the others seemed as if
+they knew us and would not tell of us; and there was peace and
+pleasantness over sky and earth.  And I said to my companion, -
+
+"'How quiet now, good Master Euseby, are all God's creatures in this
+meadow, because they never pry into such high matters, but breathe
+sweetly among the pig-nuts.  The only things we hear or see stirring
+are the glow-worms and dormice, as though they were sent for our
+edification, teaching us to rest contented with our own little
+light, and to come out and seek our sustenance where none molest or
+thwart us'"
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"Ye would have it thus, no doubt, when your pockets and pouches are
+full of gins and nooses."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"A bridle upon thy dragon's tongue!  And do thou, Master Joseph,
+quit the dormice and glow-worms, and tell us whither did the rogues
+go."
+
+JOSEPH CARNABY.
+
+"I wot not after they had crossed the river they were soon out of
+sight and hearing."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"Went they toward Charlecote?"
+
+JOSEPH CARNABY.
+
+"Their first steps were thitherward."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"Did they come back unto the punt?"
+
+JOSEPH CARNABY.
+
+"They went down the stream in it, and crossed the Avon some
+fourscore yards below where we were standing.  They came back in it,
+and moored it to the sedges in which it had stood before."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"How long were they absent?"
+
+JOSEPH CARNABY.
+
+"Within an hour, or thereabout, all the three men returned.  Will
+Shakspeare and another were sitting in the middle, the third punted.
+
+"'Remember now, gentles!' quoth William Shakspeare, 'the road we
+have taken is henceforward a footpath for ever, according to law.'
+
+"'How so?' asked the punter, turning toward him,
+
+"'Forasmuch as a corpse hath passed along it,' answered he.
+
+"Whereupon both Euseby and myself did forthwith fall upon our faces,
+commending our souls unto the Lord."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"It was then really the dead body that quivered so fearfully upon
+the water, covering all the punt!  Christ, deliver us!  I hope the
+keeper they murdered was not Jeremiah.  His wife and four children
+would be very chargeable, and the man was by no means amiss.
+Proceed! what further?"
+
+"On reaching the bank, 'I never sat pleasanter in my lifetime,' said
+William Shakspeare, 'than upon this carcass.'"
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"Lord have mercy upon us!  Thou upon a carcass, at thy years!"
+
+And the knight drew back his chair half an ell farther from the
+table, and his lips quivered at the thought of such inhumanity.
+
+"And what said he more? and what did he?" asked the knight.
+
+JOSEPH CARNABY.
+
+"He patted it smartly, and said, 'Lug it out; break it.'"
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"These four poor children! who shall feed them?"
+
+SIR SILAS.
+
+"Sir! in God's name have you forgotten that Jeremiah is gone to
+Nuneaton to see his father, and that the murdered man is the buck?"
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"They killed the buck likewise.  But what, ye cowardly varlets! have
+ye been deceiving me all this time?  And thou, youngster! couldst
+thou say nothing to clear up the case?  Thou shalt smart for it.
+Methought I had lost by a violent death the best servant ever man
+had--righteous, if there be no blame in saying it, as the prophet
+whose name he beareth, and brave as the lion of Judah."
+
+WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
+
+"Sir, if these men could deceive your worship for a moment, they
+might deceive me for ever.  I could not guess what their story aimed
+at, except my ruin.  I am inclined to lean for once toward the
+opinion of Master Silas, and to believe it was really the stolen
+buck on which this William (if indeed there is any truth at all in
+the story) was sitting."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"What more hast thou for me that is not enigma or parable?"
+
+JOSEPH CARNABY.
+
+"I did not see the carcass, man's or beast's, may it please your
+worship, and I have recited and can recite that only which I saw and
+heard.  After the words of lugging out and breaking it, knives were
+drawn accordingly.  It was no time to loiter or linger.  We crope
+back under the shadow of the alders and hazels on the high bank that
+bordereth Mickle Meadow, and, making straight for the public road,
+hastened homeward."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"Hearing this deposition, dost thou affirm the like upon thy oath,
+Master Euseby Treen, or dost thou vary in aught essential?"
+
+EUSEBY TREEN.
+
+"Upon my oath I do depose and affirm the like, and truly the
+identical same; and I will never more vary upon aught essential."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"I do now further demand of thee whether thou knowest anything more
+appertaining unto this business."
+
+EUSEBY TREEN.
+
+"Ay, verily; that your worship may never hold me for timorsome and
+superstitious, I do furthermore add that some other than deer-
+stealers was abroad.  In sign whereof, although it was the dryest
+and clearest night of the season, my jerkin was damp inside and
+outside when I reached my house-door."
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"I warrant thee, Euseby, the damp began not at the outside.  A word
+in thy ear--Lucifer was thy tapster, I trow."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"Irreverent swine! hast no awe nor shame.  Thou hast aggravated thy
+offence, William Shakspeare, by thy foul-mouthedness."
+
+SIR SILAS.
+
+"I must remind your worship that he not only has committed this
+iniquity afore, but hath pawed the puddle he made, and relapsed into
+it after due caution and reproof.  God forbid that what he spake
+against me, out of the gall of his proud stomach, should move me.  I
+defy him, a low, ignorant wretch, a rogue and vagabond, a thief and
+cut-throat, a -- {66a} monger and mutton-eater."
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"Your worship doth hear the learned clerk's testimony in my behalf.
+'Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings'--"
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"Silas, the youth has failings--a madcap; but he is pious."
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"Alas, no, sir!  Would I were!  But Sir Silas, like the prophet,
+came to curse, and was forced to bless me, even me, a sinner, a
+mutton-eater!"
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"Thou urgedst him.  He beareth no ill-will toward thee.  Thou
+knewedst, I suspect, that the blackness in his mouth proceeded from
+a natural cause."
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"The Lord is merciful!  I was brought hither in jeopardy; I shall
+return in joy.  Whether my innocence be declared or otherwise, my
+piety and knowledge will be forwarded and increased; for your
+worship will condescend, even from the judgment-seat, to enlighten
+the ignorant where a soul shall be saved or lost.  And I, even I,
+may trespass a moment on your courtesy.  I quail at the words
+NATURAL CAUSE.  Be there any such?"
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"Youth!  I never thought thee so staid.  Thou hast, for these many
+months, been represented unto me as one dissolute and light, much
+given unto mummeries and mysteries, wakes and carousals, cudgel-
+fighters and mountebanks and wanton women.  They do also represent
+of thee--I hope it may be without foundation--that thou enactest the
+parts, not simply of foresters and fairies, girls in the green-
+sickness and friars, lawyers and outlaws, but likewise, having small
+reverence for station, of kings and queens, knights and privy-
+counsellors, in all their glory.  It hath been whispered, moreover,
+and the testimony of these two witnesses doth appear in some measure
+to countenance and confirm it, that thou hast at divers times this
+last summer been seen and heard alone, inasmuch as human eye may
+discover, on the narrow slip of greensward between the Avon and the
+chancel, distorting thy body like one possessed, and uttering
+strange language, like unto incantation.  This, however, cometh not
+before me.  Take heed! take heed unto thy ways; there are graver
+things in law even than homicide and deer-stealing."
+
+SIR SILAS.
+
+"And strong against him.  Folks have been consumed at the stake for
+pettier felonies and upon weaker evidence."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"To that anon."
+
+William Shakspeare did hold down his head, answering nought.  And
+Sir Thomas spake again unto him, as one mild and fatherly, if so be
+that such a word may be spoken of a knight and parliament-man.  And
+these are the words he spake:-
+
+"Reason and ruminate with thyself now.  To pass over and pretermit
+the danger of representing the actions of the others, and mainly of
+lawyers and churchmen, the former of whom do pardon no offences, and
+the latter those only against God, having no warrant for more, canst
+thou believe it innocent to counterfeit kings and queens?  Supposest
+thou that if the impression of their faces on a farthing be
+felonious and rope-worthy, the imitation of head and body, voice and
+bearing, plume and strut, crown and mantle, and everything else that
+maketh them royal and glorious, be aught less?  Perpend, young man,
+perpend!  Consider, who among inferior mortals shall imitate them
+becomingly?  Dreamest thou they talk and act like checkmen at
+Banbury fair?  How can thy shallow brain suffice for their vast
+conceptions?  How darest thou say, as they do:  'Hang this fellow;
+quarter that; flay; mutilate; stab; shoot; press; hook; torture;
+burn alive'?  These are royalties.  Who appointed thee to such
+office?  The Holy Ghost?  He alone can confer it; but when wert thou
+anointed?"
+
+William was so zealous in storing up these verities that he looked
+as though he were unconscious that the pouring-out was over.  He
+started, which he had not done before, at the voice of Master Silas;
+but soon recovered his complacency, and smiled with much serenity at
+being called low-minded varlet.
+
+"Low-minded varlet!" cried Master Silas, most contemptuously, "dost
+thou imagine that king calleth king, like thy chums, FILCHER and
+FIBBER, WHIRLIGIG and NINCOMPOOP?  Instead of this low vulgarity and
+sordid idleness, ending in nothing, they throw at one another such
+fellows as thee by the thousand, and when they have cleared the
+land, render God thanks and make peace."
+
+Willy did now sigh out his ignorance of these matters; and he
+sighed, mayhap, too, at the recollection of the peril he had run
+into, and had ne'er a word on the nail. {70a}
+
+The bowels of Sir Thomas waxed tenderer and tenderer; and he opened
+his lips in this fashion:-
+
+"Stripling!  I would now communicate unto thee, on finding thee
+docile and assentaneous, the instruction thou needest on the
+signification of the words NATURAL CAUSE, if thy duty toward thy
+neighbour had been first instilled into thee."
+
+Whereupon Master Silas did interpose, for the dinner hour was
+drawing nigh.
+
+"We cannot do all at once," quoth he.  "Coming out of order, it
+might harm him.  Malt before hops, the world over, or the beer
+muddies."
+
+But Sir Thomas was not to be pricked out of his form even by so
+shrewd a pricker; and like unto one who heareth not, he continued to
+look most graciously on the homely vessel that stood ready to
+receive his wisdom.
+
+"Thy mind," said he, "being unprepared for higher cogitations, and
+the groundwork and religious duty not being well rammer-beaten and
+flinted, I do pass over this supererogatory point, and inform thee
+rather, that bucks and swans and herons have something in their very
+names announcing them of knightly appurtenance; and (God forfend
+that evil do ensue therefrom!) that a goose on the common, or a
+game-cock on the loft of a cottager or villager, may be seized,
+bagged, and abducted, with far less offence to the laws.  In a buck
+there is something so gainly and so grand, he treadeth the earth
+with such ease and such agility, he abstaineth from all other
+animals with such punctilious avoidance, one would imagine God
+created him when he created knighthood.  In the swan there is such
+purity, such coldness is there in the element he inhabiteth, such
+solitude of station, that verily he doth remind me of the Virgin
+Queen herself.  Of the heron I have less to say, not having him
+about me; but I never heard his lordly croak without the conceit
+that it resembled a chancellor's or a primate's.
+
+"I do perceive, William Shakspeare, thy compunction and contrition."
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"I was thinking, may it please your worship, of the game-cock and
+the goose, having but small notion of herons.  This doctrine of
+abduction, please your worship, hath been alway inculcated by the
+soundest of our judges.  Would they had spoken on other points with
+the same clearness.  How many unfortunates might thereby have been
+saved from crossing the Cordilleras!" {72a}
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"Ay, ay! they have been fain to fly the country at last, thither or
+elsewhere."
+
+And then did Sir Thomas call unto him Master Silas, and say, -
+
+"Walk we into the bay-window.  And thou mayest come, Ephraim."
+
+And when we were there together, I, Master Silas, and his worship,
+did his worship say unto the chaplain, but oftener looking toward
+me, -
+
+"I am not ashamed to avouch that it goeth against me to hang this
+young fellow, richly as the offence in its own nature doth deserve
+it, he talketh so reasonably; not indeed so reasonably, but so like
+unto what a reasonable man may listen to and reflect on.  There is
+so much, too, of compassion for others in hard cases, and something
+so very near in semblance to innocence itself in that airy swing of
+lightheartedness about him.  I cannot fix my eyes (as one would say)
+on the shifting and sudden SHADE-AND-SHINE, which cometh back to me,
+do what I will, and mazes me in a manner, and blinks me."
+
+At this juncture I was ready to fall upon the ground before his
+worship, and clasp his knees for Willy's pardon.  But he had so many
+points about him, that I feared to discompose 'em, and thus make bad
+worse.  Besides which, Master Silas left me but scanty space for
+good resolutions, crying, -
+
+"He may be committed, to save time.  Afterward he may be sentenced
+to death, or he may not."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"'T were shame upon me were he not; 't were indication that I acted
+unadvisedly in the commitment."
+
+SIR SILAS.
+
+"The penalty of the law may be commuted, if expedient, on
+application to the fountain of mercy in London."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"Maybe, Silas, those shall be standing round the fount of mercy who
+play in idleness and wantonness with its waters, and let them not
+flow widely, nor take their natural course.  Dutiful gallants may
+encompass it, and it may linger among the flowers they throw into
+it, and never reach the parched lip on the wayside.
+
+"These are homely thoughts--thoughts from a-field, thoughts for the
+study and housekeeper's room.  But whenever I have given utterance
+unto them, as my heart hath often prompted me with beatings at the
+breast, my hearers seemed to bear toward me more true and kindly
+affection than my richest fancies and choicest phraseologies could
+purchase.
+
+"'T were convenient to bethink thee, should any other great man's
+park have been robbed this season, no judge upon the bench will back
+my recommendation for mercy.  And, indeed, how could I expect it?
+Things may soon be brought to such a pass that their lordships shall
+scarcely find three haunches each upon the circuit."
+
+"Well, Sir!" quoth Master Silas, "you have a right to go on in your
+own way.  Make him only give up the girl."
+
+Here Sir Thomas reddened with righteous indignation, and answered, -
+
+"I cannot think it! such a stripling! poor, penniless; it must be
+some one else."  And now Master Silas did redden in his turn, redder
+than Sir Thomas, and first asked me, -
+
+"What the devil do you stare at?"  And then asked his worship, -
+
+"Who should it be if not the rogue?" and his lips turned as blue as
+a blue-bell.  Then Sir Thomas left the window, and again took his
+chair, and having stood so long on his legs, groaned upon it to ease
+him.  His worship scowled with all his might, and looked exceedingly
+wroth and vengeful at the culprit, and said unto him, -
+
+"Harkye, knave!  I have been conferring with my learned clerk and
+chaplain in what manner I may, with the least severity, rid the
+county (which thou disgracest) of thee."
+
+William Shakspeare raised up his eyes, modestly and fearfully, and
+said slowly these few words, which, had they been a better and
+nobler man's, would deserve to be written in letters of gold.  I,
+not having that art nor substance, do therefore write them in my
+largest and roundest character, and do leave space about 'em,
+according to their rank and dignity
+
+"Worshipful sir!"
+
+"A WORD IN THE EAR IS OFTEN AS GOOD AS A HALTER UNDER IT, AND SAVES
+THE GROAT."
+
+"Thou discoursest well," said Sir Thomas, "but others can discourse
+well likewise.  Thou shalt avoid; I am resolute."
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"I supplicate your honour to impart unto me, in your wisdom, the
+mode and means whereby I may surcease to be disgraceful to the
+county."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"I am not bloody-minded.
+
+"First, thou shalt have the fairest and fullest examination.  Much
+hath been deposed against thee; something may come forth for thy
+advantage.  I will not thy death; thou shalt not die.
+
+"The laws have loopholes, like castles, both to shoot from and to
+let folks down."
+
+SIR SILAS.
+
+"That pointed ear would look the better for paring, and that high
+forehead can hold many letters."
+
+Whereupon did William, poor lad! turn deadly pale, but spake not.
+
+Sir Thomas then abated a whit of his severity, and said, staidly, -
+
+"Testimony doth appear plain and positive against thee; nevertheless
+am I minded and prompted to aid thee myself, in disclosing and
+unfolding what thou couldst not of thine own wits, in furtherance of
+thine own defence.
+
+"One witness is persuaded and assured of the evil spirit having been
+abroad, and the punt appeared unto him diversely from what it
+appeared unto the other."
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"If the evil spirit produced one appearance, he might have produced
+all, with deference to the graver judgment of your worship.
+
+"If what seemed PUNT was DEVIL, what seemed BUCK might have been
+DEVIL too; nay, more easily, the horns being forthcoming.
+
+"Thieves and reprobates do resemble him more nearly still; and it
+would be hard if he could not make free with their bodies, when he
+has their souls already."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"But, then, those voices! and thou thyself, Will Shakspeare!"
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"O might I kiss the hand of my deliverer, whose clear-sightedness
+throweth such manifest and plenary light upon my innocence!"
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"How so?  What light, in God's name, have I thrown upon it as yet?"
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"Oh! those voices! those faeries and spirits! whence came they?
+None can deal with 'em but the devil, the parson, and witches.  And
+does not the devil oftentimes take the very form, features, and
+habiliments of knights, and bishops, and other good men, to lead
+them into temptation and destroy them? or to injure their good name,
+in failure of seduction?
+
+"He is sure of the wicked; he lets them go their ways out of hand.
+
+"I think your worship once delivered some such observation, in more
+courtly guise, which I would not presume to ape.  If it was not your
+worship, it was our glorious lady the queen, or the wise Master
+Walsingham, or the great Lord Cecil.  I may have marred and broken
+it, as sluts do a pancake, in the turning."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"Why! ay, indeed, I had occasion once to remark as much."
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"So have I heard in many places; although I was not present when
+Matthew Atterend fought about it for the honour of Kineton hundred."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"Fought about it!"
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"As your honour recollects.  Not but on other occasions he would
+have fought no less bravely for the queen."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"We must get thee through, were it only for thy memory,--the most
+precious gift among the mental powers that Providence hath bestowed
+upon us.  I had half forgotten the thing myself.  Thou mayest, in
+time, take thy satchel for London, and aid good old Master
+Holingshed.
+
+"We must clear thee, Will!  I am slow to surmise that there is blood
+upon thy hands!"
+
+His worship's choler had all gone down again; and he sat as cool and
+comfortable as a man sitteth to be shaved.  Then called he on Euseby
+Treen, and said, -
+
+"Euseby Treen! tell us whether thou observedst anything unnoticed or
+unsaid by the last witness."
+
+EUSEBY TREEN.
+
+"One thing only, sir!
+
+"When they had passed the water an owlet hooted after them; and
+methought, if they had any fear of God before their eyes they would
+have turned back, he cried so lustily."
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"Sir, I cannot forbear to take the owlet out of your mouth.  He
+knocks them all on the head like so many mice.  Likely story!  One
+fellow hears him cry lustily, the other doth not hear him at all!"
+
+JOSEPH CARNABY.
+
+"Not hear him!  A body might have heard him at Barford or
+Sherbourne."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"Why didst not name him?  Canst not answer me?"
+
+JOSEPH CARNABY.
+
+"HE doubted whether punt were punt; I doubted whether owlet were
+owlet, after Lucifer was away from the roll-call.
+
+"We say, SPEAK THE TRUTH AND SHAME THE DEVIL; but shaming him is one
+thing, your honour, and facing him another!  I have heard owlets,
+but never owlet like him."
+
+WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
+
+"The Lord be praised!  All, at last, a-running to my rescue.
+
+"Owlet, indeed!  Your worship may have remembered in an ancient
+book--indeed, what book is so ancient that your worship doth not
+remember it?--a book printed by Doctor Faustus--"
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"Before he dealt with the devil?"
+
+WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
+
+"Not long before, it being the very book that made the devil think
+it worth his while to deal with him."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"What chapter thereof wouldst thou recall unto my recollection?"
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"That concerning owls, with the grim print afore it.
+
+"Doctor Faustus, the wise doctor, who knew other than owls and
+owlets, knew the tempter in that form.  Faustus was not your man for
+fancies and figments; and he tells us that, to his certain
+knowledge, it was verily an owl's face that whispered so much
+mischief in the ear of our first parent.
+
+"One plainly sees it, quoth Doctor Faustus, under that gravity which
+in human life we call dignity, but of which we read nothing in the
+Gospel.  We despise the hangman, we detest the hanged; and yet,
+saith Duns Scotus, could we turn aside the heavy curtain, or stand
+high enough a-tiptoe to peep through its chinks and crevices, we
+should perhaps find these two characters to stand justly among the
+most innocent in the drama.  He who blinketh the eyes of the poor
+wretch about to die doeth it out of mercy; those who preceded him,
+bidding him in the garb of justice to shed the blood of his fellow-
+man, had less or none.  So they hedge well their own grounds, what
+care they?  For this do they catch at stakes and thorns, at quick
+and rotten--"
+
+Here Master Silas interrupted the discourse of the devil's own
+doctor, delivered and printed by him before he was the devil's, to
+which his worship had listened very attentively and delightedly.
+But Master Silas could keep his temper no longer, and cried,
+fiercely, "Seditious sermonizer! hold thy peace, or thou shalt
+answer for 't before convocation."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"Silas! thou dost not approve, then, the doctrine of this Doctor
+Duns?"
+
+SIR SILAS.
+
+"Heretical Rabbi!"
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"IF TWO OF A TRADE CAN NEVER AGREE, yet surely two of a name may."
+
+SIR SILAS.
+
+"Who dares call me heretical? who dares call me rabbi? who dares
+call me Scotus?  Spider! spider! yea, thou hast one corner left; I
+espy thee, and my broom shall reach thee yet."
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"I perceive that Master Silas doth verily believe I have been guilty
+of suborning the witnesses, at least the last, the best man (if any
+difference) of the two.  No, sir, no.  If my family and friends have
+united their wits and money for this purpose, be the crime of
+perverted justice on their heads!  They injure whom they intended to
+serve.  Improvident men!--if the young may speak thus of the
+elderly; could they imagine to themselves that your worship was to
+be hoodwinked and led astray?"
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"No man shall ever dare to hoodwink me, to lead me astray,--no, nor
+lead me anywise.  Powerful defence!  Heyday!  Sit quiet, Master
+Treen!--Euseby Treen! dost hear me?  Clench thy fist again, sirrah!
+and I clap thee in the stocks.
+
+"Joseph Carnaby! do not scratch thy breast nor thy pate before me."
+
+Now Joseph had not only done that in his wrath, but had unbuckled
+his leathern garter, fit instrument for strife and blood, and
+peradventure would have smitten, had not the knight, with
+magisterial authority, interposed.
+
+His worship said unto him, gravely, -
+
+"Joseph Carnaby!  Joseph Carnaby! hast thou never read the words
+'PUT UP THY SWORD'?"
+
+"Subornation! your worship!" cried Master Joe.  "The fellow hath
+ne'er a shilling in leather or till, and many must go to suborn one
+like me."
+
+"I do believe it of thee," said Sir Thomas; "but patience, man!
+patience! he rather tended toward exculpating thee.  Ye have far to
+walk for dinner; ye may depart."
+
+They went accordingly.
+
+Then did Sir Thomas say, "These are hot men, Silas!"
+
+And Master Silas did reply unto him, -
+
+"There are brands that would set fire to the bulrushes in the mill-
+pool.  I know these twain for quiet folks, having coursed with them
+over Wincott.
+
+Sir Thomas then said unto William, "It behooveth thee to stand clear
+of yon Joseph, unless when thou mayest call to thy aid the Matthew
+Atterend thou speakest of.  He did then fight valiantly, eh?"
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"His cause fought valiantly; his fist but seconded it.  He won,--
+proving the golden words to be no property of our lady's, although
+her Highness hath never disclaimed them."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"What art thou saying?"
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"So I heard from a preacher at Oxford, who had preached at Easter in
+the chapel-royal of Westminster."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"Thou! why, how could that happen?  Oxford! chapel-royal!"
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"And to whom I said (your worship will forgive my forwardness), 'I
+HAVE THE HONOUR, SIR, TO LIVE WITHIN TWO MEASURED MILES OF THE VERY
+SIR THOMAS LUCY WHO SPAKE THAT.'  And I vow I said it without any
+hope or belief that he would invite me, as he did, to dine with him
+thereupon."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"There be nigh upon three miles betwixt this house and Stratford
+bridge-end."
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"I dropt a mile in my pride and exultation, God forgive me!  I would
+not conceal my fault."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"Wonderful! that a preacher so learned as to preach before majesty
+in the chapel-royal should not have caught thee tripping over a
+whole lawful mile,--a good third of the distance between my house
+and the cross-roads.  This is incomprehensible in a scholar."
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"God willed that he should become my teacher, and in the bowels of
+his mercy hid my shame."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"How camest thou into the converse of such eminent and ghostly men?"
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"How, indeed?--everything against me!"
+
+He sighed, and entered into a long discourse, which Master Silas
+would at sundry times have interrupted, but that Sir Thomas more
+than once frowned upon him, even as he had frowned heretofore on
+young Will, who thus began and continued his narration:-
+
+"Hearing the preacher preach at Saint Mary's (for being about my
+father's business on Saturday, and not choosing to be a-horseback on
+Sundays, albeit time-pressed, I footed it to Oxford for my
+edification on the Lord's day, leaving the sorrel with Master Hal
+Webster of the Tankard and Unicorn)--hearing him preach, as I was
+saying, before the University in St. Mary's Church, and hearing him
+use moreover the very words that Matthew fought about, I was
+impatient (God forgive me!) for the end and consummation, and I
+thought I never should hear those precious words that ease every
+man's heart, 'NOW TO CONCLUDE.'  However, come they did.  I hurried
+out among the foremost, and thought the congratulations of the other
+doctors and dons would last for ever.  He walked sharply off, and
+few cared to keep his pace,--for they are lusty men mostly; and
+spiteful bad women had breathed {89a} in the faces of some among
+them, or the gowns had got between their legs.  For my part, I was
+not to be balked; so, tripping on aside him, I looked in his face
+askance.  Whether he misgave or how, he turned his eyes downward.
+No matter--have him I would.  I licked my lips and smacked them loud
+and smart, and scarcely venturing to nod, I gave my head such a sort
+of motion as dace and roach give an angler's quill when they begin
+to bite.  And this fairly hooked him."
+
+"'Young gentleman!' said he, 'where is your gown?'
+
+"'Reverend sir!' said I, 'I am unworthy to wear one.'
+
+"'A proper youth, nevertheless, and mightily well-spoken!' he was
+pleased to say.
+
+"'Your reverence hath given me heart, which failed me,' was my
+reply.  'Ah! your reverence! those words about the devil were spicy
+words; but, under favour, I do know the brook-side they sprang and
+flowered by.  'T is just where it runs into Avon; 't is called
+Hogbrook.'
+
+"'Right!' quoth he, putting his hand gently on my shoulder; 'but if
+I had thought it needful to say so in my sermon, I should have
+affronted the seniors of the University, since many claim them, and
+some peradventure would fain transpose them into higher places, and
+giving up all right and title to them, would accept in lieu thereof
+the poor recompense of a mitre.'
+
+"I wished (unworthy wish for a Sunday!) I had Matthew Atterend in
+the midst of them.  He would have given them skulls mitre-fashioned,
+if mitres are cloven now as we see them on ancient monuments.  Matt
+is your milliner for gentles, who think no more harm of purloining
+rich saws in a mitre than lane-born boys do of embezzling hazel-nuts
+in a woollen cap.  I did not venture to expound or suggest my
+thoughts, but feeling my choler rise higher and higher, I craved
+permission to make my obeisance and depart.
+
+"'Where dost thou lodge, young man?' said the preacher.
+
+"'At the public,' said I, 'where my father customarily lodgeth.
+There, too, is a mitre of the old fashion, swinging on the sign-post
+in the middle of the street.'
+
+"'Respectable tavern enough!' quoth the reverend doctor; 'and worthy
+men do turn in there, even quality,--Master Davenant, Master Powel,
+Master Whorwood, aged and grave men.  But taverns are Satan's
+chapels, and are always well attended on the Lord's day, to twit
+him.  Hast thou no friend in such a city as Oxford?'
+
+"'Only the landlady of the Mitre,' said I.
+
+"'A comely woman,' quoth he, 'but too young for business by half.
+
+"'Stay thou with me to-day, and fare frugally, but safely.
+
+"'What may thy name be, and where is thy abode?'
+
+"'William Shakspeare, of Stratford-upon-Avon, at your service, sir.'
+
+"'And welcome,' said he; 'thy father ere now hath bought our college
+wool.  A truly good man we ever found him; and I doubt not he hath
+educated his son to follow him in his paths.  There is in the blood
+of man, as in the blood of animals, that which giveth the temper and
+disposition.  These require nurture and culture.  But what nurture
+will turn flint-stones into garden mould? or what culture rear
+cabbages in the quarries of Hedington Hill?  To be well born is the
+greatest of all God's primary blessings, young man, and there are
+many well born among the poor and needy.  Thou art not of the
+indigent and destitute, who have great temptations; thou art not of
+the wealthy and affluent, who have greater still.  God hath placed
+thee, William Shakspeare, in that pleasant island, on one side
+whereof are the sirens, on the other the harpies, but inhabiting the
+coasts on the wider continent, and unable to make their talons felt,
+or their voices heard by thee.  Unite with me in prayer and
+thanksgiving for the blessings thus vouchsafed.  We must not close
+the heart when the finger of God would touch it.  Enough, if thou
+sayest only, MY SOUL, PRAISE THOU THE LORD!'"
+
+Sir Thomas said, "AMEN!"  Master Silas was mute for the moment, but
+then quoth he, "I can say amen too in the proper place."
+
+The knight of Charlecote, who appeared to have been much taken with
+this conversation, then interrogated Willy:-
+
+"What farther might have been thy discourse with the doctor? or did
+he discourse at all at trencher-time?  Thou must have been very much
+abashed to sit down at table with one who weareth a pure lambskin
+across his shoulder, and moreover a pink hood."
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"Faith! was I, your honour! and could neither utter nor gulp."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"These are good signs.  Thou hast not lost all grace."
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"With the encouragement of Dr. Glaston--"
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"And was it Dr. Glaston?"
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"Said I not so?"
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"The learnedst clerk in Christendom! a very Friar Bacon!  The Pope
+offered a hundred marks in Latin to who should eviscerate or evirate
+him,--poisons very potent, whereat the Italians are handy,--so
+apostolic and desperate a doctor is Doctor Glaston! so acute in his
+quiddities, and so resolute in his bearing!  He knows the dark arts,
+but stands aloof from them.  Prithee, what were his words unto
+thee?"
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"Manna, sir, manna! pure from the desert!"
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"Ay, but what spake he? for most sermons are that, and likewise many
+conversations after dinner."
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"He spake of the various races and qualities of men, as before
+stated; but chiefly on the elect and reprobate, and how to
+distinguish and know them."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"Did he go so far?"
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"He told me that by such discussion he should say enough to keep me
+constantly out of evil company."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"See there! see there! and yet thou art come before me!--Can nothing
+warn thee?"
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"I dare not dissemble, nor feign, nor hold aught back, although it
+be to my confusion.  As well may I speak at once the whole truth for
+your worship could find it out if I abstained."
+
+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 SHAKESPEARE.
+
+"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 SHAKESPEARE.
+
+"'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.
+
+"1 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 SHAKESPEARE.
+
+"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 SHAKESPEARE.
+
+"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 Caesar 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."
+*** Corrected and spell-checked to here--page 107 ***
+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.
+
+"Or else what mortal man shall say
+Whose shins may suffer in the fray?"
+
+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:-
+
+
+"If winks are wit,
+Who wanteth it?
+
+
+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 SHAKESPEARE.
+
+"Egad, Master Silas, those are your walls for lads to climb over, an
+they were higher than Babel's."
+
+SIR SILAS.
+
+"Have at thee!"
+
+
+"Thou art a wall
+To make the ball
+   Rebound from.
+
+"Thou hast a back
+For beadle's crack
+   To sound from, to sound from.
+
+
+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 SHAKESPEARE.
+
+"'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 voila, Monsieur! le voila!' 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, -
+
+
+'The whimsies of wantons and stories of dread,
+That make the stout-hearted look under the bed.'
+
+
+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, -
+
+
+"May I gaze upon thee when my latest hour is come!
+May I hold thy hand when mine faileth me!"
+
+
+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, -
+
+
+"'Chloe! mean men must ever make mean loves;
+They deal in dog-roses, but I in cloves.
+They are just scorch'd enough to blow their fingers;
+I am a phoenix downright burnt to cinders.'"
+
+
+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:-
+
+
+   "My briar that smelledst sweet
+   When gentle spring's first heat
+      Ran through thy quiet veins, -
+   Thou that wouldst injure none,
+   But wouldst be left alone, -
+Alone thou leavest me, and nought of thine remains.
+
+   "What! hath no poet's lyre
+   O'er thee, sweet-breathing briar,
+      Hung fondly, ill or well?
+   And yet methinks with thee
+   A poet's sympathy,
+Whether in weal or woe, in life or death, might dwell.
+
+   "Hard usage both must bear,
+   Few hands your youth will rear,
+      Few bosoms cherish you;
+   Your tender prime must bleed
+   Ere you are sweet, but freed
+From life, you then are prized; thus prized are poets too."
+
+
+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:-
+
+
+   "And art thou yet alive?
+   And shall the happy hive
+      Send out her youth to cull
+   Thy sweets of leaf and flower,
+   And spend the sunny hour
+With thee, and thy faint heart with murmuring music lull?
+
+   "Tell me what tender care,
+   Tell me what pious prayer,
+      Bade thee arise and live.
+   The fondest-favoured bee
+   Shall whisper nought to thee
+More loving than the song my grateful muse shall give."
+
+
+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, Phoebus 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!
+
+
+"Chloe!  I would not have thee wince
+That I unto thee send a quince.
+I would not have thee say unto 't
+BEGONE! and trample 't underfoot,
+For, trust me, 't is no fulsome fruit.
+It came not out of mine own garden,
+But all the way from Henly in Arden, -
+Of an uncommon fine old tree,
+Belonging to John Asbury.
+And if that of it thou shalt eat,
+'Twill make thy breath e'en yet more sweet;
+As a translation here doth shew,
+ON FRUIT-TREES, BY JEAN MIRABEAU.
+The frontispiece is printed so.
+But eat it with some wine and cake,
+Or it may give the belly-ache. {153a}
+This doth my worthy clerk indite,
+I sign,
+SIR THOMAS LUCY, Knight."
+
+
+"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:-
+
+
+"From my fair hand, O will ye, will ye
+Deign humbly to accept a gilly-
+   Flower for thy bosom, sugared maid!
+
+"Scarce had I said it ere she took it,
+And in a twinkling, faith! had stuck it,
+   Where e'en proud knighthood might have laid."
+
+
+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
+
+
+While a Warwickshire lad
+Is on earth to be had,
+With a wand to wag
+On a trusty nag,
+He shall keep the lists
+With cudgel or fists.
+And black shall be whose eye
+Looks evil on Lucy."
+
+
+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
+
+
+"The swaggering drum, and trumpet hoarse with rage."
+
+
+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:-
+
+
+   "'In the names on our books
+   Was standing Tom Flooke's,
+Who took in due time his degrees;
+   Which when he had taken,
+   Like Ascham or Bacon,
+By night he could snore and by day he could sneeze.
+
+   "'Calm, pithy, pragmatical, {164a}
+   Tom Flooke he could at a call
+Rise up like a hound from his sleep;
+   And if many a quarto
+   He gave not his heart to,
+If pellucid in lore, in his cups he was deep.
+
+   "'He never did harm,
+   And his heart might be warm,
+For his doublet most certainly was so;
+   And now has Torn Flooke
+   A quieter nook
+Than ever had Spenser or Tasso.
+
+   "'He lives in his house,
+   As still as a mouse,
+Until he has eaten his dinner;
+   But then doth his nose
+   Outroar all the woes
+That encompass the death of a sinner.
+
+   "'And there oft has been seen
+   No less than a dean
+To tarry a week in the parish,
+   In October and March,
+   When deans are less starch,
+And days are less gleamy and garish.
+
+   "'That Sunday Tom's eyes
+   Look'd always more wise,
+He repeated more often his text;
+   Two leaves stuck together,
+   (The fault of the weather)
+And . . . THE REST YE SHALL HEAR IN MY NEXT.
+
+   "'At mess he lost quite
+   His small appetite,
+By losing his friend the good dean;
+   The cook's sight must fail her!
+   The eggs sure are staler!
+The beef, too!--why, what can it mean?
+
+   "'He turned off the butcher,
+   To the cook could he clutch her,
+What his choler had done there's no saying -
+   'T is verily said
+   He smote low the cock's head,
+And took other pullets for laying.'
+
+
+"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 -
+
+
+   'At mess he lost quite
+   His small appetite,
+By losing his friend the good dean'?
+
+
+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, -
+
+
+   "Jack Calvin and Jack Cade,
+   Two gentles of one trade,
+      Two tinkers,
+   Very gladly would pull down
+   Mother Church and Father Crown,
+   And would starve or would drown
+      Right thinkers.
+
+   "Honest man! honest man!
+   Fill the can, fill the can,
+They are coming! they are coming! they are coming!
+   If any drop be left,
+   It might tempt 'em to a theft -
+Zooks! it was only the ale that was humming."
+
+
+"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.
+
+
+'My Grace shall Fanny Carew be,
+   While here she deigns to stay;
+And (ah, how sad the change for me!)
+   My Muse when far away!'
+
+
+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 QUAESIVIT 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 hic
+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:-
+
+
+"'Faithful shepherd! dearest Tommy!
+I have received the letter from ye,
+   And mightily delight therein.
+But mother, SHE says, "Nanny!  Nanny!
+HOW, BEING STAID AND PRUDENT, CAN YE
+   THINK OF A MAN AND NOT OF SIN?"
+
+"Sir shepherd!  I held down my head,
+And "MOTHER! FIE, FOR SHAME!" I said;
+   All I could say would not content her;
+Mother she would for ever harp on't,
+"A MAN'S NO BETTER THAN A SARPENT,
+   AND NOT A CRUMB MORE INNOCENTER."'
+
+
+"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:-
+
+
+"'Worshipful lady! honoured madam!
+I at this present truly glad am
+   To have so fair an opportunity
+Of saying I would be the man
+To bind in wedlock Mistress Anne,
+   Living with her in holy unity.
+
+"'And for a jointure I will gi'e her
+A good two hundred pounds a year
+   Accruing from my landed rents,
+Whereof see t'other paper, telling
+Lands, copses, and grown woods for felling,
+   Capons, and cottage tenements.
+
+"'And who must come at sound of horn,
+And who pays but a barley-corn,
+   And who is bound to keep a whelp,
+And what is brought me for the pound,
+And copyholders, which are sound,
+   And which do need the leech's help.
+
+"'And you may see in these two pages
+Exact their illnesses and ages,
+   Enough (God willing) to content ye;
+Who looks full red, who looks full yellow,
+Who plies the mullen, who the mallow,
+   Who fails at fifty, who at twenty.
+
+"'Jim Yates must go; he's one day very hot,
+And one day ice; I take a heriot;
+   And poorly, poorly's Jacob Burgess.
+The doctor tells me he has pour'd
+Into his stomach half his hoard
+   Of anthelminticals and purges.
+
+"'Judith, the wife of Ebenezer
+Fillpots, won't have him long to tease her;
+   Fillpots blows hot and cold like Jim,
+And, sleepless lest the boys should plunder
+His orchard, he must soon knock under;
+   Death has been looking out for him.
+
+"'He blusters; but his good yard land
+Under the church, his ale-house, and
+   His Bible, which he cut in spite,
+Must all fall in; he stamps and swears
+And sets his neighbours by the ears -
+   Fillpots, thy saddle sits not tight!'
+
+
+"The epitaph is ready:-
+
+
+         'HERE
+LIES ONE WHOM ALL HIS FRIENDS DID FEAR
+   MORE THAN THEY EVER FEARED THE LORD;
+IN PEACE HE WAS AT TIMES A CHRISTIAN;
+IN STRIFE, WHAT STUBBORNER PHILISTINE!
+   SING, SING HIS PSALM WITH ONE ACCORD.
+
+
+"'And he who lent my lord his wife
+Has but a very ticklish life;
+   Although she won him many a hundred,
+'T won't do; none comes with briefs and wills,
+And all her gainings are gilt pills
+   From the sick madman that she plundered.
+
+"'And the brave lad who sent the bluff
+Olive-faced Frenchman (sure enough)
+   Screaming and scouring like a plover,
+Must follow--him I mean who dash'd
+Into the water and then thrash'd
+   The cullion past the town of Dover.
+
+"'But first there goes the blear old dame
+Who nurs'd me; you have heard her name,
+   No doubt, at Compton, Sarah Salways;
+There are twelve groats at once, beside
+The frying-pan in which she fried
+   Her pancakes.
+      Madam, I am always, etc.,
+         Sir THOMAS LUCY, Knight.'
+
+
+"I did believe that such a clear and conscientious exposure of my
+affairs would have brought me a like return.  My letter was sent
+back to me with small courtesy.  It may be there was no paper in the
+house, or none equalling mine in whiteness.  No notice was taken of
+the rent-roll; but between the second and third stanza these four
+lines were written, in a very fine hand:-
+
+
+"'Most honour'd knight, Sir Thomas! two
+For merry Nan will never do;
+Now under favour let me say 't,
+She will bring more herself than that.'
+
+
+I have reason to believe that the worthy lady did neither write nor
+countenance the same, perhaps did not ever know of them.  She always
+had at her elbow one who jogged it when he listed, and although he
+could not overrule the daughter, he took especial care that none
+other should remove her from his tutelage, even when she had fairly
+grown up to woman's estate.
+
+"Now, after all this condescension and confidence, promise me, good
+lad, promise that thou wilt not edge and elbow me.  Never let it be
+said, when people say, SIR THOMAS WAS A POET WHEN HE WILL EDIT,--SO
+IS BILL SHAKSPEARE!  It beseemeth not that our names do go together
+cheek by jowl in this familiar fashion, like an old beagle and a
+whelp, in couples, where if the one would, the other would not."
+
+SIR SILAS.
+
+"Sir, while these thoughts are passing in your mind, remember there
+is another pair of couples out of which it would be as well to keep
+the cur's neck."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"Young man! dost thou understand Master Silas?"
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"But too well.  Not those couples in which it might be apprehended
+that your worship and my unworthiness should appear too close
+together; but those sorrowfuller which peradventure might unite
+Master Silas and me in our road to Warwick and upwards.  But I
+resign all right and title unto these as willingly as I did unto the
+other, and am as ready to let him go alone."
+
+SIR SILAS.
+
+"If we keep wheeling and wheeling, like a flock of pigeons, and
+rising again when we are within a foot of the ground, we shall never
+fill the craw."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"Do thou then question him, Silas."
+
+SIR SILAS.
+
+"I am none of the quorum; the business is none of mine."
+
+Then Sir Thomas took Master Silas again into the bay window, and
+said softly, -
+
+"Silas, he hath no inkling of thy meaning.  The business is a
+ticklish one.  I like not overmuch to meddle and make therein."
+
+Master Silas stood dissatisfied awhile, and then answered, -
+
+"The girl's mother, sir, was housemaid and sempstress in your own
+family, time back, and you thereby have a right over her unto the
+third and fourth generation."
+
+"I may have, Silas," said his worship, "but it was no longer than
+four or five years agone that folks were fain to speak maliciously
+of me for only finding my horse in her hovel."
+
+Sir Silas looked red and shiny as a ripe strawberry on a
+Snitterfield tile, and answered somewhat peevishly, -
+
+"The same folks, I misgive me, may find the rogue's there any night
+in the week."
+
+Whereunto replied Sir Thomas, mortifiedly,
+
+"I cannot think it, Silas!  I cannot think it."
+
+And after some hesitation and disquiet, -
+
+"Nay, I am resolved I will not think it; no man, friend or enemy,
+shall push it into me."
+
+"Worshipful sir," answered Master Silas, "I am as resolute as any
+one in what I would think and what I would not think, and never was
+known to fight dunghill in either cockpit.
+
+"Were he only out of the way, she might do duty, but what doth she
+now?
+
+"She points his young beard for him; persuading him it grows thicker
+and thicker, blacker and blacker; she washes his ruff, stiffens it,
+plaits it, tries it upon his neck, removes the hair from under it,
+pinches it with thumb and fore-finger, pretending that he hath
+moiled it, puts her hand all the way round it, SETTING IT TO RIGHTS,
+as she calleth it -
+
+"Ah, Sir Thomas! a louder whistle than that will never call her back
+again when she is off with him."
+
+Sir Thomas was angered, and cried tartly, -
+
+"Who whistled?  I would know."
+
+Master Silas said submissively, -
+
+"Your honour, as wrongfully I fancied."
+
+"Wrongfully, indeed, and to my no small disparagement and
+discomfort," said the knight, verily believing that he had not
+whistled; for deep and dubious were his cogitations.
+
+"I protest," went he on to say, "I protest it was the wind of the
+casement; and if I live another year I will put a better in the
+place of it.  Whistle indeed--for what?  I care no more about her
+than about an unfledged cygnet,--a child, {189a} a chicken, a mere
+kitten, a crab-blossom in the hedge."
+
+The dignity of his worship was wounded by Master Silas unaware, and
+his wrath again turned suddenly upon poor William.
+
+"Hark-ye, knave! hark-ye again, ill-looking stripling, lanky from
+vicious courses!  I will reclaim thee from them; I will do what thy
+own father would, and cannot.  Thou shalt follow his business."
+
+"I cannot do better, may it please your worship!" said the lad.
+
+"It shall lead thee unto wealth and respectability," said the
+knight, somewhat appeased by his ready compliancy and low, gentle
+voice. "Yea, but not here,--no witches, no wantons (this word fell
+gravely and at full-length upon the ear), no spells hereabout.
+
+"Gloucestershire is within a measured mile of thy dwelling.  There
+is one at Bristol, formerly a parish-boy, or little better, who now
+writeth himself GENTLEMAN in large, round letters, and hath been
+elected, I hear, to serve as burgess in parliament for his native
+city; just as though he had eaten a capon or turkey-poult in his
+youth, and had actually been at grammar school and college.  When he
+began, he had not credit for a goat-skin; and now, behold ye! this
+very coat upon my back did cost me eight shillings the dearer for
+him, he bought up wool so largely."
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"May it please your worship! if my father so ordereth, I go
+cheerfully."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"Thou art grown discreet and dutiful.  I am fain to command thy
+release, taking thy promise on oath, and some reasonable security,
+that thou wilt abstain and withhold in future from that idle and
+silly slut, that sly and scoffing giggler, Hannah Hathaway, with
+whom, to the heartache of thy poor, worthy father, thou wantonly
+keepest company."
+
+Then did Sir Thomas ask Master Silas Gough for the Book of Life,
+bidding him deliver it into the right hand of Billy, with an eye
+upon him that he touch it with both lips,--it being taught by the
+Jesuits, and caught too greedily out of their society and communion,
+that whoso toucheth it with one lip only, and thereafter sweareth
+falsely, cannot be called a perjurer, since perjury is breaking an
+oath.  But breaking half an oath, as he doth who toucheth the Bible
+or crucifix with one lip only, is no more perjury than breaking an
+eggshell is breaking an egg, the shell being a part, and the egg
+being an integral.
+
+William did take the Holy Book with all due reverence the instant it
+was offered to his hand.  His stature seemed to rise therefrom as
+from a pulpit, and Sir Thomas was quite edified.
+
+"Obedient and conducible youth!" said he.  "See there, Master Silas!
+what hast thou now to say against him?  Who sees farthest?"
+
+"The man from the gallows is the most likely, bating his nightcap
+and blinker," said Master Silas, peevishly.  "He hath not outwitted
+me yet."
+
+"He seized upon the Anchor of Faith like a martyr," said Sir Thomas,
+"and even now his face burns red as elder-wine before the gossips."
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
+
+"I await the further orders of your worship from the chair."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"I return and seat myself."
+
+And then did Sir Thomas say with great complacency and satisfaction
+in the ear of Master Silas, -
+
+"What civility, and deference, and sedateness of mind, Silas!"
+
+But Master Silas answered not.
+
+WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE
+
+"Must I swear, sirs?"
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"Yea, swear; be of good courage.  I protest to thee by my honour and
+knighthood, no ill shall come unto thee therefrom.  Thou shalt not
+be circumvented in thy simpleness and inexperience."
+
+Willy, having taken the Book of Life, did kiss it piously, and did
+press it unto his breast, saying,
+
+"Tenderest love is the growth of my heart, as the grass is of
+Alvescote mead.
+
+"May I lose my life or my friends, or my memory, or my reason; may I
+be viler in my own eyes than those men are--"
+
+Here he was interrupted, most lovingly, by Sir Thomas, who said unto
+him, -
+
+"Nay, nay, nay! poor youth! do not tell me so! they are not such
+very bad men, since thou appealest unto Caesar,--that is, unto the
+judgment-seat."
+
+Now his worship did mean the two witnesses, Joseph and Euseby; and,
+sooth to say there be many worse.  But William had them not in his
+eye; his thoughts were elsewhere, as will be evident, for he went on
+thus:-
+
+"--if ever I forget or desert thee, or ever cease to worship {193a}
+and cherish thee, my Hannah!"
+
+SIR SILAS.
+
+"The madman! the audacious, desperate, outrageous villain!  Look-ye,
+sir! where he flung the Holy Gospel!  Behold it on the holly and box
+boughs in the chimney-place, spreaden all abroad, like a lad about
+to be whipped!"
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"Miscreant knave!  I will send after him forthwith!
+
+"Ho, there! is the caitiff at hand, or running off?"
+
+Jonas Greenfield the butler did budge forward after a while, and
+say, on being questioned, -
+
+"Surely, that was he!  Was his nag tied to the iron gate at the
+lodge, Master Silas?"
+
+SIR SILAS.
+
+"What should I know about a thief's nag, Jonas Greenfield?"
+
+"And didst thou let him go, Jonas,--even thou?" said Sir Thomas.
+"What! are none found faithful?"
+
+"Lord love your worship," said Jonas Greenfield; "a man of
+threescore and two may miss catching a kite upon wing.  Fleetness
+doth not make folks the faithfuller, or that youth yonder beats us
+all in faithfulness.
+
+"Look! he darts on like a greyhound whelp after a leveret.  He, sure
+enough, it was!  I now remember the sorrel mare his father bought of
+John Kinderley last Lammas, swift as he threaded the trees along the
+park.  He must have reached Wellesbourne ere now at that gallop, and
+pretty nigh Walton-hill."
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"Merciful Christ! grant the country be rid of him for ever!  What
+dishonour upon his friends and native town!  A reputable wool-
+stapler's son turned gipsy and poet for life."
+
+SIR SILAS.
+
+"A Beelzebub; he spake as bigly and fiercely as a soaken yeoman at
+an election feast,--this obedient and conducible youth!"
+
+SIR THOMAS.
+
+"It was so written.  Hold thy peace, Silas!"
+
+LAUS DEO.
+E. B.
+
+
+
+POST-SCRIPTUM
+BY ME, EPHRAIM BARNETT.
+
+
+
+Twelve days are over and gone since William Shakspeare did leave our
+parts.  And the spinster, Hannah Hathaway, is in sad doleful plight
+about him; forasmuch as Master Silas Cough went yesterday unto her,
+in her mother's house at Shottery, and did desire both her and her
+mother to take heed and be admonished, that if ever she, Hannah,
+threw away one thought after the runagate William Shakspeare, he
+should swing.
+
+The girl could do nothing but weep; while as the mother did give her
+solemn promise that her daughter should never more think about him
+all her natural life, reckoning from the moment of this her promise.
+
+And the maiden, now growing more reasonable, did promise the same.
+But Master Silas said,
+
+"I DOUBT YOU WILL, THOUGH."
+
+"NO," said the mother, "I ANSWER FOR HER SHE SHALL NOT THINK OF HIM,
+EVEN IF SHE SEE HIS GHOST."
+
+Hannah screamed, and swooned, the better to forget him.  And Master
+Silas went home easier and contenteder.  For now all the worst of
+his hard duty was accomplished,--he having been, on the Wednesday of
+last week, at the speech of Master John Shakspeare, Will's father,
+to inquire whether the sorrel mare was his.  To which question the
+said Master John Shakspeare did answer, "YEA."
+
+"ENOUGH SAID!" rejoined Master Silas.
+
+"HORSE-STEALING IS CAPITAL.  WE SHALL BIND THEE OVER TO APPEAR
+AGAINST THE CULPRIT, AS PROSECUTOR, AT THE NEXT ASSIZES."
+
+May the Lord in his mercy give the lad a good deliverance, if so be
+it be no sin to wish it!
+
+October 1, A. D. 1582.
+
+LAUS DEO.
+
+
+
+Footnotes:
+
+
+
+{8a}  Quicken, bring to life.
+
+{8b}  Debtors were often let out of prison at the coronation of a
+new king; but creditors never paid by him.
+
+{21a}  The word here omitted is quite illegible.  It appears to have
+some reference to the language of the Highlanders.  That it was
+rough and outlandish is apparent from the reprimand of Sir Thomas.
+
+{29a}  By this deposition it would appear that Shakspeare had formed
+the idea, if not the outline, of several plays already, much as he
+altered them, no doubt, in after life.
+
+{39a}  The greater part of the value of the present work arises from
+the certain information it affords us on the price of small needles
+in the reign of Elizabeth.  Fine needles in her days were made only
+at Liege, and some few cities in the Netherlands, and may be
+reckoned among those things which were much dearer than they are
+now.
+
+{39b}  Mr. Tooke had not yet published his Pantheon.
+
+{44a}  This was really the case within our memory.
+
+{45a}  It was formerly thought, and perhaps is thought still, that
+the hand of a man recently hanged, being rubbed on the tumour of the
+king's evil, was able to cure it.  The crown and the gallows divided
+the glory of the sovereign remedy.
+
+{46a}  And yet he never did sail any farther than into Bohemia.
+
+{50a}  Smock, formerly a part of the female dress, corresponding
+with shroud, or what we now call (or lately called) shirt of the
+man's.  Fox, speaking of Latimer's burning, says, "Being slipped
+into his shroud."
+
+{50b}  Faith nailing the ears is a strong and sacred metaphor.  The
+rhyme is imperfect,--Shakspeare was not always attentive to these
+minor beauties.
+
+{53a}  Shakspeare seems to have profited afterward by this metaphor,
+even more perhaps than by all the direct pieces of instruction in
+poetry given him so handsomely by the worthy knight.  And here it
+may be permitted the editor to profit also by the manuscript,
+correcting in Shakspeare what is absolute nonsense as now printed:-
+
+"VAULTING ambition that o'erleaps ITSELF."
+
+It should be its SELL.  SELL is SADDLE in Spenser and elsewhere,
+from the Latin and Italian.
+
+This emendation was shewn to the late Mr. Hazlitt, an acute man at
+least, who expressed his conviction that it was the right reading,
+and added somewhat more in approbation of it.
+
+{55a}  It has been suggested that this answer was borrowed from
+Virgil, and goes strongly against the genuineness of the manuscript.
+The Editor's memory was upon the stretch to recollect the words; the
+learned critic supplied them:-
+
+"Solum AEneas vocat:  et vocet, oro."
+
+The Editor could only reply, indeed weakly, that CALLING and WAITING
+are not exactly the same, unless when tradesmen rap and gentlemen
+are leaving town.
+
+{66a}  Here the manuscript is blotted; but the probability is that
+it was FISHMONGER, rather than IRONMONGER, fishmongers having always
+been notorious cheats and liars.
+
+{70a}  ON THE NAIL appears to be intended to express READY PAYMENT.
+
+{72a}  The Cordilleras are mountains, we know, running through South
+America.  Perhaps a pun was intended; or possibly it might, in the
+age of Elizabeth, have been a vulgar term for HANGING, although we
+find no trace of the expression in other books.  We have no clue to
+guide us here.  It might be suggested that Shakspeare, who shines
+little in geographical knowledge, fancied the Cordilleras to extend
+into North America, had convicts in his time been transported to
+those colonies.  Certainly, many adventurers and desperate men went
+thither.
+
+{89a}  In that age there was prevalent a sort of cholera, on which
+Fracastorius, half a century before, wrote a Latin poem, employing
+the graceful nymphs of Homer and Hesiod, somewhat disguised, in the
+drudgery of pounding certain barks and minerals.  An article in the
+Impeachment of Cardinal Wolsey accuses him of breathing in the
+king's face, knowing that he was affected with this cholera.  It was
+a great assistant to the Reformation, by removing some of the most
+vigorous champions that opposed it.  In the Holy College it was
+followed by the SWEATING SICKNESS, which thinned it very sorely; and
+several even of God's vicegerents were laid under tribulation by it.
+Among the chambers of the Vatican it hung for ages, and it crowned
+the labours of Pope Leo XII., of blessed memory, with a crown
+somewhat uneasy.
+
+{105a}  Sir Thomas seems to have been jealous of these two towers,
+certainly the finest in England.  If Warwick Castle could borrow the
+windows from Kenilworth, it would be complete.  The knight is not
+very courteous on its hospitality.  He may, perhaps, have
+experienced it, as Garrick and Quin did under the present occupant's
+grandfather, on whom the title of Earl of Warwick was conferred for
+the eminent services he had rendered to his country as one of the
+lords of the bedchamber to his Majesty George the Second.  The
+verses of Garrick on his invitation and visit are remembered by
+many.  Quin's are less known.
+
+He shewed us Guy's pot, but the soup he forgot;
+   Not a meal did his lordship allow,
+Unless we gnaw'd o'er the blade-bone of the boar,
+   Or the rib of the famous Dun Cow.
+
+When Nevile the great Earl of Warwick lived here,
+   Three oxen for breakfast were slain,
+And strangers invited to sports and good cheer,
+   And invited again and again.
+
+This earl is in purse or in spirit so low,
+   That he with no oxen will feed 'em;
+And all of the former great doings we know
+   Is, he gives us a book and we read 'em.
+
+GARRICK.
+
+STALE peers are but tough morsels, and 't were well
+   If we had found the FRESH more eatable;
+Garrick!  I do not say 't were well for HIM,
+   For we had pluck'd the plover limb from limb.
+
+QUIN.
+
+{106a}  Another untoward blot! but leaving no doubt of the word.
+The only doubt is whether he meant the MUZZLE of the animal itself,
+or one of those leathern muzzles which are often employed to coerce
+the violence of ferocious animals.  In besieged cities men have been
+reduced to such extremities.  But the MUZZLE, in this place, we
+suspect, would more properly be called the BLINKER, which is often
+put upon bulls in pastures when they are vicious.
+
+{108a}  This would countenance the opinion of those who are inclined
+to believe that Shakspeare was a Roman Catholic.  His hatred and
+contempt of priests, which are demonstrated wherever he has
+introduced them, may have originated from the unfairness of Silas
+Gough.  Nothing of that kind, we may believe, had occurred to him
+from friars and monks, whom he treats respectfully and kindly,
+perhaps in return for some such services to himself as Friar
+Lawrence had bestowed on Romeo,--or rather less; for Shakspeare was
+grateful.  The words quoted by him from some sermon, now lost, prove
+him no friend to the filchings and swindling of popery.
+
+{111a}  It is a pity that the old divines should have indulged, as
+they often did, in such images as this.  Some readers in search of
+argumentative subtility, some in search of sound Christianity, some
+in search of pure English undefiled, have gone through with them;
+and their labours (however heavy) have been well repaid.
+
+{124a}  Tilley valley was the favourite adjuration of James the
+Second.  It appears in the comedies of Shakspeare.
+
+{133a}  Whoreson, if we may hazard a conjecture, means the son of a
+woman of ill-repute.  In this we are borne out by the context.  It
+appears to have escaped the commentators on Shakspeare.
+
+Whoreson, a word of frequent occurrence in the comedies; more rarely
+found in the tragedies.  Although now obsolete, the expression
+proves that there were (or were believed to be) such persons
+formerly.
+
+The Editor is indebted to two learned friends for these two remarks,
+which appear no less just than ingenious.
+
+{153a}  Belly-ache, a disorder once not uncommon in England.  Even
+the name is now almost forgotten; yet the elder of us may remember
+at least the report of it, and some, perhaps, even the complaint
+itself, in our school-days.  It usually broke out about the cherry
+season; and in some cases made its appearance again at the first
+nutting.
+
+{157a}  Sir Thomas borrowed this expression from Spenser, who thus
+calls Queen Elizabeth.
+
+{159a}  Humboldt notices this.
+
+{164a}  Pragmatical here means only PRECISE.
+
+{181a}  It is doubtful whether Doctor Buckland will agree with Sir
+Thomas that these petrifactions are ram's-horns and lampreys.
+
+{189a}  She was then twenty-eight years of age.  Sir Thomas must
+have spoken of her from earlier recollections.  Shakspeare was in
+his twentieth year.
+
+{193a}  It is to be feared that his taste for venison outlasted that
+for matrimony, spite of this vow.
+
+
+
+
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