help him in his ghostly endeavours, by repeating what he called the
_preliminary_ prayer; which prayer I find nowhere in our ritual, and do
suppose it to be one of those Latin supplications used in our learned
universities now or erewhile.
I am afeard it hath not the approbation of the strictly orthodox, for
inasmuch as Master Silas at such entreaty did close his teeth against it,
and with teeth thus closed did say, Athanasiuswise, “Go and be damned!”
Bill was not disheartened, but said he hoped better, and began thus:—
“‘My brethren!’ said the preacher, ‘or rather let me call you my
children, such is my age confronted with yours, for the most part,—my
children, then, and my brethren (for here are both), believe me, killing
is forbidden.’”
SIR THOMAS.
“This, not being delivered unto us from the pulpit by the preacher
himself, we may look into. Sensible man! shrewd reasoner! What a stroke
against deer-stealers! how full of truth and ruth! Excellent discourse!”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“The last part was the best.”
SIR THOMAS.
“I always find it so. The softest of the cheesecake is left in the
platter when the crust is eaten. He kept the best bit for the last,
then? He pushed it under the salt, eh? He told thee—”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“Exactly so.”
SIR THOMAS.
“What was it?”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“‘Ye shall not kill.’”
SIR THOMAS.
“How I did he run in a circle like a hare? One of his mettle should
break cover and off across the country like a fox or hart.”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“‘And yet ye kill time when ye can, and are uneasy when ye cannot.’”
Whereupon did Sir Thomas say, aside unto himself, but within my hearing,—
“Faith and troth! he must have had a head in at the window here one day
or other.”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“‘This sin cryeth unto the Lord.’”
SIR THOMAS.
“He was wrong there. It is not one of those that cry; mortal sins cry.
Surely he could not have fallen into such an error! it must be thine;
thou misunderstoodest him.”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“Mayhap, sir! A great heaviness came over me; I was oppressed in spirit,
and did feel as one awakening from a dream.”
SIR THOMAS.
“Godlier men than thou art do often feel the right hand of the Lord upon
their heads in like manner. It followeth contrition, and precedeth
conversion. Continue.”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“‘My brethren and children,’ said the teacher, ‘whenever ye want to kill
time call God to the chase, and bid the angels blow the horn; and thus ye
are sure to kill time to your heart’s content. And ye may feast another
day, and another after that—’”
Then said Master Silas unto me, concernedly,
“This is the mischief-fullest of all the devil’s imps, to talk in such
wise at a quarter past twelve!”
But William went straight on, not hearing him,
“‘—upon what ye shall, in such pursuit, have brought home with you.
Whereas, if ye go alone, or two or three together, nay, even if ye go in
thick and gallant company, and yet provide not that these be with ye, my
word for it, and a powerfuller word than mine, ye shall return to your
supper tired and jaded, and rest little when ye want to rest most.’”
“Hast no other head of the Doctor’s?” quoth Sir Thomas.
“Verily none,” replied Willy, “of the morning’s discourse, saving the
last words of it, which, with God’s help, I shall always remember.”
“Give us them, give us them,” said Sir Thomas.
“He wants doctrine; he wants authority; his are grains of millet,—grains
for unfledged doves; but they are sound, except the _crying_.
“Deliver unto us the last words; for the last of the preacher, as of the
hanged, are usually the best.”
Then did William repeat the concluding words of the discourse, being
these:—
“‘As years are running past us, let us throw something on them which they
cannot shake off in the dust and hurry of the world, but must carry with
them to that great year of all, whereunto the lesser of this mortal life
do tend and are subservient.’”
Sir Thomas, after a pause, and after having bent his knee under the
table, as though there had been the church-cushion, said unto us,—
“Here he spake _through a glass_, _darkly_, as blessed Paul hath it.”
Then turning toward Willy,—
“And nothing more?”
“Nothing but the _glory_,” quoth Willy, “at which there is always such a
clatter of feet upon the floor, and creaking of benches, and rustling of
gowns, and bustle of bonnets, and justle of cushions, and dust of mats,
and treading of toes, and punching of elbows, from the spitefuller, that
one wishes to be fairly out of it, after the scramble for _the peace of
God_ is at an end—”
Sir Thomas threw himself back upon his armchair, and exclaimed in
wonderment, “How!”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“—and in the midst of the service again, were it possible. For nothing
is painfuller than to have the pail shaken off the head when it is
brim-full of the waters of life, and we are walking staidly under it.”
SIR THOMAS.
“Had the learned Doctor preached again in the evening, pursuing the
thread of his discourse, he might, peradventure, have made up the
deficiencies I find in him.”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“He had not that opportunity.”
SIR THOMAS.
“The more’s the pity.”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“The evening admonition, delivered by him unto the household—”
SIR THOMAS.
“What! and did he indeed shew wind enough for that? Prithee out with it,
if thou didst put it into thy tablets.”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“Alack, sir! there were so many Latin words, I fear me I should be at
fault in such attempt.”
SIR THOMAS.
“Fear not; we can help thee out between us, were there a dozen or a
score.”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“Bating those latinities, I do verily think I could tie up again most of
the points in his doublet.”
SIR THOMAS.
“At him then! What was his bearing?”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“In dividing his matter, he spooned out and apportioned the commons in
his discourse, as best suited the quality, capacity, and constitution of
his hearers. To those in priests’ orders he delivered a sort of
catechism.”
SIR SILAS.
“He catechise grown men! He catechise men in priests’ orders!—being no
bishop, nor bishop’s ordinary!”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“He did so; it may be at his peril.”
SIR THOMAS.
“And what else? for catechisms are baby’s pap.”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“He did not catechise, but he admonished the richer gentlemen with gold
tassels for their top-knots.”
SIR SILAS.
“I thought as much. It was no better in my time. Admonitions fell
gently upon those gold tassels; and they ripened degrees as glass and
sunshine ripen cucumbers. We priests, forsooth, are catechised! The
worst question to any gold tasseller is, ‘_How do you do_?’ Old _Alma
Mater_ coaxes and would be coaxed. But let her look sharp, or spectacles
may be thrust upon her nose that shall make her eyes water. Aristotle
could make out no royal road to wisdom; but this old woman of ours will
shew you one, an you tip her.
“Tilley valley! {124a} catechise priests, indeed!”
SIR THOMAS.
“Peradventure he did it discreetly. Let us examine and judge him.
Repeat thou what he said unto them.”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“‘Many,’ said he, ‘are ingenuous, many are devout, some timidly, some
strenuously, but nearly all flinch, and rear, and kick, at the slightest
touch, or least inquisitive suspicion of an unsound part in their
doctrine. And yet, my brethren, we ought rather to flinch and feel sore
at our own searching touch, our own serious inquisition into ourselves.
Let us preachers, who are sufficiently liberal in bestowing our advice
upon others, inquire of ourselves whether the exercise of spiritual
authority may not be sometimes too pleasant, tickling our breasts with a
plume from Satan’s wing, and turning our heads with that inebriating
poison which he hath been seen to instil into the very chalice of our
salvation. Let us ask ourselves in the closet whether, after we have
humbled ourselves before God in our prayers, we never rise beyond the due
standard in the pulpit; whether our zeal for the truth be never
over-heated by internal fires less holy; whether we never grow stiffly
and sternly pertinacious, at the very time when we are reproving the
obstinacy of others; and whether we have not frequently so acted as if we
believed that opposition were to be relaxed and borne away by
self-sufficiency and intolerance. Believe me, the wisest of us have our
catechism to learn; and these, my dear friends, are not the only
questions contained in it. No Christian can hate; no Christian can
malign. Nevertheless, do we not often both hate and malign those unhappy
men who are insensible to God’s mercies? And I fear this unchristian
spirit swells darkly, with all its venom, in the marble of our hearts,
not because our brother is insensible to these mercies, but because he is
insensible to our faculty of persuasion, turning a deaf ear unto our
claim upon his obedience, or a blind or sleepy eye upon the fountain of
light, whereof we deem ourselves the sacred reservoirs. There is one
more question at which ye will tremble when ye ask it in the recesses of
your souls; I do tremble at it, yet must utter it. Whether we do not
more warmly and erectly stand up for God’s word because it came from our
mouths, than because it came from his? Learned and ingenious men may
indeed find a solution and excuse for all these propositions; but the
wise unto salvation will cry, “Forgive me, O my God, if, called by thee
to walk in thy way, I have not swept this dust from the sanctuary!”’”
SIR THOMAS.
“All this, methinks, is for the behoof of clerks and ministers.”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“He taught them what they who teach others should learn and practise.
Then did he look toward the young gentlemen of large fortune; and lastly
his glances fell upon us poorer folk, whom he instructed in the duty we
owe to our superiors.”
SIR THOMAS.
“Ay, there he had a host.”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“In one part of his admonition he said,—
“‘Young gentlemen! let not the highest of you who hear me this evening be
led into the delusion, for such it is, that the founder of his family was
_originally_ a greater or a better man than the lowest here. He willed
it, and became it. He must have stood low; he must have worked hard,—and
with tools, moreover, of his own invention and fashioning. He waved and
whistled off ten thousand strong and importunate temptations; he dashed
the dice-box from the jewelled hand of Chance, the cup from Pleasure’s,
and trod under foot the sorceries of each; he ascended steadily the
precipices of Danger, and looked down with intrepidity from the summit;
he overawed Arrogance with Sedateness; he seized by the horn and
overleaped low Violence; and he fairly swung Fortune round.
“‘The very high cannot rise much higher; the very low may,—the truly
great must have done it.
“‘This is not the doctrine, my friends, of the silkenly and lawnly
religious; it wears the coarse texture of the fisherman, and walks
uprightly and straightforward under it. I am speaking now more
particularly to you among us upon whom God hath laid the incumbrances of
wealth, the sweets whereof bring teazing and poisonous things about you,
not easily sent away. What now are your pretensions under sacks of
money? or your enjoyments under the shade of genealogical trees? Are
they rational? Are they real? Do they exist at all? Strange
inconsistency! to be proud of having as much gold and silver laid upon
you as a mule hath, and yet to carry it less composedly! The mule is not
answerable for the conveyance and discharge of his burden,—you are.
Stranger infatuation still! to be prouder of an excellent thing done by
another than by yourselves, supposing any excellent thing to have
actually been done; and, after all, to be more elated on his cruelties
than his kindnesses, by the blood he hath spilt than by the benefits he
had conferred; and to acknowledge less obligation to a well-informed and
well-intentioned progenitor than to a lawless and ferocious barbarian.
Would stocks and stumps, if they could utter words, utter such gross
stupidity? Would the apple boast of his crab origin, or the peach of his
prune? Hardly any man is ashamed of being inferior to his ancestors,
although it is the very thing at which the great should blush, if,
indeed, the great in general descended from the worthy. I did expect to
see the day, and although I shall not see it, it must come at last, when
he shall be treated as a madman or an impostor who dares to claim
nobility or precedency and cannot shew his family name in the history of
his country. Even he who can shew it, and who cannot write his own under
it in the same or as goodly characters, must submit to the imputation of
degeneracy, from which the lowly and obscure are exempt.
“‘He alone who maketh you wiser maketh you greater; and it is only by
such an implement that Almighty God himself effects it. When he taketh
away a man’s wisdom he taketh away his strength, his power over others
and over himself. What help for him then? He may sit idly and swell his
spleen, saying,—_Who is this_? _who is that_? and at the question’s end
the spirit of inquiry dies away in him. It would not have been so if, in
happier hour, he had said within himself, _Who am I_? _what am I_? and
had prosecuted the search in good earnest.
“‘When we ask who _this_ man is, or who _that_ man is, we do not expect
or hope for a plain answer; we should be disappointed at a direct, or a
rational, or a kind one. We desire to hear that he was of low origin, or
had committed some crime, or been subjected to some calamity. Whoever he
be, in general we disregard or despise him, unless we discover that he
possesseth by nature many qualities of mind and body which he never
brings into use, and many accessories of situation and fortune which he
brings into abuse every day. According to the arithmetic in practice, he
who makes the most idlers and the most ingrates is the most worshipful.
But wiser ones than the scorers in this school will tell you how riches
and power were bestowed by Providence that generosity and mercy should be
exercised; for, if every gift of the Almighty were distributed in equal
portions to every creature, less of such virtues would be called into the
field; consequently there would be less of gratitude, less of submission,
less of devotion, less of hope, and, in the total, less of content.’”
Here he ceased, and Sir Thomas nodded, and said,—
“Reasonable enough! nay, almost too reasonable!”
“But where are the apostles? Where are the disciples? Where are the
saints? Where is hell-fire?”
“Well! patience! we may come to it yet. Go on, Will!”
With such encouragement before him, did Will Shakspeare take breath and
continue:—
“‘We mortals are too much accustomed to behold our superiors in rank and
station as we behold the leaves in the forest. While we stand under
these leaves, our protection and refuge from heat and labour, we see only
the rougher side of them, and the gloominess of the branches on which
they hang. In the midst of their benefits we are insensible to their
utility and their beauty, and appear to be ignorant that if they were
placed less high above us we should derive from them less advantage.’”
SIR THOMAS.
“Ay; envy of superiority made the angels kick and run restive.”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“May it please your worship! with all my faults, I have ever borne due
submission and reverence toward my superiors.”
SIR THOMAS.
“Very right! very scriptural! But most folks do that. Our duty is not
fulfilled unless we bear absolute veneration; unless we are ready to lay
down our lives and fortunes at the foot of the throne, and every thing
else at the foot of those who administer the laws under virgin majesty.”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“Honoured sir! I am quite ready to lay down my life and fortune, and all
the rest of me, before that great virgin.”
SIR SILAS.
“Thy life and fortune, to wit!
“What are they worth? A June cob-nut, maggot and all.”
SIR THOMAS.
“Silas, we will not repudiate nor rebuff his Magdalen, that bringeth a
pot of ointment. Rather let us teach and tutor than twit. It is a
tractable and conducible youth, being in good company.”
SIR SILAS.
“Teach and tutor! Hold hard, sir! These base varlets ought to be taught
but two things: to bow as beseemeth them to their betters, and to hang
perpendicular. We have authority for it, that no man can add an inch to
his stature; but by aid of the sheriff I engage to find a chap who shall
add two or three to this whoreson’s.” {133a}
SIR THOMAS.
“Nay, nay, now, Silas! the lad’s mother was always held to be an honest
woman.”
SIR SILAS.
“His mother may be an honest woman for me.”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“No small privilege, by my faith! for any woman in the next parish to
thee, Master Silas!”
SIR SILAS.
“There again! out comes the filthy runlet from the quagmire, that but now
lay so quiet with all its own in it.”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“Until it was trodden on by the ass that could not leap over it. These,
I think, are the words of the fable.”
SIR THOMAS.
“They are so.”
SIR SILAS.
“What fable?”
SIR THOMAS.
“Tush! don’t press him too hard; he wants not wit, but learning.”
SIR SILAS.
“He wants a rope’s-end; and a rope’s-end is not enough for him, unless we
throw in the other.”
SIR THOMAS.
“Peradventure he may be an instrument, a potter’s clay, a type, a token.
“I have seen many young men, and none like unto him. He is shallow but
clear; he is simple, but ingenuous.”
SIR SILAS.
“Drag the ford again, then. In my mind he is as deep as the big tankard;
and a mouthful of rough burrage will be the beginning and end of it.”
SIR THOMAS.
“No fear of that. Neither, if rightly reported by the youngster, is
there so much doctrine in the doctor as we expected. He doth not dwell
upon the main; he is worldly; he is wise in his generation,—he says
things out of his own head.
“Silas, that can’t hold! We want _props—fulcrums_, I think you called
’em to the farmers; or was it _stimulums_?”
SIR SILAS.
“Both very good words.”
SIR THOMAS.
“I should be mightily pleased to hear thee dispute with that great don.”
SIR SILAS.
“I hate disputations. Saint Paul warns us against them. If one wants to
be thirsty, the tail of a stockfish is as good for it as the head of a
logician.
“The doctor there, at Oxford, is in flesh and mettle; but let him be
sleek and gingered as he may, clap me in St. Mary’s pulpit, cassock me,
lamb-skin me, give me pink for my colours, glove me to the elbow,
heel-piece me half an ell high, cushion me before and behind, bring me a
mug of mild ale and a rasher of bacon, only just to con over the text
withal; then allow me fair play, and as much of my own way as he had, and
the devil take the hindermost. I am his man at any time.”
SIR THOMAS.
“I am fain to believe it. Verily, I do think, Silas, thou hast as much
stuff in thee as most men. Our beef and mutton at Charlecote rear other
than babes and sucklings.
“I like words taken, like thine, from black-letter books. They look
stiff and sterling, and as though a man might dig about ’em for a week,
and never loosen the lightest.
“Thou hast alway at hand either saint or devil, as occasion needeth,
according to the quality of the sinner, and they never come uncalled for.
Moreover, Master Silas, I have observed that thy hell-fire is generally
lighted up in the pulpit about the dog-days.”
Then turned the worthy knight unto the youth, saying,—
“’T were well for thee, William Shakspeare, if the learned doctor had
kept thee longer in his house, and had shewn unto thee the danger of
idleness, which hath often led unto deer-stealing and poetry. In thee we
already know the one, although the distemper hath eaten but skin-deep for
the present; and we have the testimony of two burgesses on the other.
The pursuit of poetry, as likewise of game, is unforbidden to persons of
condition.”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“Sir, that of game is the more likely to keep them in it.”
SIR THOMAS.
“It is the more knightly of the two; but poetry hath also her pursuers
among us. I myself, in my youth, had some experience that way; and I am
fain to blush at the reputation I obtained. His honour, my father, took
me to London at the age of twenty; and, sparing no expense in my
education, gave fifty shillings to one Monsieur Dubois to teach me
fencing and poetry, in twenty lessons. In vacant hours he taught us also
the laws of honour, which are different from ours.
“In France you are unpolite unless you solicit a judge or his wife to
favour your cause; and you inevitably lose it. In France there is no
want of honour where there is no want of courage; you may lie, but you
must not hear that you lie. I asked him what he thought then of lying;
and he replied,—
“‘_C’est selon_.’
“‘And suppose you should overhear the whisper?’
“‘_Ah_, _parbleu_! _Cela m’irrite_; _cela me pousse au bout_.’
“I was going on to remark that a real man of honour could less bear to
lie than to hear it; when he cried, at the words _real man of honour_,—
“‘_Le voilà_, _Monsieur_! _le voilà_!’ and gave himself such a blow on
the breast as convinced me the French are a brave people.
“He told us that nothing but his honour was left him, but that it
supplied the place of all he had lost. It was discovered some time
afterward that M. Dubois had been guilty of perjury, had been a spy, and
had lost nothing but a dozen or two of tin patty-pans, hereditary in his
family, his father having been a cook on his own account.
“William, it is well at thy time of life that thou shouldst know the
customs of far countries, particularly if it should be the will of God to
place thee in a company of players. Of all nations in the world, the
French best understand the stage. If thou shouldst ever write for it,
which God forbid, copy them very carefully. Murders on their stage are
quite decorous and cleanly. Few gentlemen and ladies die by violence who
would not have died by exhaustion. ‘For they rant and rave until their
voice fails them, one after another; and those who do not die of it die
consumptive. They cannot bear to see cruelty; they would rather see any
image than their own.’ These are not my observations, but were made by
Sir Everard Starkeye, who likewise did remark to Monsieur Dubois, that
‘cats, if you hold them up to the looking-glass, will scratch you
terribly; and that the same fierce animal, as if proud of its cleanly
coat and velvety paw, doth carefully put aside what other animals of more
estimation take no trouble to conceal.’
“‘Our people,’ said Sir Everard, ‘must see upon the stage what they never
could have imagined; so the best men in the world would earnestly take a
peep of hell through a chink, whereas the worser would skulk away.’
“Do not thou be their caterer, William! Avoid the writing of comedies
and tragedies. To make people laugh is uncivil, and to make people cry
is unkind. And what, after all, are these comedies and these tragedies?
They are what, for the benefit of all future generations, I have myself
described them,—
‘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:—