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 QUÆSIVIT GLORIAM,
VIDET DEI.’”
“Poor tack! poor tack!” sourly quoth Master Silas. “If your wise doctor
could say nothing more about the fool, who died like a rotten sheep among
the darnels, his Latin might have held out for the father, and might have
told people he was as cool as a cucumber at home, and as hot as pepper in
battle. Could he not find room enough on the whinstone, to tell the
folks of the village how he played the devil among the dons, burning
their fingers when they would put thumbscrews upon us, punching them in
the weasand as a blacksmith punches a horse-shoe, and throwing them
overboard like bilgewater?
“Has Oxford lost all her Latin? Here is no _capitani filius_; no more
mention of family than a Welchman would have allowed him; no _hîc jacet_;
and, worse than all, the devil a tittle of _spe redemptionis_, or _anno
Domini_.”
“Willy!” quoth Sir Thomas, “I shrewdly do suspect there was more, and
that thou hast forgotten it.”
“Sir!” answered Willy, “I wrote not down the words, fearing to mis-spell
them, and begged them of the doctor, when I took my leave of him on the
morrow; and verily he wrote down all he had repeated. I keep them always
in the tin-box in my waistcoat-pocket, among the eel-hooks, on a scrap of
paper a finger’s length and breadth, folded in the middle to fit. And
when the eels are running, I often take it out and read it before I am
aware. I could as soon forget my own epitaph as this.”
“Simpleton!” said Sir Thomas, with his gentle, compassionate smile; “but
thou hast cleared thyself.”
SIR SILAS.
“I think the doctor gave one idle chap as much solid pudding as he could
digest, with a slice to spare for another.”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“And yet after this pudding the doctor gave him a spoonful of custard,
flavoured with a little bitter, which was mostly left at the bottom for
the other idle chap.”
Sir Thomas not only did endure this very goodnaturedly, but deigned even
to take in good part the smile upon my countenance, as though he were a
smile collector, and as though his estate were so humble that he could
hold his laced bonnet (in all his bravery) for bear and fiddle.
He then said unto Willy,
“Place likewise this custard before us.”
“There is but little of it; the platter is shallow,” replied he; “’t was
suited to Master Ethelbert’s appetite. The contents were these:
“‘The things whereon thy whole soul brooded in its innermost recesses,
and with all its warmth and energy, will pass unprized and unregarded,
not only throughout thy lifetime but long after. For the higher beauties
of poetry are beyond the capacity, beyond the vision of almost all. Once
perhaps in half a century a single star is discovered, then named and
registered, then mentioned by five studious men to five more; at last
some twenty say, or repeat in writing, what they have heard about it.
Other stars await other discoveries. Few and solitary and wide asunder
are those who calculate their relative distances, their mysterious
influences, their glorious magnitude, and their stupendous height. ’T is
so, believe me, and ever was so, with the truest and best poetry. Homer,
they say, was blind; he might have been ere he died,—that he sat among
the blind, we are sure.
“‘Happy they who, like this young lad from Stratford, write poetry on the
saddle-bow when their geldings are jaded, and keep the desk for better
purposes.’
“The young gentlemen, like the elderly, all turned their faces toward me,
to my confusion, so much did I remark of sneer and scoff at my cost.
Master Ethelbert was the only one who spared me. He smiled and said,—
“‘Be patient! From the higher heavens of poetry, it is long before the
radiance of the brightest star can reach the world below. We hear that
one man finds out one beauty, another man finds out another, placing his
observatory and instruments on the poet’s grave. The worms must have
eaten us before it is rightly known what we are. It is only when we are
skeletons that we are boxed and ticketed, and prized and shewn. Be it
so! I shall not be tired of waiting.’”
“Reasonable youth!” said Sir Thomas; “yet both he and Glaston walk rather
_a-straddle_, methinks. They might have stepped up to thee more
straightforwardly, and told thee the trade ill suiteth thee, having
little fire, little fantasy, and little learning. Furthermore, that one
poet, as one bull, sufficeth for two parishes, and that where they are
stuck too close together they are apt to fire, like haystacks. I have
known it myself; I have had my malignants and scoffers.”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“I never could have thought it!”
SIR THOMAS.
“There again! Another proof of thy inexperience.”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
“Mat Atterend! Mat Atterend! where wert thou sleeping?”
SIR THOMAS.
“I shall now from my own stores impart unto thee what will avail to tame
thee, shewing the utter hopelessness of standing on that golden
weathercock which supporteth but one at a time.
“The passion for poetry wherewith Monsieur Dubois would have inspired me,
as he was bound to do, being paid beforehand, had cold water thrown upon
it by that unlucky one, Sir Everard. He ridiculed the idea of male and
female rhymes, and the necessity of trying them as rigidly by the eye as
by the ear,—saying to Monsieur Dubois that the palate, in which the
French excel all mortals, ought also to be consulted in their acceptance
or rejection. Monsieur Dubois told us that if we did not wish to be
taught French verse, he would teach us English. Sir Everard preferred
the Greek; but Monsieur Dubois would not engage to teach the mysteries of
that poetry in fewer than thirty lessons,—having (since his misfortunes)
forgotten the letters and some other necessaries.
“The first poem I ever wrote was in the character of a shepherd, to
Mistress Anne Nanfan, daughter of Squire Fulke Nanfan, of Worcestershire,
at that time on a visit to the worshipful family of Compton at Long
Compton.
“We were young creatures,—I but twenty-four and seven months (for it was
written on the 14th of May), and she well-nigh upon a twelve-month
younger. My own verses, the first, are neither here nor there; indeed,
they were imbedded in solid prose, like lampreys and ram’s-horns {181a}
in our limestone, and would be hard to get out whole. What they are may
be seen by her answer, all in verse:—
“‘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,—