THE SONNET.
When Shakespeare took leave of his newly-found friends at Clopton, he
left a deep impression behind him.
There was a feeling amongst the trio, which two of them at least could
not understand; so greatly had the youth's manners struck them, so
forcible was the interest he had created; whilst the third and most
interesting of the party found that the handsome lad had unconsciously
robbed her of her heart.
"By 'r Lady," said the old knight, "yonder stripling is one of the most
singular companions I ever met; without being in the least forward in
manners, he somehow impresses one with a feeling of inferiority I cannot
understand. He's an extraordinary youth, my masters; and, an he turn not
out something beyond the common, I am not a Clopton."
"How well he talks on all subjects!" said Arderne; "and yet how modest
doth he seem!"
"How beautiful were those verses he wrote this morning!" said Charlotte.
"If he did write them," said Martin, "lady mine; _for mark ye_, they may
be the offspring of another brain."
"_If_ he wrote them! Martin," said Charlotte: "why, who else could have
written them, think ye?"
"Why not another as well as he, lady mine?" said Martin, archly; "what
one man can do, another might effect. Methinks one older and more
learned must have indited those lines."
"Nay," said Charlotte, "I know not wherefore, but sure I feel that none
but he could have penned that sonnet."
"Gramercy," said Martin, "this is to have an opinion of merit, indeed!
Doth that stripling, that hero of the quarter-staff, seem to you, Master
Walter," he continued, shrewdly glancing at Arderne, "to have so much
merit that none other can come up to him?"
"I confess the lad hath made a singular impression upon me," said
Arderne, "an impression I cannot shake off or understand. I never was in
company with so amiable a youth before."
"Let us hear his verse again," said Sir Hugh. "Come, Martin, thou hast a
voice, thou shalt read it."
"Ahem," said Martin. "I am no hand at a stanza; I shall mar the good
verse, I fear me. Nevertheless, I will essay it."
THE SONNET.
Who will believe my verse in time to come,
If it were filled with your most high deserts?
Though yet, Heaven knows, it is but as a tomb
Which hides your life, and shews not half your parts.
If I could write the beauty of your eyes,
And in fresh numbers, number all your graces,
The age to come would say, this poet lies,
Such heavenly touches ne'er touched earthly faces,
So should my papers, yellow'd with their age,
Be scorn'd like old men of less truth than tongue;
And your true rights be termed a poet's rage,
And stretched metre of an antique song:
But where some child of yours alive that time,
You should live twice,--in it, and in my rhyme.
Sir Hugh was a man of parts. He was a man, too, of strong sense, and,
for the age in which he lived, might have been esteemed and accounted a
learned man withal.
Had he chosen to be more of a courtier, and his creed been different, he
might have risen to some eminence as a statesman.
He felt considerable astonishment, and expressed no less admiration, at
the beauty of the verses just recited.
"Now, by my fay, good Martin," said he, "I do somewhat lean to thy
opinion in the matter, inasmuch as it seemeth scarce possible so young a
lad could have penned such stanzas. Nay, by our Lady, I know not where
to look amongst our old poets in order to find aught to equal those
lines."
"Then where hath the lad gotten them from?" said Arderne. "Peradventure
he hath fetched them from some recent book of songs and sonnets; they
say young Spencer hath lately written."
"'Tis not in Spencer's vein," said Charlotte; "and since we have so far
discussed the matter, I must needs say that I can almost vouch for his
having written them."
"Ho! ho!" said Martin, with a shrewd look. "La! you there now. Come,
tell us the when, the where, and the how, Lady Charlotte. Let us have
the circumstances under which this sonnet was written, since yon confess
to so much knowledge of the matter."
"Nay, Martin," said Charlotte, blushing; "it was by accident I
discovered so much. Walter and myself had been walking under the shade
of the tall trees at the end of the garden, when I observed the youth
standing, with arms folded, and gazing upon us in the arbour at its
extremity. As we leisurely approached him, I saw him tear a leaf from a
small book he held in his hand, and write something in it. When we
entered the arbour and joined him, in putting up his book, he dropped
the stray leaf, upon which he had been writing, and I own I was wicked
enough to let it lie, and secure it after he had left us."
"Well," said Sir Hugh, "the lad is certainly a youth of merit, and I
feel bound to befriend him in what I can. We must bethink us, Walter, in
what way we can serve him materially."
"He is at present, as he tells me," said Arderne, "a clerk or writer in
the service of Lawyer Grasp; albeit he liketh not the drudgery and
confinement of such a life."
"I wonder not thereat," said Sir Hugh; "since to sentence a lad of so
much genius to be a scrivener's clerk, is like putting my best bred
palfrey into a mill, or shutting up a soaring falcon in a thrush's cage.
We must do something for him, Walter, for we owe much to him."
Such were the kind intentions of the good Sir Hugh towards one to whom
he felt under considerable obligations, and doubtless he who had caused
those grateful feelings would have felt the benefit of them from one so
well off in the world. "Wishing well, however, hath not a body in it;"
and our intents of to-day are oft-times marred by the events of
to-morrow.
The promises of the powerful are oft-times a sort of "satire upon the
softness of prosperity;" and in a few days the good Sir Hugh was himself
involved in difficulties which made him oblivious of all, save
honourable extrication from their labyrinth.
The conversation which had taken place regarding the sonnet, occurred on
the day following that on which young Shakespeare had left the Hall: a
day made more memorable to two of the inmates, from the circumstance of
the unwelcome visit of Gilbert Parry, and which it is our purpose now
again to refer to, in order to explain certain other matters
appertaining.
It will doubtless be remembered by our readers that the shrewd Martin
had played the spy upon the insane conspirator, and succeeded in making
himself complete master of his horrid and perilous intentions.
Intentions, the more dangerous to all who were in the slightest degree
implicated, as the bloody designs and desperate projects which were
suspected to be in existence against the Queen on all sides, had
determined Elizabeth's council to make terrible examples of all whom
they might discover. To the good Sir Hugh, however, the danger likely to
accrue to his own person was the least consideration; and when the
faithful Martin, accordingly, on the following morning, informed him of
the intentions of the visitor and his own suspicions of his sanity, the
good knight was struck with consternation. It was early morning when
Martin told his tale to his patron, and when the old knight having just
descended, was making the round of his kennel and falconry, and the
relation at once filled him with terror, pity, and indignation.
"I will incontinently visit this dangerous caitiff," he said, "and if I
find matters as bad as you say, I will take means to secure him and
prevent mischief. If he be indeed mad, it is my duty, as a Christian
man, to lay him under restraint; but if he be sane and resolved on such
attempt, I swear to thee I will arrest him with my own hand, and deliver
him over to justice."
"Beware!" said Martin, stopping him as he was hastening off in search of
his visitor. "Beware, good master mine, how you introduce yourself alone
into the den of a tiger. This fellow is dangerous in the extreme; and on
the slightest hint of your knowledge and disapproval of his designs,
will fly upon you and attempt your life. A madman I have heard say, in
his furious fits, hath twice the strength of one in possession of
reason."
"I value not his madness a maravedi," said Sir Hugh, whose anger was
predominant at the moment. "A murderous caitiff and condemned felon thus
to introduce himself into my house! By our Lady's grace, an he draw
weapon or lift hand against me, I will smite him in the teeth with my
dagger, and kill him like the reptile at my foot."
"At least, let me accompany you," said Martin, who saw that the angry
spirit so seldom aroused was now predominant, and therefore the more
resistless.
"Follow an ye list," said Sir Hugh, "but I tell thee I am quite able to
cope with such a fellow, and equal to arrest him if I find his purpose
treasonable;" so saying, and followed by the faithful Martin, Sir Hugh
re-entered the house, and the pair, introducing themselves into the
secret wing of the mansion, immediately ascended into the chamber in
which Parry had been shewn the night before.
Sir Hugh was the first to enter, and, with the angry spot upon his brow,
after hastily glancing round the small room advanced to the bed and
pulled open the curtain with no very gentle hand.
The bed, however, was unoccupied, and the room tenantless, although the
crumpled state of the coverlid of the couch and pillows shewed that the
occupant had thrown himself upon it during some part of the night at
least.
"There is the form," said Sir Hugh, "but the game is off."
"There is no saying where such a customer may have crept to," said
Martin, peeping under the bed, then getting up on one of the chairs and
looking out of the small window upon the roof. "The man I am sure is as
mad as a March hare; let us descend and see if he is any where secreted
in the small apartment below."
Sir Hugh accordingly descended, and (both together) searched in every
closet and hiding hole with which the place was accommodated, but the
bird had certainly flown, having, without doubt, passed into the garden
by the small postern door which opened on the inside.
Proceeding into the garden they searched through its walks and alleys,
but the object of their search was no where to be found, and the small
door which opened in the thick high wall at its extremity, and admitted
into the thick plantations beyond, being wide open, they naturally
concluded their visitor had fairly decamped in his insane mood as
unceremoniously as he had entered. Sir Hugh, however (although he could
not but feel relieved at the absence of the dangerous intruder), felt
considerable annoyance at the whole circumstance. He was oppressed with
the knowledge of the maniac's treason, and which, notwithstanding the
powerful letter brought to him from the Nuncio Campeggio, he was
resolved to divulge to the Queen's council. At the same time he also
determined to do nothing rashly. Father Eustace was expected in a few
hours, and must be consulted, whilst Martin, meanwhile, undertook to
endeavour to trace the madman and observe his motions if possible.
In such a case delays are dangerous, as the good Sir Hugh found, for
Parry, whose vagaries had alarmed some of those connected with the
dangerous plot, having been met with in Stratford, and then followed to
Clopton, was lured into a secret appointment and put to silence with at
least half a dozen wounds; and the whole affair in a few short hours
after was in progress of being fully divulged. Of this, however, Sir
Hugh was not likely to become acquainted, till the news reached him in
an unpleasant shape. The circumstance of a man having been killed just
without the town was by no means an uncommon event; and as Martin had
failed in tracing Parry, and Father Eustace's return was delayed, except
that there was a degree of mystery attached to the appearance and
disappearance of the visitor, in a few days the circumstance was almost
forgotten.
Meantime, whilst, with swift passage, events were hastening onwards, and
which were to involve some of the _dramatis personae_ of our story in
the perils and miseries of life, how calmly and how treacherously flowed
on the even tenor of their hours. Mischief, as we have seen, was afoot;
a secret society, consisting of one or two dangerous fanatics, resident
in the county of Warwick, an Irish gentleman of rank, and several other
desperadoes, had met, as we have before hinted, at one of the low
hostels in the town of Stratford, and which locality they had chosen for
some reason best known to themselves.
These men, involved in a desperate enterprise, and sworn to devote
themselves to death one by one, till they had achieved it, whilst they
sought to increase the number of their associates, found danger even in
the overzeal--the frenzied enthusiasm--of one of their own instruments,
whilst another was about to prove false and betray them; nay, at the
very moment when, like the alchemist of old, their toils were to be
rewarded with progression, the vessel containing the elixir was to
burst, and destroy all within its influence.
These emissaries were at work in various directions,--secretly,
stealthily. They had friends in France, in Spain, in Italy, in Flanders
even; the day and the hour at which the first attempt was to be made was
fixed; the very hooftreads of the horse which carried the unscrupulous
Neville towards his design, in imagination, were counted by them; whilst
he who was then, as his associates supposed, hastening towards this
purpose, from a sudden change having taken place in his before desperate
fortunes, was indeed posting to London; not, as he had sworn, in order
to make essay upon the life of Elizabeth, but to betray the whole plot
to the council, to aggrandize himself, and give to the gibbet and the
executioner's knife, his sometime friends.
And such are the inscrutable ways by which Providence works out His
ends: such is the wisdom of the Great Director of events, and such are
the vain designs of man. Ever driving headlong onwards, hastened by evil
passions, obstinacy, wickedness, and pride, to inevitable
destruction;--destroyed by their own villanous devices, thirsting for
blood, grasping at riches, feeding absolutely on each other, the wicked
perish miserably.