|Uncle Timothy was an excursive talker and walker. He had no set
phrases; nothing ready-cut and dried (which is often _very dry_) for
formal intellectual displays. When he rose in the morning, unless bound
by some engagement, he hardly knew whither his footsteps would tend. He
was to be seen looking into curiosity shops; rummaging old book-stalls;
turning over portfolios of curious prints; stepping into an auction, a
panorama, an exhibition of ancient pictures; sometimes rambling in
the green fields, and not unfrequently making one of Punch's laughing
audiences. It is the opinion of some would-be philosophers that their
dignity is best upheld by an unbending austerity, and a supercilious
contempt for whatever engaged the attention of their youth. But we tell
such pretenders, that they are alike ignorant of nature and philosophy.
Men of the most exalted genius have been _remarkable_ for their
urbanity, and even child-like simplicity of manners: and it was one of
the many interesting traits in the author of _Waverley_, that, in the
“sear and yellow leaf,” he had nothing of age but the name; but retained
all the spirit, the romance, the gaiety of his youthful days.
The world would have called Uncle Timothy idle--but
“How various his employments, whom the world
Calls idle, and who justly in return
Esteems the busy world an idler too!”
Though the world's pursuits brought more care to the heart and profit to
the purse than his own, he wished they might only prove as innocent and
as honest.
Uncle Timothy had just got scent of an ancient carved figure of
Falstaff, that once adorned the overhanging doorway of the Boar's Head,
in East-cheap; not the original scene of revelry where Prince Hal and
Sir John turned night into day. That merry hostelrie, where “lean Jack”
slept on benches in the afternoon, and unbuttoned himself after supper,
had been replaced by another, bearing the same immortal sign, which
rose on its ruins immediately after the fire of London. The Boar's Head
(which we well remember) was cut in stone, and let into the brick work
under the centre window of the first floor. This house had been
recently pulled down, in order to make room for the new London Bridge
improvements; but Uncle Timothy heard that the figure had been carefully
reserved by the proprietor, as a memorial of so celebrated a site.
Thither he journeyed on a voyage of discovery. The owner of the Boar's
Head had departed this life; but the neighbours referred him to a
nephew, dwelling in an adjoining street, who had succeeded the old
gentleman in business. The worthy tradesman received him with courtesy,
and proceeded to narrate what had transpired since the demolition of
the tavern. The story of the figure was strictly true. His late uncle
regarded it as an interesting relic, and his widow, smitten with a
kindred feeling, had retired into the country, carrying with her Sir
John Falstaff; and it was not at all likely that she would relinquish
possession of the fat knight, until commanded by the inexorable
separatist that parts the best friends. While Uncle Timothy, on his way
homeward, was whistling, not for “want of thought,” but the figure, he
espied a new Boar's Head in the immediate vicinity of the old one; and,
as the attraction was too powerful to be resisted, he walked in,
and soon found himself in a spacious apartment, carved, fretted,
and mullioned in the ancient style; the furniture was grotesquely
ornamented and antique; the holly and mistletoe were disposed in various
parts of the room; a huge fire blazed cheerfully; and round a massy oak
table, black with age, sat Falstaff, Prince Henry, Sir Toby Belch,
Sir Andrew Ague-cheek, Sir Hugh Evans, Justice Shallow, Poins, Peto,
Touchstone, Corporal Nym, Ancient Pistol, and Lieutenant Bardolph! That
“base-string of humility,” Francis, waited upon the company; and the
shrill tones of Hostess Quickly were heard in an angry colloquy with the
“roaring girl,” Doll Tearsheet. A boar's head with a lemon in his
mouth adorned the centre of the table, and immediately before Sir John
Falstaff was a magnificent bowl of sugared sack compounded by the dame
n her very best humour, and not excelled by that memorable draught which
the oily knight so cosily lapped down, when he swore to mine hostess,
“upon a parcel-gilt goblet, sitting in her Dolphin Chamber at the
round-table, by a sea-coal fire,” that he would marry her and make her
“my lady.” Every guest had a horn cup silver-mounted; and black jacks of
sparkling ale, and cakes in abundance, strewed the festive board. Some
racy joke on Bardolph's burning nose had just been fired off, and the
company were in high merriment.
“Surely,” said Uncle Timothy to himself, “this is a masquerade. I am an
unbidden guest; but the Enchanter's wand is over me, and I cannot either
advance or retire.”
Sir Andrew thrummed his viol-de-gambo; and Sir Toby, having fortified
himself with a long draught out of a black jack, with true heartiness of
voice and gesture struck up a glee.
THE BOAR'S HEAD.
Sir Toby. Because some folks are virtuous, Sir John,
shall you and I
Forswear our wassail, cakes and ale, and sit us down
and sigh?
The world is still a merry world, and this a merry time;
And sack is sack, Sir John, Sir Jack! though in it tastes
the lime.
The watery eye of Sir John Falstaff twinkled with exquisite delight as
he filled himself a cup of sack and responded,
There's nothing extant, Sir Toby, but cant.
A plague of all cowards! Here, Bardolph, my Trigon!
You and I will repent,
And keep a lean Lent.
Presuming it long,
Let us first have a song,
And dismally troll
It over a bowl,
To honesty, manhood, good fellowship bygone.
Pistol, my Ancient!
Pistol. I'll ne'er prove a stopper,
By my sword, that's true steel!
Bardolph. By nose, that's true copper!
Falstaff. Corporal Nym--
Nym.. In sack let me swim!
Falstaff. Gadshill and Peto--
Gadshill & Peto. Sweet wag! take our veto.
Falstaff. Motley too--
Clown. My cockscomb to you!
Falstaff. Good Justice Shallow--
Shallow. I'm true to you, “Tallow!”
Falstaff. Sir Andrew, Sir Hugh--
Sir Andrew & Sir Hugh. We'll drink as you brew!
Falstaff. Poins joins! Hal shall!
Dame Partlet the hen! Doll! Francis!-- Francis. Anon!--
All. We're all your liege subjects, right glorious
Sir John!
Chorus.
The lawyer's head, and the shark's head,
The puritan parson's, and clerk's head,
Are all very well
For a shot or a shell;
Exceedingly fit
To fill up a pit!
But the head that was rear'd
When Christmas cheer'd
In the rollicking, frolicking days of yore,
When the Lord of Misrule,
The Friar and Fool,
With Robin and Marian, led the brawl,
And the hobby-horse frisk'd in the old-fashion'd hall,
Was the wassailing Head of the bristly Boar!
We are minions of the moon,
Doughty heroes, hot for fight!
May a cloud her brightness shroud,
And help us to a purse to-night.
Buckram'd varlets! coward knaves!
Angels, watches, rings unfob!--
Prince and Poins. Up with staves, and down with
braves--
We true men the robbers rob!
Touchstone. Mistress Audrey, in the dance,
With your love-lorn swain advance.
Though our carpet *s not so sheen
As shady Arden's forest green,
And the lamps are not so bright
As chaste Luna's silver light,
Nor our company so gay
As when trips the sprightly fay,
I will dance, and I will sing,
Mingling in the laughing ring.
Chorus.
Shout for the Head of the bristly Boar!
Jovial spirits, as we are now,
Did merrily bound while the cup went round
Under the holly and mistletoe bough.
Sing O the green holly! sing O the green holly!
Nothing's so sweet as divine melancholy.
Ingratitude blighting true friendships of old,
No bleak winter wind is so bitter and cold.
The room now seemed to extend in width and in length; the sounds of
revelry ceased, and other characters appeared upon the scene. Lady
Macbeth, her eyes bending on vacancy, her lips moving convulsively,
her voice audible, but in fearful whispers, slept her last sleep of
darkness, guilt, and terror. The Weird Sisters danced round their magic
caldron, hideous, anomalous, and immortal! The noble Moor ended “life's
fitful season,” remorseful and heartbroken. The “Majesty of buried
Denmark” revisited “the pale glimpses of the moon.” Ariel, dismissed
by Pros-pero, warbled his valedictory strain, and flew to his bright
dwelling, “under the blossom that hangs on the bough.” The chiefs and
sages of imperial Rome swept along in silent majesty. Lear, on his
knees, bareheaded, with heavenward eye, quivering lip, and hands clasped
together in agony, pronounced the terrible curse, and in his
death realised all that can be imagined of human woe. Shylock, the
representative of a once-despised and persecuted race, pleaded his cause
before the senate, and lost it by a quibble. Obe-ron, Puck, and the
ethereal essences of a Midsummer Night's Dream flitted in the moonbeams.
Benedick and Beatrice had their wars of wit and combats of the tongue.
The Lady Constance, alternately reproachful, despairing, and frenzied,
exhibited a matchless picture of maternal tenderness. Juliet breathed
forth her sighs to the chaste stars. Isabella read a lesson to haughty
authority, when she asks her brother's forfeited life at the hands
of the Duke, worthy of holy seer or sage *; and Ophelia, in her
distraction, was simple, touching, and sublime.
* An eminent dignitary of the Church of England was once
discoursing with the author on the morality of Shakspere. He
regretted that the Bard had not spoken on that most glorious
of all subjects, Man's Redemption, beyond a few lines
(exquisitely beautiful) in the first seene of Hamlet. The
author immediately pointed out the following terse, but
transcendant passage from “Measure for Measure.”
“Why, all the souls that were, were forfeit once;
And HE that might the 'vantage best have took,
Found out the remedy.”
It would pass the bounds of the most exalted eulogy to
record the prelate's answer, and how deeply affected he was
whilst making it.
Though these soul-stirring scenes were perfectly familiar to Uncle
Timothy, and from youth to age had been his morning study and his
nightly dream, they had never been invested with such an absorbing
reality before, and he stood transfixed, a wondering spectator of the
glorious vision,--for such to his aching sight it seemed to be. At this
moment, the embroidered arras that hung before the oriel window of
the tapestried chamber was slowly drawn aside, and the _figure of
Shakspere_, his eyes beaming with immortality, and his lofty brow
discoursing of all things past, present, and to come, stood revealed
to view! “Flowers of all hues, and without thorn the rose,” sprung up
spontaneously beneath his feet.
And as he walk'd along th' enamell'd bed
Of flow'rs, disposed in many a fairy ring,
Celestial music answer d to his tread,
As if his feet had touch'd some hidden spring
Of harmony--so soft the airs did breathe
In the charmed ear--around--above--beneath?
He spoke--But his voice was of “no sound that the earth knows.”
The sensations of Uncle Timothy grew intensely painful--amounting almost
to agony. He made a sudden effort to rush forward, and in making it,
_awoke!_ when he found himself seated snugly in an arm-chair before
a bright “sea-coal fire,” at the Mother Red Cap, where he had fallen
asleep after the exit of the Bartholomew Fair troop, in their progress
to the “_Rounds_.” And thus ended Uncle Timothy's _Vision of the Boar's
Head!_