Chapter III: Part 3

“‘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.

“I 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 SHAKSPEARE.

“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 SHAKSPEARE.

“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 Cæsar 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.”

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 SHAKSPEARE.

“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 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:—

“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 phœnix 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.