Chapter VI: Part 6

By the luckiest chance, all the wandering knights and their ladies met at the court of a King of Greece, who is not, certainly, to be heard of in Gillies’ or Goldsmith’s history. The scenery is now on a magnificent scale, for there is a regal wedding on foot, and tournaments, and the real war of Heathenism against all Christendom. As the Champions of Christendom have as yet done little to warrant them in assuming the appellation, one would suppose that the time had now arrived when they were to give the world a taste of their quality in that respect. But nothing of the sort occurs. The seven worthies separate, each to his own country, in order to prepare for great deeds; but none are done for the benefit of Christianity, unless indeed we are to conclude that when George and Sabra travelled together, and he overcame all antagonists, and she inspired with love all beholders;--he subdued nature itself and she ran continually into danger, from which he rescued her:--and that when, after being condemned to the stake, the young wife gave birth to three babes in the wood, and was at last crowned Queen of Egypt, something is meant by way of allegory, in reference to old church questions, and in not very clear elucidation as to how these questions were beneficially affected by the Champions of Christendom!

I may add that when Sabra was crowned Queen of Egypt, every one was ordered to be merry, on pain of death! It is further to be observed there is now much confusion, and that the confusion by no means grows less as the story thunders on. The Champions and the three sons of St. George are, by turns, East, West, North, and South, either pursuing each other, or suddenly and unexpectedly encountering, like the principal personages in a pantomime. Battles, love-making, and shutting up cruel and reprobate magicians from the “humane eye,” are the chief events, but to every event there are dozens of episodes, and each episode is as confusing, dazzling, and bewildering as the trunk from which it hangs.

St. George, however, is like a greater champion than himself; and when he is idle and in Italy, he does precisely what Nelson did in the same place--fall in love with a lady, and cause endless mischief in consequence. By this time, however, Johnson begins to think, rightly, that his readers have had enough of it, and that it is time to dispose of his principal characters. These too, are so well disposed to help him, that when the author kills St. Patrick, the saint burys himself! In memory of his deeds, of which we have heard little or nothing, some are accustomed to honor him, says Mr. Johnson--“wearing upon their hats, each of them, a cross of red silk, in token of his many adventures under the Christian Cross.” So that the shamrock appears to have been a device only of later times.

St. David is as quickly despatched. This champion enters Wales to crush the pagans there. He wears a leek in his helmet, and his followers adopt the same fashion, in order that friend may be distinguished from foe. The doughty saint, of course, comes conqueror out of the battle, but he is in a heated state, gets a chill and dies after all of a common cold. Bruce, returning safe from exploring the Nile, to break his neck by falling down his own stairs, hardly presents a more practical bathos than this. Why the leek became the badge of Welshmen need not be further explained.

It is singular that in recounting the manner of the death of the next champion, St. Denis, the romancer is less romantic than common tradition. He tells us how the knight repaired to then pagan France; how he was accused of being a Christian, by another knight of what we should fancy a Christian order, St. Michael, and how the pagan king orders St. Denis to be beheaded, in consequence. There are wonders in the heavens, at this execution, which convert the heathen sovereign to Christianity; but no mention is made of St. Denis having walked to a monastery, after his head was off, and _with_ his head under his arm. Of this prodigy Voltaire remarked, “Ce n’est que le premier pas qui coute,” but of that the romancer makes no mention. St. James suffers by being shut up in his chapel in Spain, and starved to death, by order of the Atheist king. Anthony dies quietly in a good old age, in Italy; St. Andrew is beheaded by the cruel pagan Scots whom, in his old age, he had visited, in order to bring them to conversion: and St. George, who goes on, riding down wild monsters and rescuing timid maidens, to the last--and his inclination, was always in the direction of the maidens--ultimately meets his death by the sting of a venomous dragon.

And now it would seem that two or three hundred years ago, authors were very much like the actors in the _Critic_, who when they _did_ get hold of a good thing, could never give the public enough of it. Accordingly, the biography of the Seven Champions was followed by that of their sons. I will spare my readers the turbulent details: they will probably be satisfied with learning that the three sons of St. George became kings, “according as the fairy queen had prophesied to them,” and that Sir Turpin, son of David, Sir Pedro, son of James, Sir Orlando, son of Anthony, Sir Ewen, son of Andrew, Sir Phelim, son of Patrick, and Sir Owen, son of David, like their sires, combated with giants, monsters, and dragons; tilted and tournamented in honor of the ladies, did battle in defence of Christianity, relieved the distressed, annihilated necromancers and table-turners, in short, accomplished all that could be expected from knights of such prowess and chivalry.

When Richard Johnson had reached this part of his history, he gave it to the world, awaiting the judgment of the critics, before he published his second portion: that portion wherein he was to unfold what nobody yet could guess at, namely, wherefore the Seven Champions were called _par excellence_, the Champions of Christendom. I am afraid that meanwhile those terrible, god-like, and inexorable critics, had not dealt altogether gently with him. The _Punch_ they offered him was not made exclusively of sweets. His St. George had been attacked, and very small reverence been expressed for his ladies. But see how calmly and courteously--all the more admirable that there must have been some affectation in the matter--he turns from the censuring judges to that benevolent personage, the gentle reader. “Thy courtesy,” he says, “must be my buckler against the carping malice of mocking jesters, that being worse able to do well, scoff commonly at that they can not mend; censuring all things, doing nothing, but (monkey-like) make apish jests at anything they do in print, and nothing pleaseth them, except it savor of a scoffing and invective spirit. Well, what they say of me I do not care; thy delight is my sole desire.” Well said, bold Richard Johnson. He thought he had put down criticism as St. George had the dragon.

I can not say, however, that good Richard Johnson treats his gentle reader fairly. This second part of his Champions is to a reader worse than what all the labors of Hercules were to the lusty son of Alcmena. An historical drama at Astley’s is not half so bewildering, and is almost as credible, and Mr. Ducrow himself when he was rehearsing his celebrated “spectacle drama” of “St. George and the Dragon” at old Drury--and who that ever saw him on those occasions can possibly forget him?--achieved greater feats, or was more utterly unlike any sane individual than St. George is, as put upon the literary stage by Master Johnson.

One comfort in tracing the tortuosities of this chivalric romance is that the action is rapid; but then there is so much of it, and it is so astounding! We are first introduced to the three sons of St. George, who are famous hunters in England, and whose mother, the lady Sabra, “catches her death,” by going out attired like Diana, to witness their achievements. The chivalric widower thereupon sets out for Jerusalem, his fellow-champions accompany, and George’s three sons, Guy, Alexander, and David, upon insinuation from their mother’s spirit, start too in pursuit. The lads were knighted by the king of England before they commenced their journey, which they perform with the golden spur of chivalry attached to their heels. They meet with the usual adventures by the way: destroying giants, and rescuing virgins, who in these troublesome times seem to have been allowed to travel about too much by themselves. Meanwhile, their sire is enacting greater prodigies still, and is continually delivering his fellow-champions from difficulties, from which they are unable to extricate themselves. Indeed, in all circumstances, his figure is the most prominent; and although the other half-dozen _must_ have rendered some service on each occasion, St. George makes no more mention of the same than Marshal St. Arnaud, in his letters on the victory at the Alma, does of the presence and services of the English.

It is said that Mrs. Radcliffe, whose horrors used to delight and distress our mothers and aunts, in their younger days, became herself affected by the terrors which she only paints to explain away natural circumstances. What then must have been the end of Richard Johnson? His scene of the enchantments of the Black Castle is quite enough to have killed the author with bewilderment. There is a flooring in the old palace of the Prince of Orange in Brussels, which is so inlaid with small pieces of wood, of a thousand varieties of patterns, as to be a triumph of its kind. I was not at all surprised, when standing on that floor, to hear that when the artist had completed his inconceivable labor, he gave one wild gaze over the _parquet_ of the palace, and dropped dead of a fit of giddiness. I am sure that Richard Johnson must have met with some such calamity after revising this portion of his history. It is a portion in which it is impossible for the Champions or for the readers to go to sleep. The noise is terrific, the incidents fall like thunderbolts, the changes roll over each other in a succession made with electric rapidity, and when the end comes we are all the more rejoiced, because we have comprehended nothing; but we are especially glad to find that the knight of the Black Castle, who is the cause of all the mischief, is overcome, flies in a state of destitution to a neighboring wood, and being irretrievably “hard up,” stabs himself with the first thing at hand, as ruthlessly as the lover of the “Ratcatcher’s Daughter.”

Time, place, propriety, and a respect for contemporary history, are amusingly violated throughout the veracious details. Nothing can equal the confusion, nothing can be more absurd than the errors. But great men have committed errors as grave. Shakespeare opened a seaport in Bohemia, and Mr. Macaulay wrote of one Penn what was only to be attributed to another. And now, have the dramatists treated St. George better than the romancers?

The national saint was, doubtless, often introduced in the Mysteries; but the first occasion of which I have any knowledge of his having been introduced on the stage, was by an author named John Kirke. John was so satisfied with his attempt that he never wrote a second play. He allowed his fame to rest on the one in question, which is thus described on his title-page: “The Seven Champions of Christendome. Acted at the _Cocke Pit_, and at the _Red Bull_ in St. John’s Streete, with a general liking, And never printed till this _yeare_ 1638. Written by J. K.--London, printed by J. Okes, and are (_sic_) to be sold by James Becket, at his Shop in the Inner Temple Gate, 1638.”

John Kirke treats his subject melodramatically. In the first scene, Calib the Witch, in a speech prefacing her declarations of a love for foul weather and deeds, tells the audience by way of prologue, how she had stolen the young St. George from his now defunct parent, with the intention of making a bath for her old bones out of his young warm blood. Love, however, had touched her, and she had brought up “the red-lipped boy,” with some indefinite idea of making something of him when a man.

With this disposition the old lady has some fears as to the possible approaching term of her life; but, as she is assured by “Tarfax the Devill” that she can not die unless she love blindly, the witch, like a mere mortal, accounting that she loves wisely, reckons herself a daughter of immortality, and rejoices hugely. The colloquy of this couple is interrupted by their son Suckabud, who, out of a head just broken by St. George, makes complaint with that comic lack of fun, which was wont to make roar the entire inside of the Red Bull. The young clown retires with his sire, and then enters the great St. George, a lusty lad, with a world of inquiries touching his parentage. Calib explains that his lady mother was anything but an honest woman, and that his sire was just the partner to match. “Base or noble, pray?” asks St. George. To which the witch replies:--

“Base and noble too;
Both base by thee, but noble by descent;
And thou born base, yet mayst thou write true gent:”

and it may be said, parenthetically, that many a “true gent” is by birth equal to St. George himself.

Overcome by her affection, the witch makes a present to St. George of the half-dozen champions of England whom she holds in chains within her dwelling. One of them is described as “the lively, brisk, cross-cap’ring Frenchman, Denis.” With these for slaves, Calib yields her wand of power, and the giver is no sooner out of sight when George invokes the shades of his parents, who not only appear and furnish him with a corrected edition of his biography, but inform him that he is legitimate Earl of Coventry, with all the appurtenances that a young earl can desire.

Thereupon ensues a hubbub that must have shaken all the lamps in the cockpit. George turns the Witch’s power against herself, and she descends to the infernal regions, where she is punningly declared to have gained the title of Duchess of Helvetia. The six champions are released, and the illustrious seven companions go forth in search of adventures, with Suckabus for a “Squire.” The father of the latter gives him some counsel at parting, which is a parody on the advice of Polonius to Laertes. “Lie,” says Torpax:--

“Lie to great profit, borrow, pay no debts,
Cheat and purloin, they are gaming dicers’ bets.”

“If Cottington outdo me,” says the son, “he be-whipt.” And so, after the election of St. George as the seventh champion of Christendom, ends one of the longest acts that Bull or Cockpit was ever asked to witness and applaud.

The next act is briefer but far more bustling. We are in that convenient empire of Trebizond, where everything happened which never took place, according to the romances. The whole city is in a state of consternation at the devastations of a detestable dragon, and a lion, his friend and co-partner. The nobles bewail the fact in hexameters, or at least in lines meant to do duty for them; and the common people bewail the fact epigrammatically, and describe the deaths of all who have attempted to slay the monsters, with a broadness of effect that doubtless was acknowledged by roars of laughter. Things grow worse daily, the fiends look down, and general gloom is settling thick upon the empire, when Andrew of Scotland and Anthony of Italy arrive, send in their cards, and announce their determination to slay both these monsters.

Such visitors are received with more than ordinary welcome. The emperor is regardless of expense in his liberality, and his daughter Violetta whispers to her maid Carinthia that she is already in love with one of them, but will not say which; a remark which is answered by the pert maid, that she is in love with both, and would willingly take either. All goes on joyously until in the course of conversation, and it is by no means remarkable for brilliancy, the two knights let fall that they are Christians. Now, you must know, that the established Church at Trebizond at this time, which is at any period, was heathen. The court appeared to principally affect Apollo and Diana, while the poorer people put up with Pan, and abused him for denouncing may-poles! Well, the Christians had never been emancipated; nay, they had never been tolerated in Trebizond, and it was contrary to law that the country should be saved, even in its dire extremity, by Christian help. The knights are doomed to die, unless they will turn heathens. This, of course, they decline with a dignified scorn; whereupon, in consideration of their nobility, they are permitted to choose their own executioners. They make choice of the ladies, but Violetta and Carinthia protest that they can not think of such a thing. Their high-church sire is disgusted with their want of orthodoxy, and he finally yields to the knights their swords, that they may do justice on themselves as the law requires. But Andrew and Anthony are no sooner armed again than they clear their way to liberty, and the drop scene falls upon the rout of the whole empire of Trebizond.

The third act is of gigantic length, and deals with giants. There is mourning in Tartary. David has killed the king’s son in a tournament, and the king remarks, like a retired apothecary, that “Time’s plaster must draw the sore before he can feel peace again.” To punish David, he is compelled to undertake the destruction of the enchanter Ormandine, who lived in a cavern fortress with “some selected friends.” The prize of success is the reversion of the kingdom of Tartary to the Welsh knight. The latter goes upon his mission, but he is so long about it that our old friend Chorus enters, to explain what he affirms they have not time to act--namely, the great deeds of St. George, who, as we learn, had slain the never-to-be-forgotten dragon, rescued Sabrina, been cheated of his reward, and held in prison seven years upon bread and water. His squire, Suckabus, alludes to giants whom he and his master had previously slain, and whose graves were as large as Tothill Fields. He also notices “Ploydon’s law,” and other matters, that could hardly have been contemporaneous with the palmy days of the kingdom of Tartary. Meanwhile, David boldly assaults Ormandine, but the enchanter surrounds him with some delicious-looking nymphs, all thinly clad and excessively seductive; and we are sorry to say that the Welsh champion, not being cavalierly mounted on proper principles, yields to seduction, and after various falls under various temptations, is carried to bed by the rollicking nymph Drunkenness.

But never did good, though fallen, men want for a friend at a pinch. St. George is in the neighborhood; and seedy as he is after seven years in the dark, with nothing more substantial by way of food than bread, and nothing more exhilarating for beverage than _aqua pura_, the champion of England does David’s work, and with more generosity than justice, makes him a present of the enchanter’s head. David presents the same to the King of Tartary, that, according to promise pledged in case of such a present being made, he may be proclaimed heir-apparent to the Tartarian throne. With this bit of cheating, the long third act comes to an end.

The fourth act is taken up with an only partially successful attack by James, David, and Patrick, on a cruel enchanter, Argalio, who at least is put to flight, and _that_, at all events, as the knights remark, is something to be thankful for. The fifth and grand act reveals to us the powerful magician, Brandron, in his castle. He holds in thrall the King of Macedon--a little circumstance not noted in history; and he has in his possession the seven daughters of his majesty transformed into swans. The swans contrive to make captives of six of the knights as they were taking a “gentle walk” upon his ramparts. They are impounded as trespassers, and Brandron, who has some low comedy business with Suckubus, will not release them but upon condition that they fight honestly in his defence against St. George. The six duels take place, and of course the champion of England overcomes all his friendly antagonists; whereupon Brandron, with his club, beats out his own brains, in presence of the audience.

At this crisis, the King of Macedon appears, restored to power, and inquires after his daughters. St. George and the rest, with a use of the double negatives that would have shocked Lindley Murray, declare

“We never knew, nor saw no ladies here.”

The swans, however, soon take their pristine form, and the three daughters appear fresh from their plumes and their long bath upon the lake. Upon this follows the smart dialogue which we extract as a sample of how sharply the King of Macedon looked to his family interests, and how these champion knights were “taken in” before they well knew how the fact was accomplished.

_Mac._ Reverend knights, may we desire to know which of you are
unmarried?
_Ant., Den., and Pat._ We are.
_Geo._ Then here’s these ladies, take ’em to your beds.
_Mac._ George highly honors aged Macedon.
_The three Knights._ But can the ladies’ love accord with us?
_The three Ladies._ Most willingly!
_The three Knights._ We thus then seal our contract.
_Geo._ Which thus we ratifie.
Sit with the brides, most noble Macedon;
And since kind fortune sent such happy chance,
We’ll grace your nuptials with a soldier’s dance.

And, fore George, as our fathers used to say, they make a night of it. The piece ends with a double military reel, and the audiences at the Bull and the Cockpit probably whistled the tune as they wended their way homeward to crab-apple ale and spiced gingerbread.

Next to the Champions of Christendom, the King’s Knight Champion of England is perhaps the most important personage--in the point of view of chivalry. I think it is some French author who has said, that revolutions resemble the game of chess, where the pawns or pieces (_les pions_) may cause the ruin of the king, save him, or take his place. Now the _champ pion_, as this French remark reminds me, is nothing more than the field _pion_, pawn, or piece, put forward to fight in the king’s quarrel.

The family of the Champion of England bears, it may be observed, exactly the name which suits a calling so derived. The appellation “Dymoke” is derived from _De Umbrosâ Quercu_; I should rather say it is the translation of it; and Harry De Umbrosâ Quercu is only Harry of the Shady or Dim Oak, a very apt dwelling-place and name for one whose chief profession was that of field-pawn to the king.

This derivation or adaptation of names from original Latin surnames is common enough, and some amusing pages might be written on the matter, in addition to what has been so cleverly put together by Mr. Mark Anthony Lower, in his volume devoted especially to an elucidation of English surnames.

The royal champions came in with the Conquest. The Norman dukes had theirs in the family of Marmion--ancestors of that Marmion of Sir Walter Scott’s, who commits forgery, like a common knave of more degenerate times. The Conqueror conferred sundry broad lands in England on his champions; among others, the lands adjacent to, as well as the castle of Tamworth. Near this place was the first nunnery established in this country. The occupants were the nuns of St. Edith, at Polesworth. Robert de Marmion used the ladies very “cavalierly,” ejected them from their house, and deprived them of their property. But such victims had a wonderfully clever way of recovering their own.

My readers may possibly remember how a certain Eastern potentate injured the church, disgusted the Christians generally, and irritated especially that Simeon Stylites who sat on the summit of a pillar, night and day, and never moved from his abiding-place. The offender had a vision, in which he not only saw the indignant Simeon, but was cudgelled almost into pulp by the _simulacre_ of that saint. I very much doubt if Simeon himself was in his airy dwelling-place at that particular hour of the night. I was reminded of this by what happened to the duke’s champion, Robert de Marmion. He was roused from a deep sleep by the vision of a stout lady, who announced herself as the wronged St. Edith, and who proceeded to show her opinion of De Marmion’s conduct toward her nuns, by pommelling his ribs with her crosier, until she had covered his side with bruises, and himself with repentance. What strong-armed young monk played St. Edith that night, it is impossible to say; but that he enacted the part successfully, is seen from the fact that Robert brought back the ladies to Polesworth, and made ample restitution of all of which they had been deprived. The nuns, in return, engaged with alacrity to inter all defunct Marmions within the chapter-house of their abbey, for nothing.

With the manor of Tamworth in Warwickshire, Marmion held that of Scrivelsby in Lincolnshire. The latter was held of the King by grand sergeantry, “to perform the office of champion at the King’s coronation.” At his death he was succeeded by a son of the same Christian name, who served the monks of Chester precisely as his sire had treated the nuns at Polesworth. This second Robert fortified his ill-acquired prize--the priory; but happening to fall into one of the newly-made ditches, when inspecting the fortifications, a soldier of the Earl of Chester killed him, without difficulty, as he lay with broken hip and thigh, at the bottom of the fosse. The next successor, a third Robert, was something of a judge, with a dash of the warrior, too, and he divided his estates between two sons, both Roberts, by different mothers. The eldest son and chief possessor, after a bustling and emphatically “battling” life, was succeeded by his son Philip, who fell into some trouble in the reign of Henry III. for presuming to act as a judge or justice of the peace, without being duly commissioned. This Philip was, nevertheless, one of the most faithful servants to a king who found so many faithless; and if honors were heaped upon him in consequence, he fairly merited them all. He was happy, too, in marriage, for he espoused a lady sole heiress to a large estate, and who brought him four daughters, co-heiresses to the paternal and maternal lands of the Marmions and the Kilpecs.

This, however, is wandering. Let us once more return to orderly illustration. In St. George I have shown how pure romance deals with a hero. In the next chapter I will endeavor to show in what spirit the lives and actions of real English heroes have been treated by native historians. In so doing, I will recount the story of Sir Guy of Warwick, after their fashion, with original illustrations and “modern instances.”

SIR GUY OF WARWICK,

AND WHAT BEFELL HIM.

“His desires
Are higher than his state, and his deserts
Not much short of the most he can desire.”
_Chapman’s Byron’s Conspiracy._

The Christian name of Guy was once an exceedingly popular name in the county of York. I have never heard a reason assigned for this, but I think it may have originated in admiration of the deeds and the man whose appellation and reputation have survived to our times. I do not allude to Guy Faux; _that_ young gentleman was the Father of Perverts, but by no means the first of the Guys.

The “Master Guy” of whom I am treating here, or, rather, about to treat, was a youth whose family originally came from Northumberland. That family was, in one sense, more noble than the imperial family of Muscovy, for its members boasted not only of good principles, but of sound teeth.

The teeth and principles of the Romanoffs are known to be in a distressing state of dilapidation.

Well; these Northumbrian Guys having lived extremely fast, and being compelled to compound with their creditors, by plundering the latter, and paying them zero in the pound, migrated southward, and finally settled in Warwickshire. Now, the head of the house had a considerable share of common sense about him, and after much suffering in a state of shabby gentility, he not only sent his daughters out to earn their own livelihood, but, to the intense disgust of his spouse, hired himself as steward to that noble gentleman the Earl of Warwick. “My blood is as good as ever it was,” said he to the fine lady his wife. “It is the blood of an upper servant,” cried she, “and my father’s daughter is the spouse of a flunkey.”

The husband was not discouraged; and he not only opened his office in his patron’s castle but he took his only son with him, and made him his first clerk. This son’s name was Guy; and he was rather given to bird-catching, hare-snaring, and “gentism” generally. He had been a precocious youth from some months previous to his birth, and had given his lady-mother such horrid annoyance, that she was always dreaming of battles, fiery-cars, strong-smelling dragons, and the wrathful Mars. “Well,” she used to remark to her female friends, while the gentlemen were over their wine, “I expect that this boy” (she had made up her mind to that) “will make a noise in the world, draw bills upon his father, and be the terror of maid-servants. Why, do you know----” and here she became confidential, and I do not feel authorized to repeat what she then communicated.

But Master Guy, the “little stranger” alluded to, proved better than was expected. He might have been considerably worse, and yet would not have been so bad as maternal prophecy had depicted him. At eight years ... but I hear you say, “When did all this occur?” Well, it was in a November’s “Morning Post,” that announcement was made of the birth; and as to the year, Master Guy has given it himself in the old metrical romance,

“Two hundred and twenty years and odd,
After our Savior Christ his birth,
When King Athelstan wore the crown,
I livéd here upon the earth.”

At eight years old, I was about to remark, young Guy was the most insufferable puppy of his district. He won all the prizes for athletic sports; and by the time he was sixteen there was not a man in all England who dared accept his challenge to wrestle with both arms, against _him_ using only one.

It was at this time that he kept his father’s books and a leash of hounds, with the latter of which he performed such extraordinary feats, that the Earl of Warwick invited him from the steward’s room to his own table; where Guy’s father changed his plate, and Master Guy twitched him by the beard as he did it.

At the head of the earl’s table sat his daughter “Phillis the Fair,” a lady who, like her namesake in the song, was “sometimes forward, sometimes coy,” and altogether so sweetly smiling and so beguiling, that when the earl asked Guy if he would not come and hunt (the dinner was at 10 A. M.), Guy answered, as the Frenchman did who could not bear the sport, with a _Merci, j’ai été!_ and affecting an iliac seizure, hinted at the necessity of staying at home.

The youth forthwith was carried to bed. Phillis sent him a posset, the earl sent him his own physician; and this learned gentleman, after much perplexity veiled beneath the most affable and confident humbug, wrote a prescription which, if it could do the patient no good would do him no harm. He was a most skilful man, and his patients almost invariably recovered under this treatment. He occasionally sacrificed one or two when a consultation was held, and he was called upon to prescribe _secundum artem_; but he compensated for this professional slaying by, in other cases, leaving matters to Nature, who was the active partner in his firm, and of whose success he was not in the least degree jealous. So, when he had written the prescription, Master Guy fell a discoursing of the passion of love, and _that_ with a completeness and a variety of illustration as though he were the author of the chapter on that subject in Burton’s “Anatomy of Melancholy.” The doctor heard him to the end, gently rubbing one side of his nose the while with the index-finger of his right hand; and when his patient had concluded, the medical gentleman smiled, hummed “Phillis is my only joy,” and left the room with his head nodding like a Chinese Mandarin’s.

By this time the four o’clock sun was making green and gold pillars of the trees in the neighboring wood, and Guy got up, looked at the falling leaves, and thought of the autumn of his hopes. He whistled “Down, derry, down,” with a marked emphasis on the _down_; but suddenly his hopes again sprang up, as he beheld Phillis among her flower-beds, engaged in the healthful occupation which a sublime poet has given to the heroine whom he names, and whose action he describes, when he tells us that

“Miss Dinah was a-walking in her garding one day.”

Guy trussed his points, pulled up his hose, set his bonnet smartly on his head, clapped a bodkin on his thigh, and then walked into the garden with the air of the once young D’Egville in a ballet, looking after a nymph--which indeed was a pursuit he was much given to when he was _old_ D’Egville, and could no longer bound through his ballets, because he was stiff in the joints.

Guy, of course, went down on one knee, and at once plunged into the most fiery style of declaration, but Phillis had not read the Mrs. Chapone of that day for nothing. She brought him back to prose and propriety, and then the two started afresh, and they _did_ talk! Guy felt a little “streaked” at first, but he soon recovered his self-possession, and it would have been edifying for the young mind to have heard how these two pretty things spoke to, and answered each other in moral maxims stolen from the top pages of their copy-books. They poured them out by the score, and the proverbial philosophy they enunciated was really the origin of the book so named by Martin Tupper. He took it all from Phillis and Guy, whose descendants, of the last name, were so famous for their school-books. This I expect Mr. Tupper will (not) mention in his next edition.

After much profitable interchange of this sort of article, the lady gently hinted that Master Guy was not indifferent to her, but that he was of inferior birth, yet of qualities that made him equal with her; adding, that hitherto he had done little but kill other people’s game, whereas there were nobler deeds to be accomplished. And then she bade him go in search of perilous adventures, winding up with the toast and sentiment, “Master Guy, eagles do not care to catch flies.”

Reader, if you have ever seen the prince of pantomimists, Mr. Payne, tear the hair of his theatrical wig in a fit of amorous despair, you may have some idea as to the intensity with which Master Guy illustrated his own desperation. He stamped the ground with such energy that all the hitherto quiet aspens fell a-shaking, and their descendants have ever since maintained the same fashion. Phillis fell a-crying at this demonstration, and softened considerably. After a lapse of five minutes, she had blushingly directed Master Guy to “speak to papa.”

Now, of all horrible interviews, this perhaps is the most horrible. Nelson used to say that there was only one thing on earth which he dreaded, and that was dining with a mayor and corporation. Doubtless it is dreadful, but _what_ is it compared with looking a grave man in the face, who has no sentiment into him, and whose first remark is sure to be, “Well, sir, be good enough to tell me--what can you settle on my daughter? What can you do to secure her happiness?”

“Well,” said Guy, in reply to this stereotyped remark, “I can kill the Dun cow on the heath. _She_ has killed many herself who’ve tried the trick on her; and last night she devoured crops of clover, and twice as many fields of barley on your lordship’s estate.”

“First kill the cow, and then----,” said the earl with a smile; and Shakespeare had the echo of this speech in his ear, when he began the fifth act of his Othello. Now Guy was not easily daunted. If I cared to make a pun, I might easily have said “cowed,” but in a grave and edifying narrative this loose method of writing would be extremely improper. Guy, then, was not a coward--nay, nothing is hidden under the epithet. He tossed a little in bed that night as he thought the matter over, and the next morning made sheets of paper as crumpled as the cow’s horns, as he rejected the plans of assault he had designed upon them, and sat uncertain as to what he should do in behoof of his own fortune. He at length determined to go and visit the terrible animal “incognito.” It is the very word used by one of the biographers of Guy, an anonymous Northumbrian, who published the life on a broad sheet, with a picture of Master Guy which might have frightened the cow, and which is infinitely more ugly. Neither the black-letter poem, the old play, nor the pamphlets or ballads, use the term _incognito_, but all declare that Guy proceeded with much caution, and a steel cuirass over his jerkin. I mention these things, because without correctness my narrative would be worthless. I am not imaginative, and would not embroider a plain suit of fact upon any account.

Guy’s carefulness is to be proved. Here was a cow that had been more destructive than ever Red Riding Hood’s Wolf was--that Count Wolf, who used to snap up young maidens, and lived as careless of respectability as was to be expected of a man once attached to a “marching regiment,” and who turned monk. The cow was twelve feet high, from the hoof to the shoulder, and eighteen feet long, from the neck to the root of the tail. All the dragons ever heard of had never been guilty of such devastation to life and property as this terrible cow. Guy looked at her and did not like her. The cow detected him and rushed at her prey. Guy was active, attacked her in front and rear, as the allies did the forts of Bomarsund; very considerably confused her by burying his battle-axe in her skull; hung on by her tail as she attempted to fly; and finally gave her the _coup de grace_ by passing his rapier rapidly and repeatedly through her especially vulnerable point behind the ear. In proof of the fact, the scene of the conflict still bears the name of Dunsmore Heath, and that is a wider basis of proof than many “facts” stand upon, to which we are required by plodding teachers to give assent.

Besides, there is a rib of this very cow exhibited at Bristol. To be sure it is not a rib now of a cow, but out of reverence to the antiquity of the assertion which allegedly makes it so, I think we are bound to believe what is thus advanced. Not that I do myself, but that is of no consequence. I have a strong idea that the cow was not a cow, but a countess (not a Countess Cowper), who made war in her own right, lived a disreputable life, was as destructive to wealthy young lords as a _Lorette_, and won whole estates by cheating at _écarté_. Guy took a hand, and beat her.

Poor Master Guy, he was as hardly used as ever Jacob was, and much he meditated thereupon in the fields at eventide. The stern earl would by no means give his consent to the marriage of his daughter with the young champion, until the latter had performed some doughtier deeds than this. The boy (he was still in his teens) took heart of grace, divided a crooked sixpence with Phillis, and straightway sailed for Normandy, where he arrived, after meeting as many thieves by the way as if he had walked about for a month in the streets of Dover. But Master Guy killed all _he_ met; there is a foolish judicial, not to say social, prejudice against our doing the same with the bandits of Dover. I can not conjecture why; perhaps they have a privilege under some of the city companies, whereby they are constituted the legal skinners of all sojourners among them, carrying filthy lucre.

Guy met in Normandy with the last person he could have expected to fall in with--no other than the Emperor of Almayne, a marvellously ubiquitous person to be met with in legends, and frequently encountered in the seaports of inland towns. The historians are here a little at issue. One says that Master Guy having found a certain Dorinda tied to the stake, and awaiting a champion who would stake his own life for her rescue, inquired the “antecedents” of the position. Dorinda, it appears, had been as rudely used as young lady possibly could be, “by the Duke of Blois, his son,” and the duke was so enraged at Dorinda’s charge against his favorite Otto, that he condemned her to be burned alive, unless a champion appeared in time to rescue her by defeating the aforesaid Otto in single combat. Guy, of course, transacted the little business successfully; spoiled Otto’s beauty by slashing his nose; and so enchanted Dorinda, that she never accused her champion of doing aught displeasing to her.

Anxious as I am touching the veracity of this narrative, I have recorded what biographers state, though not in their own words. But I must add, that in some of the histories this episode about Dorinda is altogether omitted, and we only hear of Master Guy appearing in panoply at a tournament given by the Emperor of Allemagne, in Normandy--which is much the same, gentle reader, as if I were, at your cost, to give a concert and ball, with a supper from Farrance’s, and all, not in my house, but in yours. Nevertheless, in Normandy the tournament was held, and the paternal Emperor of Allemagne, having then a daughter, Blanche, of whom he wished to get rid, he set her up as the prize of the conquering knight in the tournament.

I think I hear you remark something as to the heathenness of the custom. But it is a custom sacred to these times; and our neighbors (for of course neither you nor I could condescend to such manners) get up evening tournaments of whist, quadrilles, and a variety of singing--of every variety but the good and intelligible, and at these modern tournaments given for the express purpose which that respectable old gentleman, the Emperor of Allemagne, had in view when he opened his lists; the “girls” are the prizes of the carpet-knights. So gentlemen, _faites votre jeu_, as the philosopher who presided at Frescati’s used to say--_faites votre jeu, Messieurs_; and go in and win. Perhaps if you read Cowper, you may be the better armed against loss in such a conflict.

I need not say that Master Guy’s good sword, which gleamed like lightning in the arena, and rained blows faster than ever Mr. Blanchard rained them, in terrific Coburg combats, upon the vulnerable crest of Mr. Bradley--won for him the peerless prize--to say nothing of a dog and a falcon thrown in. Master Guy rather ungallantly declined having the lady, though her father would have given him _carte blanche_; he looked at her, muttered her name, and then murmured, “Blanche, as thou art, yet art thou black-a-moor, compared with my Phillis;”--and with this unchivalric avowal, for it was a part of chivalry to say a thing and think another, he returned to England, carrying with him the “Spaniel King’s Charls,” as French authors write it, and the falcon, with a ring and a perch, like a huge parroquet.

Master Guy entered Warwick in a “brougham,” as we now might say, and sorely was he put to it with the uneasy bird. At every lurch of the vehicle, out flapped the wings, elongated was the neck, and Master Guy had to play at “dodge” with the falcon, who was intent upon darting his terrific beak into the cavalier’s nose. At length, however, the castle was safely reached; the presents were deposited at the feet of Phillis the Fair, and Guy hoped, like the Peri, and also like that gentle spirit to be disappointed, that the gates of paradise were about to open. But not so, Phillis warmly praised his little regard for that pert minx, Blanche, or _Blanc d’Espagne_, as she wickedly added; and she patted the spaniel, and offered sugar to the falcon; and, after the dinner to which Guy _was_ invited, she intimated in whispers, that they were both “too young as yet” (not that she believed so), and that more deeds must be done by Guy, ere the lawyers would be summoned by her papa to achieve some of their own.

The youthful Guy went forth “reluctant but resolved,” and he _would_ have sung as he went along,

“Elle a quinze ans, moi j’en ai seize,”

of Sedaine and Grétry, only neither poet nor composer, nor the opera of _Richard Cœur de Lion_, had yet appeared to gladden heart and ear. But the sentiment was there, and perhaps Sedaine knew of it when he penned the words. However this may be, Master Guy, though soft of heart, was not so of arm, for on this present cause of errantry he enacted such deeds that their very enumeration makes one breathless. His single sword cleared whole forests of hordes of brigands, through whose sides his trenchant blade passed as easily as the sabre, when held by Corporal Sutton, through a dead sheep. Our hero was by no means particular as to what he did, provided he was doing something; nor what cause he fought for, provided there were a cause and a fight. Thus we find him aiding the Duke of Louvain against his old friend the Emperor of Allemagne. He led the Duke’s forces, slew thousands upon thousands of the enemy, and, as though he had the luck of a modern Muscovite army, did not lose more than “one man,” with slight damage to the helmet of a second.

Master Guy, not yet twenty, surpassed the man whom Mr. Thiers calls “_ce pur Anglais_,” Mr. Pitt, for he became a prime minister ere he had attained his majority. In that capacity he negotiated a peace for the Duke with the Emperor. The two potentates were so satisfied with the negotiator, that out of compliment they offered him the command of their united fleet against the Pagan Soldan of Byzantium. They did not at all expect that he would accept it; but then they were not aware that Master Guy had much of the spirit which Sidney Smith, in after-years, discerned in Lord John Russell--and the enterprising Guy accepted the command of the entire fleet, with quite an entire confidence.

He did therewith, if chroniclers are to be credited, more than we might reasonably expect from Lord John Russell, were that statesman to be in command of a Channel squadron. Having swept the sea, he rather prematurely, if dates are to be respected, nearly annihilated Mohammedanism--and he was as invincible and victorious against every kind of Pagan. It was in the East that he overthrew in single combat, the giants Colbron and his brother Mongadora. He was resting after this contest, and leaning like the well-breathed Hotspur, upon his sword, at the entrance to his tent, when the Turkish governor Esdalante, approaching him, politely begged that he might take his head, as he had promised the same to an Osmanlee lady, who was in a condition of health which might be imperilled by refusal. Master Guy as politely bade him take it if he could, and therewith, they went at it “like French falconers,” and Guy took off the head of his opponent instead of losing his own. This little matter being settled, Guy challenged the infidel Soldan himself, putting Christianity against Islamism, on the issue, and thus professing to decide questions of faith as Galerius did when he left Olympus and Calvary to depend upon a vote of the Roman senate. Master Guy, being thrice armed by the justness of his quarrel, subdued the infidel Soldan, but the latter, to show, as we are told, his insuperable hatred for Christianity, took handfuls of his own blood, and cast it in the face of his conqueror--and no doubt here, the victor had in his mind the true story of Julian insulting “the Galilæan.” We thus see how history is made to contribute to legend.

And now the appetite of the errant lover grew by what it fed upon. He mixed himself up in every quarrel, and could not see a lion and a dragon quietly settling their disputes in a wood, by dint of claws, without striking in for the lion, slaying his foe, and receiving with complacency the acknowledgments of the nobler beast.

He achieved something more useful when he met Lord Terry in a wood, looking for his wife who had been carried off by a score of ravishers. While the noble lord sat down on a mossy bank, like a gentleman in a melodrama, Guy rescued his wife in his presence, and slew all the ravishers, “in funeral order,” the youngest first. He subsequently stood godfather to his friend Terry’s child, and as I am fond of historical parallels, I may notice that Sir Walter Scott performed the same office for a Terry, who if he was not a lord, often represented them, to say nothing of monarchs and other characters.

Master Guy’s return to England was a little retarded by another characteristic adventure. As he was passing through Louvain, he found Duke Otto besieging his father in his own castle--“governor” of the castle and the Duke. Now nothing shocked Master Guy so much as filial ingratitude, and despite all that Otto could urge about niggardly allowance, losses at play, debts of honor, and the parsimony of the “governor,” our champion made common cause with the “indignant parent,” and not only mortally wounded Otto, but, before the latter died, Guy brought him to a “sense of his situation,” and Otto died in a happy frame of mind, leaving all his debts to his father. The legacy was by way of a “souvenir,” and certainly the governor never forgot it. As for Guy, he killed the famous boar of Louvain, before he departed for England, and as he drew his sword from the animal’s flank, he remarked, there lies a greater boar, and not a less beast than Otto himself. However, he took the head and hams with him, for Phillis was fond of both; and as she was wont to say, if there was anything that could seduce her, it was brawn!

When Master Guy stepped ashore at Harwich, where that amphibious town now lies soaking, deputations from all quarters were awaiting him, to ask his succor against some terrible dragon in the north that was laying waste all the land, and laying hold of all the waists which the men there wished to enclose. King Athelstan was then at York hoping to terrify the indomitable beast by power of an army, which in combat with the noxious creature made as long a tail, in retreat, as the dragon itself.

Now whatever this nuisance was which so terribly plagued the good folks in the North, whether a dragon with a tongue thirty feet long, or anything else equally hard to imagine, it is matter of fact that our Master Guy assuredly got the better of it. On his return he met an ovation in York; Athelstan entertained him at a banquet, covered him with honor, endowed him with a good round sum, and _thus_ all the newborn male children in the county became Guys. At least two thirds of them received the popular name, and for many centuries it remained in favor, until disgrace was brought upon it by the York proctor’s son, whose effigy still glides through our streets on each recurring 5th of November.