Part 7

“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.

“Sir, if it were permitted me to swear on that holy Bible, I would swear I never until this day heard that dog-roses were our provender; and yet did I, no longer ago than last summer, write, not indeed upon a dog-rose, but upon a sweet-briar, what would only serve to rinse the mouth withal after the clove.”

SIR THOMAS.

“Repeat the same, youth. We may haply give thee our counsel thereupon.”

Willy took heart, and lowering his voice, which hath much natural mellowness, repeated these from memory:—

“My briar that smelledst sweet When gentle spring’s first heat Ran through thy quiet veins,— Thou that wouldst injure none, But wouldst be left alone,— Alone thou leavest me, and nought of thine remains.

“What! hath no poet’s lyre O’er thee, sweet-breathing briar, Hung fondly, ill or well? And yet methinks with thee A poet’s sympathy, Whether in weal or woe, in life or death, might dwell.

“Hard usage both must bear, Few hands your youth will rear, Few bosoms cherish you; Your tender prime must bleed Ere you are sweet, but freed From life, you then are prized; thus prized are poets too.”

Sir Thomas said, with kind encouragement, “He who beginneth so discreetly with a dog-rose, may hope to encompass a damask-rose ere he die.”

Willy did now breathe freely. The commendation of a knight and magistrate worked powerfully within him; and Sir Thomas said furthermore,—

“These short matters do not suit me. Thou mightest have added some moral about life and beauty,—poets never handle roses without one; but thou art young, and mayest get into the train.”

Willy made the best excuse he could; and no bad one it was, the knight acknowledged; namely, that the sweet-briar was not really dead, although left for dead.

“Then,” said Sir Thomas, “as life and beauty would not serve thy turn, thou mightest have had full enjoyment of the beggar, the wayside, the thieves, and the good Samaritan,—enough to tapestry the bridal chamber of an empress.”

William bowed respectfully, and sighed.

“Ha! thou hast lost them, sure enough, and it may not be quite so fair to smile at thy quandary,” quoth Sir Thomas.

“I did my best the first time,” said Willy, “and fell short the second.”

“That, indeed, thou must have done,” said Sir Thomas. “It is a grievous disappointment, in the midst of our lamentations for the dead, to find ourselves balked. I am curious to see how thou couldst help thyself. Don’t be abashed; I am ready for even worse than the last.”

Bill hesitated, but obeyed:—

“And art thou yet alive? And shall the happy hive Send out her youth to cull Thy sweets of leaf and flower, And spend the sunny hour With thee, and thy faint heart with murmuring music lull?

“Tell me what tender care, Tell me what pious prayer, Bade thee arise and live. The fondest-favoured bee Shall whisper nought to thee More loving than the song my grateful muse shall give.”

Sir Thomas looked somewhat less pleased at the conclusion of these verses than at the conclusion of the former, and said, gravely,—

“Young man! methinks it is betimes that thou talkest of having a muse to thyself; or even in common with others. It is only great poets who have muses; I mean to say who have the right to talk in that fashion. The French, I hear, _Phœbus_ it and _muse-me_ it right and left; and boggle not to throw all nine, together with mother and master, into the compass of a dozen lines or thereabout. And your Italian can hardly do without ’em in the multiplication-table. We Englishmen do let them in quietly, shut the door, and say nothing of what passes. I have read a whole book of comedies, and ne’er a muse to help the lamest.”

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

“Wonderful forbearance! I marvel how the poet could get through.”

SIR THOMAS.

“By God’s help. And I think we did as well without ’em; for it must be an unabashable man that ever shook his sides in their company. They lay heavy restraint both upon laughing and crying. In the great master Virgil of Rome, they tell me they come in to count the ships, and having cast up the sum total, and proved it, make off again. Sure token of two things,—first, that he held ’em dog-cheap; secondly, that he had made but little progress (for a Lombard born) in book-keeping at double entry.

“He, and every other great genius, began with small subject-matters, gnats and the like. I myself, similar unto him, wrote upon fruit. I would give thee some copies for thy copying, if I thought thou wouldst use them temperately, and not render them common, as hath befallen the poetry of some among the brightest geniuses. I could shew thee how to say new things, and how to time the same. Before my day, nearly all the flowers and fruits had been gathered by poets, old and young, _from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop on the wall_; roses went up to Solomon, apples to Adam, and so forth.

“Willy! my brave lad! I was the first that ever handled a quince, I’ll be sworn.

“Hearken!

“Chloe! I would not have thee wince That I unto thee send a quince. I would not have thee say unto ’t _Begone_! and trample ’t underfoot, For, trust me, ’t is no fulsome fruit. It came not out of mine own garden, But all the way from Henly in Arden,— Of an uncommon fine old tree, Belonging to John Asbury. And if that of it thou shalt eat, ’Twill make thy breath e’en yet more sweet; As a translation here doth shew, _On fruit-trees_, _by Jean Mirabeau_. The frontispiece is printed so. But eat it with some wine and cake, Or it may give the belly-ache. {153a} This doth my worthy clerk indite, I sign,

SIR THOMAS LUCY, Knight.”

“Now, Willy, there is not one poet or lover in twenty who careth for consequences. Many hint to the lady what to do, few what not to do although it would oftentimes, as in this case, go to one’s heart to see the upshot.”

“Ah, sir,” said Bill, in all humility, “I would make bold to put the parings of that quince under my pillow, for sweet dreams and insights, if Doctor Glaston had given me encouragement to continue the pursuit of poetry. Of a surety it would bless me with a bedful of churches and crucifixions, duly adumbrated.”

Whereat Sir Thomas, shaking his head, did inform him,—

“It was in the golden age of the world, as pagans call it, that poets of condition sent fruits and flowers to their beloved, with posies fairly penned. We, in our days, have done the like. But manners of late are much corrupted on the one side, if not on both.

“Willy! it hath been whispered that there be those who would rather have a piece of brocade or velvet for a stomacher than the touchingest copy of verses, with a bleeding heart at the bottom.”

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

“Incredible!”

SIR THOMAS.

“’T is even so!”

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

“They must surely be rotten fragments of the world before the flood,—saved out of it by the devil.”

SIR THOMAS.

“I am not of that mind.

“Their eyes, mayhap, fell upon some of the bravery cast ashore from the Spanish Armada. In ancienter days, a few pages of good poetry outvalued a whole ell of the finest Genoa.”

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

“When will such days return?”

SIR THOMAS.

“It is only within these few years that corruption and avarice have made such ghastly strides. They always did exist, but were gentler.

“My youth is waning, and has been nigh upon these seven years, I being now in my forty-eighth.”

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

“I have understood that the god of poetry is in the enjoyment of eternal youth; I was ignorant that his sons were.”

SIR THOMAS.

“No, child! we are hale and comely, but must go the way of all flesh.”

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

“Must it, can it, be?”

SIR THOMAS.

“Time was, my smallest gifts were acceptable, as thus recorded:—

“From my fair hand, O will ye, will ye Deign humbly to accept a gilly- Flower for thy bosom, sugared maid!

“Scarce had I said it ere she took it, And in a twinkling, faith! had stuck it, Where e’en proud knighthood might have laid.”

William was now quite unable to contain himself, and seemed utterly to have forgotten the grievous charge against him; to such a pitch did his joy o’erleap his jeopardy.

Master Silas in the meantime was much disquieted; and first did he strip away all the white feather from every pen in the inkpot, and then did he mend them, one and all, and then did he slit them with his thumb-nail, and then did he pare and slash away at them again and then did he cut off the tops, until at last he left upon them neither nib nor plume, nor enough of the middle to serve as quill to a virginal. It went to my heart to see such a power of pens so wasted; there could not be fewer than five. Sir Thomas was less wary than usual, being overjoyed. For great poets do mightly affect to have little poets under them; and little poets do forget themselves in great company, as fiddlers do, who _hail fellow well met_ even with lords.

Sir Thomas did not interrupt our Bill’s wild gladness. I never thought so worshipful a personage could bear so much. At last he said unto the lad,—

“I do bethink me, if thou hearest much more of my poetry, and the success attendant thereon, good Doctor Glaston would tear thy skirt off ere he could drag thee back from the occupation.”

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

“I fear me, for once, all his wisdom would sluice out in vain.”

SIR THOMAS.

“It was reported to me that when our virgin queen’s highness (her Dear Dread’s {157a} ear not being then poisoned) heard these verses, she said before her courtiers, to the sore travail of some, and heart’s content of others,—

“‘We need not envy our young cousin James of Scotland his ass’s bite of a thistle, having such flowers as these gillyflowers on the chimney-stacks of Charlecote.’

“I could have told her highness that all this poetry, from beginning to end, was real matter of fact, well and truly spoken by mine own self. I had only to harness the rhymes thereunto, at my leisure.”

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

“None could ever doubt it. Greeks and Trojans may fight for the quince; neither shall have it

While a Warwickshire lad Is on earth to be had, With a wand to wag On a trusty nag, He shall keep the lists With cudgel or fists. And black shall be whose eye Looks evil on Lucy.”

SIR THOMAS.

“Nay, nay, nay! do not trespass too soon upon heroics. Thou seest thou canst not hold thy wind beyond eight lines. What wouldst thou do under the heavy mettle that should have wrought such wonders at Pavia, if thou findest these petards so troublesome in discharging? Surely, the good doctor, had he entered at large on the subject, would have been very particular in urging this expostulation.”

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.