Chapter 3

I bowed unto his worship reverentially, thinking of a surety he meant me, and returned my best thanks in set language. But his worship rebuffed them, and told me graciously that he had an eye on another of very different quality; that the plain sense of his discourse might do for me, the subtler was certainly for himself. He added that in his younger days he had heard from a person of great parts, and had since profited by it, that ordinary poets are like adders,—the tail blunt and the body rough, and the whole reptile cold-blooded and sluggish: “whereas we,” he subjoined, “leap and caracole and curvet, and are as warm as velvet, and as sleek as satin, and as perfumed as a Naples fan, in every part of us; and the end of our poems is as pointed as a perch’s back-fin, and it requires as much nicety to pick it up as a needle{38a} at nine groats the hundred.”

Then turning toward the culprit, he said mildly unto him,—

“Now why canst thou not apply thyself unto study? Why canst thou not ask advice of thy superiors in rank and wisdom? In a few years, under good discipline, thou mightest rise from the owlet unto the peacock. I know not what pleasant things might not come into the youthful head thereupon.

“He was the bird of Venus, {39b} goddess of beauty. He flew down (I speak as a poet, and not in my quality of knight and Christian) with half the stars of heaven upon his tail; and his long, blue neck doth verily appear a dainty slice out of the solid sky.”

Sir Silas smote me with his elbow, and said in my ear,—

“He wanteth not this stuffing; he beats a pheasant out of the kitchen, to my mind, take him only at the pheasant’s size, and don’t (upon your life) overdo him.

“Never be cast down in spirit, nor take it too ‘grievously to heart, if the colour be a suspicion of the pinkish,—no sign of rawness in that; none whatever. It is as becoming to him as to the salmon; it is as natural to your pea-chick in his best cookery, as it is to the finest October morning,—moist underfoot, when partridge’s and puss’s and renard’s scent lies sweetly.”

Willie Shakspeare, in the mean time, lifted up his hands above his ears half a cubit, and taking breath again, said, audibly, although he willed it to be said unto himself alone,—

“O that knights could deign to be our teachers! Methinks I should briefly spring up into heaven, through the very chink out of which the peacock took his neck.”

Master Silas, who like myself and the worshipful knight, did overhear him, said angrily,—

“To spring up into heaven, my lad, it would be as well to have at least one foot upon the ground to make the spring withal. I doubt whether we shall leave thee this vantage.”

“Nay, nay! thou art hard upon him, Silas,” said the knight.

I was turning over the other papers taken from the pocket of the culprit on his apprehension, and had fixed my eyes on one, when Sir Thomas caught them thus occupied, and exclaimed,—

“Mercy upon us! have we more?”

“Your patience, worshipful sir!” said I; “must I forward?”

“Yea, yea,” quoth he, resignedly, “we must go through; we are pilgrims in this life.”

Then did I read, in a clear voice, the contents of paper the second, being as followeth:—

“THE MAID’S LAMENT.

“I loved him not; and yet, now he is gone, I feel I am alone. I check’d him while he spoke; yet, could he speak, Alas! I would not check. For reasons not to love him once I sought, And wearied all my thought To vex myself and him: I now would give My love could he but live Who lately lived for me, and when he found ’T was vain, in holy ground He hid his face amid the shades of death! I waste for him my breath Who wasted his for me! but mine returns, And this loin bosom burns With stifling heat, heaving it up in sleep, And waking me to weep Tears that had melted his soft heart. For years Wept he as bitter tears! _Merciful God_! such was his latest prayer, _These may she never share_! Quieter is his breath, his breast more cold, Than daisies in the mould, Where children spell, athwart the churchyard gate, His name and life’s brief date. Pray for him, gentle souls, whoe’er you be, And, oh! pray too for me!”

Sir Thomas had fallen into a most comfortable and refreshing slumber ere this lecture was concluded; but the pause broke it, as there be many who experience after the evening service in our parish-church. Howbeit, he had presently all his wits about him, and remembered well that he had been carefully counting the syllables, about the time when I had pierced as far as into the middle.

“Young man,” said he to Willy, “thou givest short measure in every other sack of the load. Thy uppermost stake is of right length; the undermost falleth off, methinks.

“Master Ephraim, canst thou count syllables? I mean no offence. I may have counted wrongfully myself, not being born nor educated for an accountant.”

At such order I did count; and truly the suspicion was as just as if he had neither been a knight nor a sleeper.

“Sad stuff! sad stuff, indeed!” said Master Silas, “and smelling of popery and wax-candles.”

“Ay?” said Sir Thomas, “I must sift that.”

“If praying for the dead is not popery,” said Master Silas, “I know not what the devil is. Let them pray for us; they may know whether it will do us any good. We need not pray for them; we cannot tell whether it will do them any. I call this sound divinity.”

“Are our churchmen all agreed thereupon?” asked Sir Thomas.

“The wisest are,” replied Master Silas.

“There are some lank rascals who will never agree upon anything but upon doubting. I would not give ninepence for the best gown upon the most thrifty of ’em; and their fingers are as stiff and hard with their pedlary, knavish writing, as any bishop’s are with chalk-stones won honestly from the gout.”

Sir Thomas took the paper up from the table on which I had laid it, and said after a while,—

“The man may only have swooned. I scorn to play the critic, or to ask any one the meaning of a word; but, sirrah!”

Here he turned in his chair from the side of Master Silas, and said unto Willy,—

“William Shakspeare! out of this thraldom in regard to popery, I hope, by God’s blessing, to deliver thee. If ever thou repeatest the said verses, knowing the man to be to all intents and purposes a dead man, prythee read the censurable line as thus corrected,—

‘Pray for our Virgin Queen, gentles! whoe’er you be.’

although it is not quite the thing that another should impinge so closely on her skirts.

“By this improvement, of me suggested, thou mayest make some amends—a syllable or two—for the many that are weighed in the balance and are found wanting.”

Then turning unto me, as being conversant by my profession in such matters, and the same being not very worthy of learned and staid clerks the like of Master Silas, he said,—

“Of all the youths that did ever write in verse, this one verily is he who hath the fewest flowers and devices. But it would be loss of time to form a border, in the fashion of a kingly crown, or a dragon, or a Turk on horseback, out of buttercups and dandelions.

“Master Ephraim! look at these badgers! with a long leg on one quarter and a short leg on the other. The wench herself might well and truly have said all that matter without the poet, bating the rhymes and metre. Among the girls in the country there are many such _shilly-shallys_, who give themselves sore eyes and sharp eye-water; I would cure them rod in hand.”

Whereupon did William Shakspeare say, with great humility,—

“So would I, may it please your worship, an they would let me.”

“Incorrigible sluts! Out upon ’em! and thou art no better than they are,” quoth the knight.

Master Silas cried aloud, “No better, marry! they at the worst are but carted and whipped for the edification of the market-folks. {44a} Not a squire or parson in the country round but comes in his best to see a man hanged.”

“The edification then is higher by a deal,” said William, very composedly.

“Troth! is it,” replied Master Silas. “The most poisonous reptile has the richest jewel in his head; thou shalt share the richest gift bestowed upon royalty, and shalt cure the king’s evil.” {45a}

“It is more tractable, then, than the church’s,” quoth William; and, turning his face toward the chair, he made an obeisance to Sir Thomas, saying,—

“Sir! the more submissive my behaviour is, the more vehement and boisterous is Master Silas. My gentlest words serve only to carry him toward the contrary quarter, as the south wind bloweth a ship northward.”

“Youth,” said Sir Thomas, smiling most benignly, “I find, and well indeed might I have surmised, thy utter ignorance of winds, equinoxes, and tides. Consider now a little! With what propriety can a wind be called a south wind if it bloweth a vessel to the north? Would it be a south wind that blew it from this hall into Warwick market-place?”

“It would be a strong one,” said Master Silas unto me, pointing his remark, as witty men are wont, with the elbow-pan.

But Sir Thomas, who waited for an answer, and received none, continued,—

“Would a man be called a good man who tended and pushed on toward evil?”

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

“I stand corrected. I could sail to Cathay or Tartary {46a} with half the nautical knowledge I have acquired in this glorious hall.

“The devil impelling a mortal to wrong courses, is thereby known to be the devil. He, on the contrary, who exciteth to good is no devil, but an angel of light, or under the guidance of one. The devil driveth unto his own home; so doth the south wind, so doth the north wind.

“Alas! alas! we possess not the mastery over our own weak minds when a higher spirit standeth nigh and draweth us within his influence.”

SIR THOMAS.

“Those thy words are well enough,—very well, very good, wise, discreet, judicious beyond thy years. But then that _sailing_ comes in an awkward, ugly way across me,—that _Cathay_, that _Tartarus_!

“Have a care! Do thou nothing rashly. Mind! an thou stealest my punt for the purpose, I send the constable after thee or e’er thou art half way over.”

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

“He would make a stock-fish of me an he caught me. It is hard sailing out of his straits, although they be carefully laid down in most parishes, and may have taken them from actual survey.”

SIR SILAS.

“Sir, we have bestowed on him already well-nigh a good hour of our time.”

Sir Thomas, who was always fond of giving admonition and reproof to the ignorant and erring, and who had found the seeds (little mustard-seeds, ’t is true, and never likely to arise into the great mustard-tree of the Gospel) in the poor lad Willy, did let his heart soften a whit tenderer and kindlier than Master Silas did, and said unto Master Silas,—

“A good hour of our time! Yea, Silas! and thou wouldst give _him_ eternity!”

“What, sir! would you let him go?” said Master Silas. “Presently we shall have neither deer nor dog, neither hare nor coney, neither swan nor heron; every carp from pool, every bream from brook, will be groped for. The marble monuments in the church will no longer protect the leaden coffins; and if there be any ring of gold on the finger of knight or dame, it will be torn away with as little ruth and ceremony as the ring from a butchered sow’s snout.”

“Awful words! Master Silas,” quoth the knight, musing; “but thou mistakest my intentions. I let him not go; howbeit, at worst I would only mark him in the ear, and turn him up again after this warning, peradventure with a few stripes to boot athwart the shoulders, in order to make them shrug a little, and shake off the burden of idleness.”

Now I, having seen, I dare not say the innocence, but the innocent and simple manner of Willy, and pitying his tender years, and having an inkling that he was a lad, poor Willy! whom God had endowed with some parts, and into whose breast he had instilled that milk of loving-kindness by which alone we can be like unto those little children of whom is the household and kingdom of our Lord,—I was moved, yea, even unto tears. And now, to bring gentler thoughts into the hearts of Master Silas and Sir Thomas, who, in his wisdom, deemed it a light punishment to slit an ear or two, or inflict a wiry scourging, I did remind his worship that another paper was yet unread, at least to them, although I had been perusing it.

This was much pleasanter than the two former, and overflowing with the praises of the worthy knight and his gracious lady; and having an echo to it in another voice, I did hope thereby to disarm their just wrath and indignation. It was thus couched:—

“FIRST SHEPHERD.

“Jesu! what lofty elms are here! Let me look through them at the clear, Deep sky above, and bless my star That such a worthy knight’s they are!

“SECOND SHEPHERD.

“Innocent creatures! how those deer Trot merrily, and romp and rear!

“FIRST SHEPHERD.

“The glorious knight who walks beside His most majestic lady bride,

“SECOND SHEPHERD.

“Under these branches spreading wide,

“FIRST SHEPHERD.

“Carries about so many cares Touching his ancestors and heirs, That came from Athens and from Rome—

“SECOND SHEPHERD.

“As many of them as are come—

“FIRST SHEPHERD.

“Nought else the smallest lodge can find In the vast manors of his mind; Envying not Solomon his wit—

“SECOND SHEPHERD.

“No, nor his women not a bit; Being well-built and well-behavèd As Solomon, I trow, or David.

“FIRST SHEPHERD.

“And taking by his jewell’d hand The jewel of that lady bland, He sees the tossing antlers pass And throw quaint shadows o’er the grass; While she alike the hour beguiles, And looks at him and them, and smiles.

“SECOND SHEPHERD.

“With conscience proof ’gainst Satan’s shock, Albeit finer than her smock, {50a} Marry! her smiles are not of vanity, But resting on sound Christianity. Faith, you would swear, had nail’d {50b} her ears on The book and cushion of the parson.”

“Methinks the rhyme at the latter end might be bettered,” said Sir Thomas. “The remainder is indited not unaptly. But, young man, never having obtained the permission of my honourable dame to praise her in guise of poetry, I cannot see all the merit I would fain discern in the verses. She ought first to have been sounded; and it being certified that she disapproved not her glorification, then might it be trumpeted forth into the world below.”

“Most worshipful knight,” replied the youngster, “I never could take it in hand to sound a dame of quality,—they are all of them too deep and too practised for me, and have better and abler men about ’em. And surely I did imagine to myself that if it were asked of any honourable man (omitting to speak of ladies) whether he would give permission to be openly praised, he would reject the application as a gross offence. It appeareth to me that even to praise one’s self, although it be shameful, is less shameful than to throw a burning coal into the incense-box that another doth hold to waft before us, and then to snift and simper over it, with maidenly, wishful coyness, as if forsooth one had no hand in setting it asmoke.”

Then did Sir Thomas, in his zeal to instruct the ignorant, and so make the lowly hold up their heads, say unto him,—

“Nay, but all the great do thus. Thou must not praise them without leave and license. Praise unpermitted is plebeian praise. It is presumption to suppose that thou knowest enough of the noble and the great to discover their high qualities. They alone could manifest them unto thee. It requireth much discernment and much time to enucleate and bring into light their abstruse wisdom and gravely featured virtues. Those of ordinary men lie before thee in thy daily walks; thou mayest know them by converse at their tables, as thou knowest the little tame squirrel that chippeth his nuts in the open sunshine of a bowling-green. But beware how thou enterest the awful arbours of the great, who conceal their magnanimity in the depths of their hearts, as lions do.”

He then paused; and observing the youth in deep and earnest meditation over the fruits of his experience, as one who tasted and who would fain digest them; he gave him encouragement, and relieved the weight of his musings by kind interrogation.

“So, then, these verses are thine own?” The youth answered,—

“Sir, I must confess my fault.”

SIR THOMAS.

“And who was the shepherd written here _Second Shepherd_, that had the ill manners to interrupt thee? Methinks, in helping thee to mount the saddle, he pretty nigh tossed thee over, {53a} with his jerks and quirks.”

Without waiting for any answer, his worship continued his interrogations.

“But do you woolstaplers call yourselves by the style and title of shepherds?”

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

“Verily, sir, do we; and I trust by right. The last owner of any place is called the master more properly than the dead and gone who once held it. If that be true (and who doubts it?) we, who have the last of the sheep, namely, the wool and skin, and who buy all of all the flock, surely may more properly be called shepherds than those idle vagrants who tend them only for a season, selling a score or purchasing a score, as may happen.”

Here Sir Thomas did pause a while, and then said unto Master Silas,—

“My own cogitations, and not this stripling, have induced me to consider and to conclude a weighty matter for knightly scholarship. I never could rightly understand before how Colin Clout, and sundry others calling themselves shepherds, should argue like doctors in law, physic, and divinity.

“Silas! they were woolstaplers; and they must have exercised their wits in dealing with tithe-proctors and parsons, and moreover with fellows of colleges from our two learned universities, who have sundry lands held under them, as thou knowest, and take the small tithes in kind. Colin Clout, methinks, from his extensive learning, might have acquired enough interest with the Queen’s Highness to change his name for the better, and, furthermore, her royal license to carry armorial bearings, in no peril of taint from so unsavoury an appellation.”

Master Silas did interrupt this discourse, by saying,—

“May it please your worship, the constable is waiting.”

Whereat Sir Thomas said, tartly,—

“And let him wait.” {55a}

Then to me,—

“I hope we have done with verses, and are not to be befooled by the lad’s nonsense touching mermaids or worse creatures.”

Then to Will,—

“William Shakspeare! we live in a Christian land, a land of great toleration and forbearance. Three score cartsful of fagots a year are fully sufficient to clear our English air from every pestilence of heresy and witchcraft. It hath not alway been so, God wot! Innocent and guilty took their turns before the fire, like geese and capons. The spit was never cold; the cook’s sleeve was ever above the elbow. Countrymen came down from distant villages into towns and cities, to see perverters whom they had never heard of, and to learn the righteousness of hatred. When heretics waxed fewer the religious began to grumble that God, in losing his enemies, had also lost his avengers.

“Do not thou, William Shakspeare, dig the hole for thy own stake. If thou canst not make men wise, do not make them merry at thy cost. We are not to be paganised any more. Having struck from our calendars, and unnailed from our chapels, many dozens of decent saints, with as little compunction and remorse as unlucky lads throw frog-spawn and tadpoles out of stagnant ditches, never let us think of bringing back among us the daintier divinities they ousted. All these are the devil’s imps, beautiful as they appear in what we falsely call works of genius, which really and truly are the devil’s own,—statues more graceful than humanity, pictures more living than life, eloquence that raised single cities above empires, poor men above kings. If these are not Satan’s works, where are they? I will tell thee where they are likewise. In holding vain converse with false gods. The utmost we can allow in propriety is to call a knight Phœbus, and a dame Diana. They are not meat for every trencher.

“We must now proceed straightforward with the business on which thou comest before us. What further sayest thou, witness?”

EUSEBY TREEN.

“His face was toward me; I saw it clearly. The graver man followed him into the punt, and said, roughly, ‘We shall get hanged as sure as thou pipest.’

“Whereunto he answered,—

‘Naturally, as fall upon the ground The leaves in winter and the girls in spring.’

And then began he again with the mermaid; whereat the graver man clapped a hand before his mouth, and swore he should take her in wedlock, to have and to hold, if he sang another stave. ‘And thou shalt be her pretty little bridemaid,’ quoth he gaily to the graver man, chucking him under the chin.”

SIR THOMAS.

“And what did Carnaby say unto thee, or what didst thou say unto Carnaby?”

EUSEBY TREEN.

“Carnaby said unto me, somewhat tauntingly, ‘The big squat man, that lay upon thy bread-basket like a nightmare, is a punt at last, it seems.’

“‘Punt, and more too,’ answered I. ‘Tarry awhile, and thou shalt see this punt (so let me call it) lead them into temptation, and swamp them or carry them to the gallows; I would not stay else.’”

SIR THOMAS.

“And what didst thou, Joseph Carnaby?”

JOSEPH CARNABY.

“Finding him neither slack nor shy, I readily tarried. We knelt down opposite each other, and said our prayers; and he told me he was now comfortable. ‘The evil one,’ said he, ‘hath enough to mind yonder: he shall not hurt us.’

“Never was a sweeter night, had there been but some mild ale under it, which any one would have sworn it was made for. The milky way looked like a long drift of hail-stones on a sunny ridge.”

SIR THOMAS.

“Hast thou done describing?”

JOSEPH CARNABY.

“Yea, an please your worship.”

SIR THOMAS.

“God’s blessing be upon thee, honest Carnaby! I feared a moon-fall. In our days nobody can think about a plum-pudding but the moon comes down upon it. I warrant ye this lad here hath as many moons in his poems as the Saracens had in their banners.”

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

“I have not hatched mine yet, sir. Whenever I do I trust it will be worth taking to market.”

JOSEPH CARNABY.

“I said all I know of the stars; but Master Euseby can run over half a score and upward, here and there. ‘Am I right, or wrong?’ cried he, spreading on the back of my hand all his fingers, stiff as antlers and cold as icicles. ‘Look up, Joseph! Joseph! there is no Lucifer in the firmament!’ I myself did feel queerish and qualmy upon hearing that a star was missing, being no master of gainsaying it; and I abased my eyes, and entreated of Euseby to do in like manner. And in this posture did we both of us remain; and the missing star did not disquiet me; and all the others seemed as if they knew us and would not tell of us; and there was peace and pleasantness over sky and earth. And I said to my companion,—

“‘How quiet now, good Master Euseby, are all God’s creatures in this meadow, because they never pry into such high matters, but breathe sweetly among the pig-nuts. The only things we hear or see stirring are the glow-worms and dormice, as though they were sent for our edification, teaching us to rest contented with our own little light, and to come out and seek our sustenance where none molest or thwart us.’”

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

“Ye would have it thus, no doubt, when your pockets and pouches are full of gins and nooses.”

SIR THOMAS.

“A bridle upon thy dragon’s tongue! And do thou, Master Joseph, quit the dormice and glow-worms, and tell us whither did the rogues go.”

JOSEPH CARNABY.

“I wot not after they had crossed the river they were soon out of sight and hearing.”

SIR THOMAS.

“Went they toward Charlecote?”

JOSEPH CARNABY.