Chapter 6

“‘And so long as there is vice and ignorance in the world, so long as fear is a passion, their dominion will prevail; but their dominion is not, and never shall be, universal. Can we wonder that it is so general? Can we wonder that anything is wanting to give it authority and effect, when every learned, every prudent, every powerful, every ambitious man in Europe, for above a thousand years, united in the league to consolidate it?

“‘The old dealers in the shambles, where Christ’s body is exposed for sale in convenient marketable slices, {111a} have not covered with blood and filth the whole pavement. Beautiful usages are remaining still,—kindly affections, radiant hopes, and ardent aspirations!

“‘It is a comfortable thing to reflect, as they do, and as we may do unblamably, that we are uplifting to our Guide and Maker the same incense of the heart, and are uttering the very words, which our dearest friends in all quarters of the earth, nay in heaven itself, are offering to the throne of grace at the same moment.

“‘Thus are we together through the immensity of space. What are these bodies? Do they unite us? No; they keep us apart and asunder even while we touch. Realms and oceans, worlds and ages, open before two spirits bent on heaven. What a choir surrounds us when we resolve to live unitedly and harmoniously in Christian faith!’”

SIR THOMAS.

“Now, Silas, what sayest thou?”

SIR SILAS.

“Ignorant fool!”

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

“Ignorant fools are bearable, Master Silas! your wise ones are the worst.”

SIR THOMAS.

“Prithee no bandying of loggerheads.”

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

“Or else what mortal man shall say Whose shins may suffer in the fray?”

SIR THOMAS.

“Thou reasonest aptly and timest well. And surely, being now in so rational and religious a frame of mind, thou couldst recall to memory a section or head or two of the sermon holden at St. Mary’s. It would do thee and us as much good as _Lighten our darkness_, or _Forasmuch as it hath pleased_; and somewhat less than three quarters of an hour (maybe less than one quarter) sufficeth.”

SIR SILAS.

“Or he hangs without me. I am for dinner in half the time.”

SIR THOMAS.

“Silas! Silas! he hangeth not with thee or without thee.”

SIR SILAS.

“He thinketh himself a clever fellow; but he (look ye) is the cleverest that gets off.”

“I hold quite the contrary,” quoth Will Shakspeare, winking at Master Silas from the comfort and encouragement he had just received touching the hanging.

And Master Silas had his answer ready, and shewed that he was more than a match for poor Willy in wit and poetry.

He answered thus:—

“If winks are wit, Who wanteth it?

Thou hadst other bolts to kill bucks withal. In wit, sirrah, thou art a mere child.”

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

“Little dogs are jealous of children, great ones fondle them.”

SIR THOMAS.

“An that were written in the Apocrypha, in the very teeth of Bel and the Dragon, it could not be truer. I have witnessed it with my own eyes over and over.”

SIR SILAS.

“He will take this for wit, likewise, now the arms of Lucy do seal it.”

SIR THOMAS.

“Silas, they may stamp wit, they may further wit, they may send wit into good company, but not make it.”

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

“Behold my wall of defence!”

SIR SILAS.

“An thou art for walls, I have one for thee from Oxford, pithy and apposite, sound and solid, and trimmed up becomingly, as a collar of brawn with a crown of rosemary, or a boar’s head with a lemon in the mouth.”

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

“Egad, Master Silas, those are your walls for lads to climb over, an they were higher than Babel’s.”

SIR SILAS.

“Have at thee!”

“Thou art a wall To make the ball Rebound from.

“Thou hast a back For beadle’s crack To sound from, to sound from.

The foolishest dolts are the ground-plot of the most wit, as the idlest rogues are of the most industry. Even thou hast brought wit down from Oxford. And before a thief is hanged, parliament must make laws, attorneys must engross them, printers stamp and publish them, hawkers cry them, judges expound them, juries weigh and measure them with offences, then executioners carry them into effect. The farmer hath already sown the hemp, the ropemaker hath twisted it; sawyers saw the timber, carpenters tack together the shell, grave-diggers delve the earth. And all this truly for fellows like unto thee.”

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

“Whom a God came down from heaven to save.”

SIR THOMAS.

“Silas! he hangeth not. William, I must have the heads of the sermon, six or seven of ’em; thou hast whetted my appetite keenly. How! dost duck thy pate into thy hat? nay, nay, that is proper and becoming at church; we need not such solemnity. Repeat unto us the setting forth at St. Mary’s.”

Whereupon did William Shakspeare entreat of Master Silas that he would help him in his ghostly endeavours, by repeating what he called the _preliminary_ prayer; which prayer I find nowhere in our ritual, and do suppose it to be one of those Latin supplications used in our learned universities now or erewhile.

I am afeard it hath not the approbation of the strictly orthodox, for inasmuch as Master Silas at such entreaty did close his teeth against it, and with teeth thus closed did say, Athanasiuswise, “Go and be damned!”

Bill was not disheartened, but said he hoped better, and began thus:—

“‘My brethren!’ said the preacher, ‘or rather let me call you my children, such is my age confronted with yours, for the most part,—my children, then, and my brethren (for here are both), believe me, killing is forbidden.’”

SIR THOMAS.

“This, not being delivered unto us from the pulpit by the preacher himself, we may look into. Sensible man! shrewd reasoner! What a stroke against deer-stealers! how full of truth and ruth! Excellent discourse!”

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

“The last part was the best.”

SIR THOMAS.

“I always find it so. The softest of the cheesecake is left in the platter when the crust is eaten. He kept the best bit for the last, then? He pushed it under the salt, eh? He told thee—”

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

“Exactly so.”

SIR THOMAS.

“What was it?”

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

“‘Ye shall not kill.’”

SIR THOMAS.

“How I did he run in a circle like a hare? One of his mettle should break cover and off across the country like a fox or hart.”

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

“‘And yet ye kill time when ye can, and are uneasy when ye cannot.’”

Whereupon did Sir Thomas say, aside unto himself, but within my hearing,—

“Faith and troth! he must have had a head in at the window here one day or other.”

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

“‘This sin cryeth unto the Lord.’”

SIR THOMAS.

“He was wrong there. It is not one of those that cry; mortal sins cry. Surely he could not have fallen into such an error! it must be thine; thou misunderstoodest him.”

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

“Mayhap, sir! A great heaviness came over me; I was oppressed in spirit, and did feel as one awakening from a dream.”

SIR THOMAS.

“Godlier men than thou art do often feel the right hand of the Lord upon their heads in like manner. It followeth contrition, and precedeth conversion. Continue.”

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

“‘My brethren and children,’ said the teacher, ‘whenever ye want to kill time call God to the chase, and bid the angels blow the horn; and thus ye are sure to kill time to your heart’s content. And ye may feast another day, and another after that—’”

Then said Master Silas unto me, concernedly,

“This is the mischief-fullest of all the devil’s imps, to talk in such wise at a quarter past twelve!”

But William went straight on, not hearing him,

“‘—upon what ye shall, in such pursuit, have brought home with you. Whereas, if ye go alone, or two or three together, nay, even if ye go in thick and gallant company, and yet provide not that these be with ye, my word for it, and a powerfuller word than mine, ye shall return to your supper tired and jaded, and rest little when ye want to rest most.’”

“Hast no other head of the Doctor’s?” quoth Sir Thomas.

“Verily none,” replied Willy, “of the morning’s discourse, saving the last words of it, which, with God’s help, I shall always remember.”

“Give us them, give us them,” said Sir Thomas.

“He wants doctrine; he wants authority; his are grains of millet,—grains for unfledged doves; but they are sound, except the _crying_.

“Deliver unto us the last words; for the last of the preacher, as of the hanged, are usually the best.”

Then did William repeat the concluding words of the discourse, being these:—

“‘As years are running past us, let us throw something on them which they cannot shake off in the dust and hurry of the world, but must carry with them to that great year of all, whereunto the lesser of this mortal life do tend and are subservient.’”

Sir Thomas, after a pause, and after having bent his knee under the table, as though there had been the church-cushion, said unto us,—

“Here he spake _through a glass_, _darkly_, as blessed Paul hath it.”

Then turning toward Willy,—

“And nothing more?”

“Nothing but the _glory_,” quoth Willy, “at which there is always such a clatter of feet upon the floor, and creaking of benches, and rustling of gowns, and bustle of bonnets, and justle of cushions, and dust of mats, and treading of toes, and punching of elbows, from the spitefuller, that one wishes to be fairly out of it, after the scramble for _the peace of God_ is at an end—”

Sir Thomas threw himself back upon his armchair, and exclaimed in wonderment, “How!”

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

“—and in the midst of the service again, were it possible. For nothing is painfuller than to have the pail shaken off the head when it is brim-full of the waters of life, and we are walking staidly under it.”

SIR THOMAS.

“Had the learned Doctor preached again in the evening, pursuing the thread of his discourse, he might, peradventure, have made up the deficiencies I find in him.”

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

“He had not that opportunity.”

SIR THOMAS.

“The more’s the pity.”

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

“The evening admonition, delivered by him unto the household—”

SIR THOMAS.

“What! and did he indeed shew wind enough for that? Prithee out with it, if thou didst put it into thy tablets.”

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

“Alack, sir! there were so many Latin words, I fear me I should be at fault in such attempt.”

SIR THOMAS.

“Fear not; we can help thee out between us, were there a dozen or a score.”

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

“Bating those latinities, I do verily think I could tie up again most of the points in his doublet.”

SIR THOMAS.

“At him then! What was his bearing?”

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

“In dividing his matter, he spooned out and apportioned the commons in his discourse, as best suited the quality, capacity, and constitution of his hearers. To those in priests’ orders he delivered a sort of catechism.”

SIR SILAS.

“He catechise grown men! He catechise men in priests’ orders!—being no bishop, nor bishop’s ordinary!”

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

“He did so; it may be at his peril.”

SIR THOMAS.

“And what else? for catechisms are baby’s pap.”

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

“He did not catechise, but he admonished the richer gentlemen with gold tassels for their top-knots.”

SIR SILAS.

“I thought as much. It was no better in my time. Admonitions fell gently upon those gold tassels; and they ripened degrees as glass and sunshine ripen cucumbers. We priests, forsooth, are catechised! The worst question to any gold tasseller is, ‘_How do you do_?’ Old _Alma Mater_ coaxes and would be coaxed. But let her look sharp, or spectacles may be thrust upon her nose that shall make her eyes water. Aristotle could make out no royal road to wisdom; but this old woman of ours will shew you one, an you tip her.

“Tilley valley! {124a} catechise priests, indeed!”

SIR THOMAS.

“Peradventure he did it discreetly. Let us examine and judge him. Repeat thou what he said unto them.”

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

“‘Many,’ said he, ‘are ingenuous, many are devout, some timidly, some strenuously, but nearly all flinch, and rear, and kick, at the slightest touch, or least inquisitive suspicion of an unsound part in their doctrine. And yet, my brethren, we ought rather to flinch and feel sore at our own searching touch, our own serious inquisition into ourselves. Let us preachers, who are sufficiently liberal in bestowing our advice upon others, inquire of ourselves whether the exercise of spiritual authority may not be sometimes too pleasant, tickling our breasts with a plume from Satan’s wing, and turning our heads with that inebriating poison which he hath been seen to instil into the very chalice of our salvation. Let us ask ourselves in the closet whether, after we have humbled ourselves before God in our prayers, we never rise beyond the due standard in the pulpit; whether our zeal for the truth be never over-heated by internal fires less holy; whether we never grow stiffly and sternly pertinacious, at the very time when we are reproving the obstinacy of others; and whether we have not frequently so acted as if we believed that opposition were to be relaxed and borne away by self-sufficiency and intolerance. Believe me, the wisest of us have our catechism to learn; and these, my dear friends, are not the only questions contained in it. No Christian can hate; no Christian can malign. Nevertheless, do we not often both hate and malign those unhappy men who are insensible to God’s mercies? And I fear this unchristian spirit swells darkly, with all its venom, in the marble of our hearts, not because our brother is insensible to these mercies, but because he is insensible to our faculty of persuasion, turning a deaf ear unto our claim upon his obedience, or a blind or sleepy eye upon the fountain of light, whereof we deem ourselves the sacred reservoirs. There is one more question at which ye will tremble when ye ask it in the recesses of your souls; I do tremble at it, yet must utter it. Whether we do not more warmly and erectly stand up for God’s word because it came from our mouths, than because it came from his? Learned and ingenious men may indeed find a solution and excuse for all these propositions; but the wise unto salvation will cry, “Forgive me, O my God, if, called by thee to walk in thy way, I have not swept this dust from the sanctuary!”’”

SIR THOMAS.

“All this, methinks, is for the behoof of clerks and ministers.”

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

“He taught them what they who teach others should learn and practise. Then did he look toward the young gentlemen of large fortune; and lastly his glances fell upon us poorer folk, whom he instructed in the duty we owe to our superiors.”

SIR THOMAS.

“Ay, there he had a host.”

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

“In one part of his admonition he said,—

“‘Young gentlemen! let not the highest of you who hear me this evening be led into the delusion, for such it is, that the founder of his family was _originally_ a greater or a better man than the lowest here. He willed it, and became it. He must have stood low; he must have worked hard,—and with tools, moreover, of his own invention and fashioning. He waved and whistled off ten thousand strong and importunate temptations; he dashed the dice-box from the jewelled hand of Chance, the cup from Pleasure’s, and trod under foot the sorceries of each; he ascended steadily the precipices of Danger, and looked down with intrepidity from the summit; he overawed Arrogance with Sedateness; he seized by the horn and overleaped low Violence; and he fairly swung Fortune round.

“‘The very high cannot rise much higher; the very low may,—the truly great must have done it.

“‘This is not the doctrine, my friends, of the silkenly and lawnly religious; it wears the coarse texture of the fisherman, and walks uprightly and straightforward under it. I am speaking now more particularly to you among us upon whom God hath laid the incumbrances of wealth, the sweets whereof bring teazing and poisonous things about you, not easily sent away. What now are your pretensions under sacks of money? or your enjoyments under the shade of genealogical trees? Are they rational? Are they real? Do they exist at all? Strange inconsistency! to be proud of having as much gold and silver laid upon you as a mule hath, and yet to carry it less composedly! The mule is not answerable for the conveyance and discharge of his burden,—you are. Stranger infatuation still! to be prouder of an excellent thing done by another than by yourselves, supposing any excellent thing to have actually been done; and, after all, to be more elated on his cruelties than his kindnesses, by the blood he hath spilt than by the benefits he had conferred; and to acknowledge less obligation to a well-informed and well-intentioned progenitor than to a lawless and ferocious barbarian. Would stocks and stumps, if they could utter words, utter such gross stupidity? Would the apple boast of his crab origin, or the peach of his prune? Hardly any man is ashamed of being inferior to his ancestors, although it is the very thing at which the great should blush, if, indeed, the great in general descended from the worthy. I did expect to see the day, and although I shall not see it, it must come at last, when he shall be treated as a madman or an impostor who dares to claim nobility or precedency and cannot shew his family name in the history of his country. Even he who can shew it, and who cannot write his own under it in the same or as goodly characters, must submit to the imputation of degeneracy, from which the lowly and obscure are exempt.

“‘He alone who maketh you wiser maketh you greater; and it is only by such an implement that Almighty God himself effects it. When he taketh away a man’s wisdom he taketh away his strength, his power over others and over himself. What help for him then? He may sit idly and swell his spleen, saying,—_Who is this_? _who is that_? and at the question’s end the spirit of inquiry dies away in him. It would not have been so if, in happier hour, he had said within himself, _Who am I_? _what am I_? and had prosecuted the search in good earnest.

“‘When we ask who _this_ man is, or who _that_ man is, we do not expect or hope for a plain answer; we should be disappointed at a direct, or a rational, or a kind one. We desire to hear that he was of low origin, or had committed some crime, or been subjected to some calamity. Whoever he be, in general we disregard or despise him, unless we discover that he possesseth by nature many qualities of mind and body which he never brings into use, and many accessories of situation and fortune which he brings into abuse every day. According to the arithmetic in practice, he who makes the most idlers and the most ingrates is the most worshipful. But wiser ones than the scorers in this school will tell you how riches and power were bestowed by Providence that generosity and mercy should be exercised; for, if every gift of the Almighty were distributed in equal portions to every creature, less of such virtues would be called into the field; consequently there would be less of gratitude, less of submission, less of devotion, less of hope, and, in the total, less of content.’”

Here he ceased, and Sir Thomas nodded, and said,—

“Reasonable enough! nay, almost too reasonable!”

“But where are the apostles? Where are the disciples? Where are the saints? Where is hell-fire?”

“Well! patience! we may come to it yet. Go on, Will!”

With such encouragement before him, did Will Shakspeare take breath and continue:—

“‘We mortals are too much accustomed to behold our superiors in rank and station as we behold the leaves in the forest. While we stand under these leaves, our protection and refuge from heat and labour, we see only the rougher side of them, and the gloominess of the branches on which they hang. In the midst of their benefits we are insensible to their utility and their beauty, and appear to be ignorant that if they were placed less high above us we should derive from them less advantage.’”

SIR THOMAS.

“Ay; envy of superiority made the angels kick and run restive.”

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

“May it please your worship! with all my faults, I have ever borne due submission and reverence toward my superiors.”

SIR THOMAS.

“Very right! very scriptural! But most folks do that. Our duty is not fulfilled unless we bear absolute veneration; unless we are ready to lay down our lives and fortunes at the foot of the throne, and every thing else at the foot of those who administer the laws under virgin majesty.”

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

“Honoured sir! I am quite ready to lay down my life and fortune, and all the rest of me, before that great virgin.”

SIR SILAS.

“Thy life and fortune, to wit!

“What are they worth? A June cob-nut, maggot and all.”

SIR THOMAS.

“Silas, we will not repudiate nor rebuff his Magdalen, that bringeth a pot of ointment. Rather let us teach and tutor than twit. It is a tractable and conducible youth, being in good company.”

SIR SILAS.

“Teach and tutor! Hold hard, sir! These base varlets ought to be taught but two things: to bow as beseemeth them to their betters, and to hang perpendicular. We have authority for it, that no man can add an inch to his stature; but by aid of the sheriff I engage to find a chap who shall add two or three to this whoreson’s.” {133a}

SIR THOMAS.

“Nay, nay, now, Silas! the lad’s mother was always held to be an honest woman.”

SIR SILAS.

“His mother may be an honest woman for me.”

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

“No small privilege, by my faith! for any woman in the next parish to thee, Master Silas!”

SIR SILAS.

“There again! out comes the filthy runlet from the quagmire, that but now lay so quiet with all its own in it.”

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

“Until it was trodden on by the ass that could not leap over it. These, I think, are the words of the fable.”

SIR THOMAS.

“They are so.”

SIR SILAS.

“What fable?”

SIR THOMAS.

“Tush! don’t press him too hard; he wants not wit, but learning.”

SIR SILAS.

“He wants a rope’s-end; and a rope’s-end is not enough for him, unless we throw in the other.”

SIR THOMAS.

“Peradventure he may be an instrument, a potter’s clay, a type, a token.

“I have seen many young men, and none like unto him. He is shallow but clear; he is simple, but ingenuous.”

SIR SILAS.

“Drag the ford again, then. In my mind he is as deep as the big tankard; and a mouthful of rough burrage will be the beginning and end of it.”

SIR THOMAS.

“No fear of that. Neither, if rightly reported by the youngster, is there so much doctrine in the doctor as we expected. He doth not dwell upon the main; he is worldly; he is wise in his generation,—he says things out of his own head.

“Silas, that can’t hold! We want _props—fulcrums_, I think you called ’em to the farmers; or was it _stimulums_?”

SIR SILAS.

“Both very good words.”

SIR THOMAS.

“I should be mightily pleased to hear thee dispute with that great don.”

SIR SILAS.

“I hate disputations. Saint Paul warns us against them. If one wants to be thirsty, the tail of a stockfish is as good for it as the head of a logician.

“The doctor there, at Oxford, is in flesh and mettle; but let him be sleek and gingered as he may, clap me in St. Mary’s pulpit, cassock me, lamb-skin me, give me pink for my colours, glove me to the elbow, heel-piece me half an ell high, cushion me before and behind, bring me a mug of mild ale and a rasher of bacon, only just to con over the text withal; then allow me fair play, and as much of my own way as he had, and the devil take the hindermost. I am his man at any time.”

SIR THOMAS.

“I am fain to believe it. Verily, I do think, Silas, thou hast as much stuff in thee as most men. Our beef and mutton at Charlecote rear other than babes and sucklings.