Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare, Euseby Treen, Joseph Carnaby, and Silas Gough, Clerk. Walter Savage Landor

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СКАЧАТЬ me, I forgive him as a Christian. Murrain upon such varlet vermin! It is but of late years that dignities have come to be reviled. The other parts of the Gospel were broken long before,—this was left us; and now this likewise is to be kicked out of doors, amid the mutterings of such mooncalves as him yonder.”

      “Too true, Silas!” said the knight, sighing deeply. “Things are not as they were in our glorious wars of York and Lancaster. The knaves were thinned then,—two or three crops a year of that rank squitch-grass which it has become the fashion of late to call the people. There was some difference then between buff doublets and iron mail, and the rogues felt it. Well-a-day! we must bear what God willeth, and never repine, although it gives a man the heart-ache. We are bound in duty to keep these things for the closet, and to tell God of them only when we call upon his holy name, and have him quite by ourselves.”

      Sir Silas looked discontented and impatient, and said, snappishly,—

      “Cast we off here, or we shall be at fault. Start him, sir!—prithee, start him.”

      Again his worship, Sir Thomas, did look gravely and grandly, and taking a scrap of paper out of the Holy Book then lying before him, did read distinctly these words:—

      “Providence hath sent Master Silas back hither, this morning, to confound thee in thy guilt.”

      Again, with all the courage and composure of an innocent man, and indeed with more than what an innocent man ought to possess in the presence of a magistrate, the youngster said, pointing toward Master Silas,—

      “The first moment he ventureth to lift up his visage from the table, hath Providence marked him miraculously. I have heard of black malice. How many of our words have more in them than we think of! Give a countryman a plough of silver, and he will plough with it all the season, and never know its substance. ’T is thus with our daily speech. What riches lie hidden in the vulgar tongue of the poorest and most ignorant! What flowers of Paradise lie under our feet, with their beauties and parts undistinguished and undiscerned, from having been daily trodden on! O, sir, look you!—but let me cover my eyes! Look at his lips! Gracious Heaven! they were not thus when he entered. They are blacker now than Harry Tewe’s bull-bitch’s!”

      Master Silas did lift up his eyes in astonishment and wrath; and his worship, Sir Thomas, did open his wider and wider, and cried by fits and starts:—

      “Gramercy! true enough! nay, afore God, too true by half! I never saw the like! Who would believe it? I wish I were fairly rid of this examination,—my hands washed clean thereof! Another time,—anon! We have our quarterly sessions; we are many together. At present I remand—”

      And now, indeed, unless Sir Silas had taken his worship by the sleeve, he would may-hap have remanded the lad. But Sir Silas, still holding the sleeve and shaking it, said, hurriedly,—

      “Let me entreat your worship to ponder. What black does the fellow talk of? My blood and bile rose up against the rogue; but surely I did not turn black in the face, or in the mouth, as the fellow calls it?”

      Whether Master Silas had some suspicion and inkling of the cause or not, he rubbed his right hand along his face and lips, and, looking upon it, cried aloud,—

      “Ho, ho! is it off? There is some upon my finger’s end, I find. Now I have it,—ay, there it is. That large splash upon the centre of the table is tallow, by my salvation! The profligates sat up until the candle burned out, and the last of it ran through the socket upon the board. We knew it before. I did convey into my mouth both fat and smut!”

      “Many of your cloth and kidney do that, good Master Silas, and make no wry faces about it,” quoth the youngster, with indiscreet merriment, although short of laughter, as became him who had already stepped too far and reached the mire.

      To save paper and time, I shall now, for the most part, write only what they all said, not saying that they said it, and just copying out in my clearest hand what fell respectively from their mouths.

      Sir Silas.

      “I did indeed spit it forth, and emunge my lips, as who should not?”

      William Shakspeare.

      “Would it were so!”

      Sir Silas.

      “Would it were so! in thy teeth, hypocrite!”

      Sir Thomas.

      “And, truly, I likewise do incline to hope and credit it, as thus paraphrased and expounded.”

      William Shakspeare.

      “Wait until this blessed day next year, sir, at the same hour. You shall see it forth again at its due season; it would be no miracle if it lasted. Spittle may cure sore eyes, but not blasted mouths and scald consciences.”

      Sir Thomas.

      “Why! who taught thee all this?”

      Then turned he leisurely toward Sir Silas, and placing his hand outspreaden upon the arm of the chaplain, said unto him in a low, judicial, hollow voice,—

      “Every word true and solemn! I have heard less wise saws from between black covers.”

      Sir Silas was indignant at this under-rating, as he appeared to think it, of the church and its ministry, and answered impatiently, with Christian freedom,—

      “Your worship surely will not listen to this wild wizard in his brothel-pulpit!”

      William Shakspeare.

      “Do I live to hear Charlecote Hall called a brothel-pulpit? Alas, then, I have lived too long!”

      Sir Silas.

      “We will try to amend that for thee.”

      William seemed not to hear him, loudly as he spake and pointedly unto the youngster, who wiped his eyes, crying,—

      “Commit me, sir! in mercy commit me! Master Ephraim! Oh, Master Ephraim! A guiltless man may feel all the pangs of the guilty! Is it you who are to make out the commitment? Dispatch! dispatch. I am a-weary of my life. If I dared to lie, I would plead guilty.”

      Sir Thomas.

      “Heyday! No wonder, Master Ephraim, thy entrails are moved and wamble. Dost weep, lad? Nay, nay; thou bearest up bravely. Silas, I now find, although the example come before me from humble life, that what my mother said was true—’t was upon my father’s demise—‘In great grief there are few tears.’”

      Upon which did the youth, Willy Shakspeare, jog himself by the memory, and repeat these short verses, not wide from the same purport:

      “There are, alas, some depths of woe

       Too vast for tears to overflow.”

      Sir Thomas.

      “Let those who are sadly vexed in spirit mind that notion, whoever indited it, and be men. I always was; but some little griefs have pinched me woundily.”

      Master Silas grew impatient, for he had ridden hard that morning, and had no cushion upon his seat, as Sir СКАЧАТЬ