Sir Thomas.
“It must be an idle fellow who would take that trouble; besides, unless he nicked the time he might miss the monster. There be many who are slow to believe that the mermaid singeth.”
William Shakspeare.
“Ah sir! not only the mermaid singeth, but the merman sweareth, as another old song will convince you.”
Sir Thomas.
“I would fain be convinced of God’s wonders in the great deeps, and would lean upon the weakest reed like unto thee to manifest his glory. Thou mayest convince me.”
William Shakspeare.
1.
“‘A wonderful story, my lasses and lads,
Peradventure you’ve heard from your grannams or dads,
Of a merman that came every night to woo
The spinster of spinsters, our Catherine Crewe.
2.
“‘But Catherine Crewe
Is now seventy-two,
And avers she hath half forgotten
The truth of the tale, when you ask her about it,
And says, as if fain to deny it or flout it,
“Pooh! the merman is dead and rotten.”
3.
“‘The merman came up as the mermen are wont,
To the top of the water, and then swam upon ’t;
And Catherine saw him with both her two eyes,
A lusty young merman full six feet in size.
4.
“‘And Catherine was frighten’d,
Her scalp-skin it tighten’d,
And her head it swam strangely, although on dry land;
And the merman made bold
Eftsoons to lay hold
(This Catherine well recollects) of her hand.
5.
“‘But how could a merman, if ever so good,
Or if ever so clever, be well understood
By a simple young creature of our flesh and blood?
6.
“‘Some tell us the merman
Can only speak German,
In a voice between grunting and snoring;
But Catherine says he had learned in the wars
The language, persuasions, and oaths of our tars,
And that even his voice was not foreign.
7.
“‘Yet when she was asked how he managed to hide
The green fishy tail, coming out of the tide
For night after night above twenty,
“You troublesome creatures!” old Catherine replied,
“In his pocket; won’t that now content ye?”’”
Sir Thomas.
“I have my doubts yet. I should have said unto her, seriously, ‘Kate! Kate! I am not convinced.’ There may be witchcraft or sortilege in it. I would have made it a star-chamber matter.”
William Shakspeare.
“It was one, sir.”
Sir Thomas.
“And now I am reminded by this silly, childish song,—which, after all, is not the true mermaid’s,—thou didst tell me, Silas, that the papers found in the lad’s pocket were intended for poetry.”
Sir Silas.
“I wish he had missed his aim, sir, in your park, as he hath missed it in his poetry. The papers are not worth reading; they do not go against him in the point at issue.”
Sir Thomas.
“We must see that,—they being taken upon his person when apprehended.”
Sir Silas.
“Let Ephraim read them, then; it behooveth not me, a Master of Arts, to con a whelp’s whining.”
Sir Thomas.
“Do thou read them aloud unto us, good Master Ephraim.”
Whereupon I took the papers which young Willy had not bestowed much pains on; and they posed and puzzled me grievously, for they were blotted and scrawled in many places, as if somebody had put him out. These likewise I thought fit, after long consideration, to write better, and preserve, great as the loss of time is when men of business take in hand such unseemly matters. However, they are decenter than most, and not without their moral; for example:—
“TO THE OWLET.
“Who, O thou sapient, saintly bird!
Thy shouted warnings ever heard
Unbleached by fear?
The blue-faced blubbering imp, who steals
Yon turnips, thinks thee at his heels,
Afar or near.
“The brawnier churl, who brags at times
To front and top the rankest crimes,—
To paunch a deer,
Quarter a priest, or squeeze a wench,—
Scuds from thee, clammy as a tench,
He knows not where.
“For this the righteous Lord of all
Consigns to thee the castle-wall,
When, many a year,
Closed in the chancel-vaults, are eyes
Rainy or sunny at the sighs
Of knight or peer.”
Sir Thomas, when I had ended, said unto me,
“No harm herein; but are they over?”
I replied, “Yea, sir!”
“I miss the posy,” quoth he; “there is usually a lump of sugar, or a smack thereof at the bottom of the glass. They who are inexperienced in poetry do write it as boys do their copies in the copy-book, without a flourish at the finis. It is only the master who can do this befittingly.”
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