Imaginary Conversations and Poems: A Selection
of Master Chapman's,[13] began with the dogs and mules, and afterwards
crope up into the breasts of men.
_Sir Oliver._ I call such treatment barbarous; their troopers will not
let the gentlemen come with me into the house, but insist on sitting
down to dinner with them. And yet, having brought them out of their
colleges, these brutal half-soldiers must know that they are fellows.
_Oliver._ Yea, of a truth are they, and fellows well met. Out of their
superfluities they give nothing to the Lord or His saints; no, not
even stirrup or girth, wherewith we may mount our horses and go forth
against those who thirst for our blood. Their eyes are fat, and they
raise not up their voices to cry for our deliverance.
_Sir Oliver._ Art mad? What stirrups and girths are hung up in
college halls and libraries? For what are these gentlemen brought
hither?
_Oliver._ They have elected me, with somewhat short of unanimity, not
indeed to be one of themselves, for of that distinction I acknowledge
and deplore my unworthiness, nor indeed to be a poor scholar, to
which, unless it be a very poor one, I have almost as small
pretension, but simply to undertake a while the heavier office of
bursar for them; to cast up their accounts; to overlook the scouring
of their plate; and to lay a list thereof, with a few specimens,
before those who fight the fight of the Lord, that His saints, seeing
the abasement of the proud and the chastisement of worldly-mindedness,
may rejoice.
_Sir Oliver._ I am grown accustomed to such saints and such
rejoicings. But, little could I have thought, threescore years ago,
that the hearty and jovial people of England would ever join in so
filching and stabbing a jocularity. Even the petticoated torchbearers
from rotten Rome, who lighted the faggots in Smithfield some years
before, if more blustering and cocksy, were less bitter and vulturine.
They were all intolerant, but they were not all hypocritical; they had
not always '_the Lord_' in their mouth.
_Oliver._ According to their own notions, they might have had, at an
outlay of a farthing.
_Sir Oliver._ Art facetious, Nol? for it is as hard to find that out
as anything else in thee, only it makes thee look, at times, a little
the grimmer and sourer.
But, regarding these gentlemen from Cambridge. Not being such as, by
their habits and professions, could have opposed you in the field, I
hold it unmilitary and unmanly to put them under any restraint, and to
lead them away from their peaceful and useful occupations.
_Oliver._ I always bow submissively before the judgment of mine
elders; and the more reverentially when I know them to be endowed with
greater wisdom, and guided by surer experience than myself. Alas!
these collegians not only are strong men, as you may readily see if
you measure them round the waistband, but boisterous and pertinacious
challengers. When we, who live in the fear of God, exhorted them
earnestly unto peace and brotherly love, they held us in derision.
Thus far indeed it might be an advantage to us, teaching us
forbearance and self-seeking, but we cannot countenance the evil
spirit moving them thereunto. Their occupations, as you remark most
wisely, might have been useful and peaceful, and had formerly been
so. Why then did they gird the sword of strife about their loins
against the children of Israel? By their own declaration, not only are
they our enemies, but enemies the most spiteful and untractable. When
I came quietly, lawfully, and in the name of the Lord, for their
plate, what did they? Instead of surrendering it like honest and
conscientious men, they attacked me and my people on horseback, with
syllogisms and enthymemes, and the Lord knows with what other such
gimcracks; such venomous and rankling old weapons as those who have
the fear of God before their eyes are fain to lay aside. Learning
should not make folks mockers ... should not make folks malignants ...
should not harden their hearts. We came with bowels for them.
_Sir Oliver._ That ye did! and bowels which would have stowed within
them all the plate on board of a galleon. If tankards and
wassail-bowls had stuck between your teeth, you would not have felt
them.
_Oliver._ We did feel them; some at least: perhaps we missed too many.
_Sir Oliver._ How can these learned societies raise the money you
exact from them, beside plate? dost think they can create and coin it?
_Oliver._ In Cambridge, Uncle Sir Oliver, and more especially in that
college named in honour (as they profanely call it) of the Blessed
Trinity, there are great conjurors or chemists. Now the said conjurors
or chemists not only do possess the faculty of making the precious
metals out of old books and parchments, but out of the skulls of young
lordlings and gentlefolks, which verily promise less. And this they
bring about by certain gold wires fastened at the top of certain caps.
Of said metals, thus devilishly converted, do they make a vain and
sumptuous use; so that, finally, they are afraid of cutting their lips
with glass. But indeed it is high time to call them.
_Sir Oliver._ Well ... at last thou hast some mercy.
_Oliver._ [_Aloud._] Cuffsatan Ramsbottom! Sadsoul Kiteclaw! advance!
Let every gown, together with the belly that is therein, mount up
behind you and your comrades in good fellowship. And forasmuch as you
at the country places look to bit and bridle, it seemeth fair and
equitable that ye should leave unto them, in full propriety, the
mancipular office of discharging the account. If there be any spare
beds at the inns, allow the doctors and dons to occupy the same ...
they being used to lie softly; and be not urgent that more than three
lie in each ... they being mostly corpulent. Let pass quietly and
unreproved any light bubble of pride or impetuosity, seeing that they
have not always been accustomed to the service of guards and ushers.
The Lord be with ye!... Slow trot! And now, Uncle Sir Oliver, I can
resist no longer your loving kindness. I kiss you, my godfather, in
heart's and soul's duty; and most humbly and gratefully do I accept of
your invitation to dine and lodge with you, albeit the least worthy of
your family and kinsfolk. After the refreshment of needful food, more
needful prayer, and that sleep which descendeth on the innocent like
the dew of Hermon, to-morrow at daybreak I proceed on my journey
Londonward.
_Sir Oliver._ [_Aloud._] Ho, there! [_To a servant._] Let dinner be
prepared in the great dining-room; let every servant be in waiting,
each in full livery; let every delicacy the house affords be placed
upon the table in due courses; arrange all the plate upon the
sideboard: a gentleman by descent ... a stranger ... has claimed my
hospitality. [_Servant goes._]
Sir! you are now master. Grant me dispensation, I entreat you, from a
further attendance on you.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] Sir Oliver, who died in 1655, aged ninety-three, might, by
possibility, have seen all the men of great genius, excepting Chaucer
and Roger Bacon, whom England had produced from its first discovery
down to our own times, Francis Bacon, Shakespeare, Milton, Newton, and
the prodigious shoal that attended these leviathans through the
intellectual deep. Newton was but in his thirteenth year at Sir
Oliver's death. Raleigh, Spenser, Hooker, Eliot, Selden, Taylor,
Hobbes, Sidney, Shaftesbury, and Locke, were existing in his lifetime;
and several more, who may be compared with the smaller of these.
[13] Chapman's _Homer_, first book.
THE COUNT GLEICHEM: THE COUNTESS: THEIR CHILDREN, AND ZAIDA.
_Countess._ Ludolph! my beloved Ludolph! do we meet again? Ah! I am
jealous of these little ones, and of the embraces you are giving them.
Why sigh, my sweet husband?
Come back again, Wilhelm! Come back again, Annabella! How could you
run away? Do you think you can see better out of the corner?
_Annabella._ Is this indeed our papa? What, in the name of mercy, can
have given him so dark a colour? I hope I shall never be like that;
and yet everybody tells me I am very like papa.
_Wilhelm._ Do not let her plague you, papa; but take me between your
knees (I am too old to sit upon them), and tell me all about the
Turks, and how you ran away from them.
_Countess._ Wilhelm! if your father had run away from the enemy, we
should not have been deprived of him two whole years.
_Wilhelm._ I am hardly such a child as to suppose that a Christian
knight would run away from a rebel Turk in battle. But even Christians
are taken, somehow, by their tricks and contrivances, and their dog
Mahomet. Beside, you know you yourself told me, with tear after tear,
and scolding me for mine, that papa was taken by them.
_Annabella._ Neither am I, who am only one year younger, so foolish as
to believe there is any dog Mahomet. And, if there were, we have dogs
that are better and faithfuller and stronger.
_Wilhelm._ [_To his father._] I can hardly help laughing to think what
curious fancies girls have about Mahomet. We know that Mahomet is a
dog-spirit with three horsetails.
_Annabella._ Papa! I am glad to see you smile at Wilhelm. I do assure
you he is not half so bad a boy as he was, although he did point at
me, and did tell you some mischief.
_Count._ I ought to be indeed most happy at seeing you all again.
_Annabella._ And so you are. Don't pretend to look grave now. I very
easily find you out. I often look grave when I am the happiest. But
forth it bursts at last: there is no room for it in tongue, or eyes,
or anywhere.
_Count._ And so, my little angel, you begin to recollect me.
_Annabella._ At first I used to dream of papa, but at last I forgot
how to dream of him: and then I cried, but at last I left off crying.
And then, papa, who could come to me in my sleep, seldom came again.
_Count._ Why do you now draw back from me, Annabella?
_Annabella._ Because you really are so very very brown: just like
those ugly Turks who sawed the pines in the saw-pit under the wood,
and who refused to drink wine in the heat of summer, when Wilhelm and
I brought it to them. Do not be angry; we did it only once.
_Wilhelm._ Because one of them stamped and frightened her when the
other seemed to bless us.
_Count._ Are they still living?
_Countess._ One of them is.
_Wilhelm._ The fierce one.
_Count._ We will set him free, and wish it were the other.
_Annabella._ Papa! I am glad you are come back without your spurs.
_Countess._ Hush, child, hush.
_Annabella._ Why, mamma? Do not you remember how they tore my frock
when I clung to him at parting? Now I begin to think of him again: I
lose everything between that day and this.
_Countess._ The girl's idle prattle about the spurs has pained you:
always too sensitive; always soon hurt, though never soon offended.
_Count._ O God! O my children! O my wife! it is not the loss of spurs
I now must blush for.
_Annabella._ Indeed, papa, you never can blush at all, until you cut
that horrid beard off.
_Countess._ Well may you say, my own Ludolph, as you do; for most
gallant was your bearing in the battle.
_Count._ Ah! why was it ever fought?
_Countess._ Why were most battles? But they may lead to glory even
through slavery.
_Count._ And to shame and sorrow.
_Countess._ Have I lost the little beauty I possessed, that you hold
my hand so languidly, and turn away your eyes when they meet mine? It
was not so formerly ... unless when first we loved.
That one kiss restores to me all my lost happiness.
Come; the table is ready: there are your old wines upon it: you must
want that refreshment.
_Count._ Go, my sweet children! you must eat your supper before I do.
_Countess._ Run into your own room for it.
_Annabella._ I will not go until papa has patted me again on the