THE SONNET.
When Shakespeare took leave of his newly-found friends at Clopton, he left a deep impression behind him.
There was a feeling amongst the trio, which two of them at least could not understand; so greatly had the youth's manners struck them, so forcible was the interest he had created; whilst the third and most interesting of the party found that the handsome lad had unconsciously robbed her of her heart.
"By 'r Lady," said the old knight, "yonder stripling is one of the most singular companions I ever met; without being in the least forward in manners, he somehow impresses one with a feeling of inferiority I cannot understand. He's an extraordinary youth, my masters; and, an he turn not out something beyond the common, I am not a Clopton."
"How well he talks on all subjects!" said Arderne; "and yet how modest doth he seem!"
"How beautiful were those verses he wrote this morning!" said Charlotte.
"If he did write them," said Martin, "lady mine; for mark ye, they may be the offspring of another brain."
"If he wrote them! Martin," said Charlotte: "why, who else could have written them, think ye?"
"Why not another as well as he, lady mine?" said Martin, archly; "what one man can do, another might effect. Methinks one older and more learned must have indited those lines."
"Nay," said Charlotte, "I know not wherefore, but sure I feel that none but he could have penned that sonnet."
"Gramercy," said Martin, "this is to have an opinion of merit, indeed! Doth that stripling, that hero of the quarter-staff, seem to you, Master Walter," he continued, shrewdly glancing at Arderne, "to have so much merit that none other can come up to him?"
"I confess the lad hath made a singular impression upon me," said Arderne, "an impression I cannot shake off or understand. I never was in company with so amiable a youth before."
"Let us hear his verse again," said Sir Hugh. "Come, Martin, thou hast a voice, thou shalt read it."
"Ahem," said Martin. "I am no hand at a stanza; I shall mar the good verse, I fear me. Nevertheless, I will essay it."
THE SONNET.
Who will believe my verse in time to come,
If it were filled with your most high deserts?
Though yet, Heaven knows, it is but as a tomb
Which hides your life, and shews not half your parts.
If I could write the beauty of your eyes,
And in fresh numbers, number all your graces,
The age to come would say, this poet lies,
Such heavenly touches ne'er touched earthly faces,
So should my papers, yellow'd with their age,
Be scorn'd like old men of less truth than tongue;
And your true rights be termed a poet's rage,
And stretched metre of an antique song:
But where some child of yours alive that time,
You should live twice,—in it, and in my rhyme.
Sir Hugh was a man of parts. He was a man, too, of strong sense, and, for the age in which he lived, might have been esteemed and accounted a learned man withal.
Had he chosen to be more of a courtier, and his creed been different, he might have risen to some eminence as a statesman.
He felt considerable astonishment, and expressed no less admiration, at the beauty of the verses just recited.
"Now, by my fay, good Martin," said he, "I do somewhat lean to thy opinion in the matter, inasmuch as it seemeth scarce possible so young a lad could have penned such stanzas. Nay, by our Lady, I know not where to look amongst our old poets in order to find aught to equal those lines."
"Then where hath the lad gotten them from?" said Arderne. "Peradventure he hath fetched them from some recent book of songs and sonnets; they say young Spencer hath lately written."
"'Tis not in Spencer's vein," said Charlotte; "and since we have so far discussed the matter, I must needs say that I can almost vouch for his having written them."
"Ho! ho!" said Martin, with a shrewd look. "La! you there now. Come, tell us the when, the where, and the how, Lady Charlotte. Let us have the circumstances under which this sonnet was written, since yon confess to so much knowledge of the matter."
"Nay, Martin," said Charlotte, blushing; "it was by accident I discovered so much. Walter and myself had been walking under the shade of the tall trees at the end of the garden, when I observed the youth standing, with arms folded, and gazing upon us in the arbour at its extremity. As we leisurely approached him, I saw him tear a leaf from a small book he held in his hand, and write something in it. When we entered the arbour and joined him, in putting up his book, he dropped the stray leaf, upon which he had been writing, and I own I was wicked enough to let it lie, and secure it after he had left us."
"Well," said Sir Hugh, "the lad is certainly a youth of merit, and I feel bound to befriend him in what I can. We must bethink us, Walter, in what way we can serve him materially."
"He is at present, as he tells me," said Arderne, "a clerk or writer in the service of Lawyer Grasp; albeit he liketh not the drudgery and confinement of such a life."
"I wonder not thereat," said Sir Hugh; "since to sentence a lad of so much genius to be a scrivener's clerk, is like putting my best bred palfrey into a mill, or shutting up a soaring falcon in a thrush's cage. We must do something for him, Walter, for we owe much to him."
Such were the kind intentions of the good Sir Hugh towards one to whom he felt under considerable obligations, and doubtless he who had caused those grateful feelings would have felt the benefit of them from one so well off in the world. "Wishing well, however, hath not a body in it;" and our intents of to-day are oft-times marred by the events of to-morrow.
The promises of the powerful are oft-times a sort of "satire upon the softness of prosperity;" and in a few days the good Sir Hugh was himself involved in difficulties which made him oblivious of all, save honourable extrication from their labyrinth.
The conversation which had taken place regarding the sonnet, occurred on the day following that on which young Shakespeare had left the Hall: a day made more memorable to two of the inmates, from the circumstance of the unwelcome visit of Gilbert Parry, and which it is our purpose now again to refer to, in order to explain certain other matters appertaining.
It will doubtless be remembered by our readers that the shrewd Martin had played the spy upon the insane conspirator, and succeeded in making himself complete master of his horrid and perilous intentions. Intentions, the more dangerous to all who were in the slightest degree implicated, as the bloody designs and desperate projects which were suspected to be in existence against the Queen on all sides, had determined Elizabeth's council to make terrible examples of all whom they might discover. To the good Sir Hugh, however, the danger likely to accrue to his own person was the least consideration; and when the faithful Martin, accordingly, on the following morning, informed him of the intentions of the visitor and his own suspicions of his sanity, the good knight was struck with consternation. It was early morning when Martin told his tale to his patron, and when the old knight having just descended, was making the round of his kennel and falconry, and the relation at once filled him with terror, pity, and indignation.
"I will incontinently visit this dangerous caitiff," he said, "and if I find matters as bad as you say, I will take means to secure him and prevent mischief. If he be indeed mad, it is my duty, as a Christian man, to lay him under restraint; but if he be sane and resolved on such attempt, I swear to thee I will arrest him with my own hand, and deliver him over to justice."
"Beware!" said Martin, stopping him as he was hastening off in search of his visitor. "Beware, good master mine, how you introduce yourself alone into the den of a tiger. This fellow is dangerous in the extreme; and on the slightest hint of your knowledge and disapproval of his designs, will fly upon you and attempt your life. A madman I have heard say, in his furious fits, hath twice the strength of one in possession of reason."
"I value not his madness a maravedi," said Sir Hugh, whose anger was predominant at the moment. "A murderous caitiff and condemned felon thus to introduce himself into my house! By our Lady's grace, an he draw weapon or lift hand against me, I will smite him in the teeth with my dagger, and kill him like the reptile at my foot."
"At least, let me accompany you," said Martin, who saw that the angry spirit so seldom aroused was now predominant, and therefore the more resistless.
"Follow an ye list," said Sir Hugh, "but I tell thee I am quite able to cope with such a fellow, and equal to arrest him if I find his purpose treasonable;" so saying, and followed by the faithful Martin, Sir Hugh re-entered the house, and the pair, introducing themselves into the secret wing of the mansion, immediately ascended into the chamber in which Parry had been shewn the night before.
Sir Hugh was the first to enter, and, with the angry spot upon his brow, after hastily glancing round the small room advanced to the bed and pulled open the curtain with no very gentle hand.
The bed, however, was unoccupied, and the room tenantless, although the crumpled state of the coverlid of the couch and pillows shewed that the occupant had thrown himself upon it during some part of the night at least.
"There is the form," said Sir Hugh, "but the game is off."
"There is no saying where such a customer may have crept to," said Martin, peeping under the bed, then getting up on one of the chairs and looking out of the small window upon the roof. "The man I am sure is as mad as a March hare; let us descend and see if he is any where secreted in the small apartment below."
Sir Hugh accordingly descended, and (both together) searched in every closet and hiding hole with which the place was accommodated, but the bird had certainly flown, having, without doubt, passed into the garden by the small postern door which opened on the inside.
Proceeding into the garden they searched through its walks and alleys, but the object of their search was no where to be found, and the small door which opened in the thick high wall at its extremity, and admitted into the thick plantations beyond, being wide open, they naturally concluded their visitor had fairly decamped in his insane mood as unceremoniously as he had entered. Sir Hugh, however (although he could not but feel relieved at the absence of the dangerous intruder), felt considerable annoyance at the whole circumstance. He was oppressed with the knowledge of the maniac's treason, and which, notwithstanding the powerful letter brought to him from the Nuncio Campeggio, he was resolved to divulge to the Queen's council. At the same time he also determined to do nothing rashly. Father Eustace was expected in a few hours, and must be consulted, whilst Martin, meanwhile, undertook to endeavour to trace the madman and observe his motions if possible.
In such a case delays are dangerous, as the good Sir Hugh found, for Parry, whose vagaries had alarmed some of those connected with the dangerous plot, having been met with in Stratford, and then followed to Clopton, was lured into a secret appointment and put to silence with at least half a dozen wounds; and the whole affair in a few short hours after was in progress of being fully divulged. Of this, however, Sir Hugh was not likely to become acquainted, till the news reached him in an unpleasant shape. The circumstance of a man having been killed just without the town was by no means an uncommon event; and as Martin had failed in tracing Parry, and Father Eustace's return was delayed, except that there was a degree of mystery attached to the appearance and disappearance of the visitor, in a few days the circumstance was almost forgotten.
Meantime, whilst, with swift passage, events were hastening onwards, and which were to involve some of the dramatis personæ of our story in the perils and miseries of life, how calmly and how treacherously flowed on the even tenor of their hours. Mischief, as we have seen, was afoot; a secret society, consisting of one or two dangerous fanatics, resident in the county of Warwick, an Irish gentleman of rank, and several other desperadoes, had met, as we have before hinted, at one of the low hostels in the town of Stratford, and which locality they had chosen for some reason best known to themselves.
These men, involved in a desperate enterprise, and sworn to devote themselves to death one by one, till they had achieved it, whilst they sought to increase the number of their associates, found danger even in the overzeal—the frenzied enthusiasm—of one of their own instruments, whilst another was about to prove false and betray them; nay, at the very moment when, like the alchemist of old, their toils were to be rewarded with progression, the vessel containing the elixir was to burst, and destroy all within its influence.
These emissaries were at work in various directions,—secretly, stealthily. They had friends in France, in Spain, in Italy, in Flanders even; the day and the hour at which the first attempt was to be made was fixed; the very hooftreads of the horse which carried the unscrupulous Neville towards his design, in imagination, were counted by them; whilst he who was then, as his associates supposed, hastening towards this purpose, from a sudden change having taken place in his before desperate fortunes, was indeed posting to London; not, as he had sworn, in order to make essay upon the life of Elizabeth, but to betray the whole plot to the council, to aggrandize himself, and give to the gibbet and the executioner's knife, his sometime friends.
And such are the inscrutable ways by which Providence works out His ends: such is the wisdom of the Great Director of events, and such are the vain designs of man. Ever driving headlong onwards, hastened by evil passions, obstinacy, wickedness, and pride, to inevitable destruction;—destroyed by their own villanous devices, thirsting for blood, grasping at riches, feeding absolutely on each other, the wicked perish miserably.