Shallow. Jesu, Jesu, dead! a’ drew a good bow: and dead! a’ shot a fine shoot: John a Gaunt loved him well, and betted much money on his head. Dead!—a’ would have clapped i’ the clout at twelve score; and carried you a forehand shaft a fourteen and fourteen and a half, that it would have done a man’s heart good to see. How a score of ewes now?
Silence. Thereafter as they be: a score of good ewes may be worth ten pounds.
Shallow. And is old Double dead?
You get little or none of that solemn, sweet rusticity in Dickens: nor of the rush of England in spring with slow country-folk watching it:
The fields breathe sweet, the daisies kiss our feet,
Young lovers meet, old wives a-sunning sit;
In every street these tunes our ears do greet—
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!
Spring, the sweet Spring!
You will remember that Pickwick, in its first conception, was to deal with the adventures and misadventures of a Sporting Club after the fashion of the Handley Cross series by Surtees. Now Surtees—not a great writer but to this day (at any rate to me) a most amusing one—was, although like Dickens condemned to London and the law, a north-country sportsman, and could ride and, it is reported, “without riding for effect usually saw a deal of what the hounds were doing.” The Pickwickian sportsmen had to decline that competition very soon.