I looked up, dabbing my wound gently. His voice had risen and stretched itself on a high, monotonous pitch. He was declaiming verse.
'Who doth not see the measures of the Moon?
Which thirteen times she dances every year,
And ends her Pavane thirteen times as soon
As doth—
Hey? Do you know the lines, soldier?' He stepped forward and peered close at my head while I shook it. 'Tush! a cut, a trifle! Go on bathing. . . . The lines, sir, were writ by Sir John Davies, the first of English poets.'
'Indeed, sir,' said I. 'Now at the Inner Temple, before mixing myself in these troubles, I used to read much poetry and dispute on it with other young men. We had our several laureates; but believe me-and despise if you will—although we had heard tell of Sir John Davies, I doubt if one in six of us had read a line of him.'
'Ay, indeed,' he caught me up, 'I have scarce read a line of any other. Having discovered him I had no need. For allow me to observe—although I know nothing about it—that in poetry the Subject is nine points of excellence; and, Sir John Davies having hit on the most exalted subject tractable by the Muse, it follows that he must be the most exalted poet. Let me tell you—if it will shorten argument—that in general, and in all walks of life, I hate the second-best.'
'I have heard, sir,' said I, 'that this masterpiece was a poem on
Dancing. But you must be thinking of another.'
'Not at all, young man,' my host replied, poring anew into his toy. '"Orchestra" is the name of it; the subject, Dancing. But what dancing!—the sun, the moon, the stars—Eh? Halleluia, but it goes again!'
Sure enough, bending over the basin, I heard a buzz of wheels, and looked up to see the whole machine springing like a score of whipping-tops gone mad, the brass balls swinging and rotating so fast that the eye lost them in little twinkling circles and ellipses, the wheels whirring and filling the room with their hum.
My astronomer had dived under the bench. I saw for the moment little more than his posterior and the soles of his list slippers.
'You'll pardon me,' I heard him grunt, and the speed of the machinery slackened as he attached a couple of leaden weights to the dependent chains. He backed, crawled out, and stood erect; adjusted his spectacles, and stood beaming upon his invention.