In Francis Feeble then the spirit of the tailor is immortalized. Compared with him, Starveling, in the ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ is simply tender-hearted. He is one of the actors in the play of ‘Pyramus and Thisbe,’ and he is the most ready to second the motion that the sword of Pyramus should not be drawn, nor the lion be permitted to roar, lest the ladies, dear souls, should be affrighted. Starveling is more of the carpet knight than Feeble. The one is gallant in stricken fields, the other airs his gallantry in ladies’ bower.
It was right that the race of Feebles should not expire. It was said of old, that to be the sire of sons was no great achievement, but that he was a man indeed who was the father of daughters. Such no doubt was Feeble, one of whose spirited girls married a Sketon; and their eldest son it is, as I would fondly think, who figures so bravely among the followers of Perkin Warbeck, in John Ford’s tragedy of that name. Sketon is the most daring of the company, and the blood of the Feebles suffers no disgrace in his person. Sketon, like the great Duke of Guise, is full of dashing hope, when all his fellows are sunk in dull despair. While so august a personage as John à Water, Mayor of Cork, is thinking twice ere he acts once, Sketon thus boldly and tailor-like cuts out the habit of invasion, and prepares the garb of victory:—“’Tis but going to sea, and leaping ashore,” saith he; “cut ten or twelve thousand unnecessary throats, fire seven or eight towns, take half-a-dozen cities, get him into the market-place, crown him Richard the Fourth, and the business is finished!” Is not this a man whom Nature intended for a commander-in-chief? He is not only quick of resolution, but of action; and yet, I dare be sworn, Sketon had read nothing of what Caius Crispus Sallust says thereupon. And I beseech you to mark one thing more. You know that when the foolish Roman Emperor would not permit the statue of Brutus to be borne in the funeral procession of Britannicus, lest the people should think too much upon that imperatoricide, the obstinate and vulgar rogues thought all the more upon him and his deeds, for the very reason that his statue did not figure among those of other heroes. So in the above heart-stirring speech of valiant Sketon, we miss something which reveals to us how chaste and chivalrous a soldier was the grandson of Feeble. His views go to bold invasion, to the burning of towns, and the sacking of cities, and to splendid victory, built upon the cutting of throats, which he nicely, and as it were apologetically for the act, describes as “unnecessary throats.” A taste of the quality of the roystering soldier is perhaps to be found in this speech; but you are entreated to remark, that all the vengeance of the tailor is directed solely against his enemy, man. The women, it is evident, have nothing to fear at the hands of Sketon. He does not mention rudeness to them, just as the ancient legislator did not provide against parricide, simply because, judging from his own heart, he deemed the crime impossible. Sketon and Scipio deserve to go down to posterity hand in hand, as respecters of timid beauty. There was a Persian victor, too, who would not look upon the faces of his fair captives, lest he should be tempted to violate the principles of propriety. Sketon was bolder, and not less virtuous. To my thinking, he is the Bayard of tailors. It would wrong him to compare him even with Joseph Andrews; and I will only add that if old Tilly, at Magdeburg, had been influenced by the virtue of Sketon, there might not have been less weeping for lost lovers, but there would have been more maidens left to sit down in cypress, and mourn for them.
Sketon, foremost in fight, is first to hail the man whom he takes for prince, when victory has induced the Cornish men of mettle to proclaim at Bodnam, Richard IV. “monarch of England, and king of hearts.” Jubilant in success, he does not complain when Fortune veils her face. Defeat and captivity are accepted with dignity when they are compelled upon him; and when swift death is to be the doom of himself and companions, he does not object to the philosophical disquisition of his old leader and fellow-sufferer, Perkin, that death by the sword, whereby the “pain is past ere sensibly ’tis felt,” is far preferable to being slowly slain at home by the doctors. For he says:—
“To tumble
From bed to bed, be massacred alive
By some physicians, for a month or two,
In hope of freedom from a fever’s torments,
Might stagger manhood.”
And accordingly Sketon follows Warbeck to death without a remnant of fear; and I must add, that Henry VII. showed little generosity when he remarked upon their executions, as he sat comfortably at home,
“That public states,