The youthful Guy went forth “reluctant but resolved,” and he would have sung as he went along,
“Elle a quinze ans, moi j’en ai seize,”
of Sedaine and Grétry, only neither poet nor composer, nor the opera of Richard Cœur de Lion, had yet appeared to gladden heart and ear. But the sentiment was there, and perhaps Sedaine knew of it when he penned the words. However this may be, Master Guy, though soft of heart, was not so of arm, for on this present cause of errantry he enacted such deeds that their very enumeration makes one breathless. His single sword cleared whole forests of hordes of brigands, through whose sides his trenchant blade passed as easily as the sabre, when held by Corporal Sutton, through a dead sheep. Our hero was by no means particular as to what he did, provided he was doing something; nor what cause he fought for, provided there were a cause and a fight. Thus we find him aiding the Duke of Louvain against his old friend the Emperor of Allemagne. He led the Duke’s forces, slew thousands upon thousands of the enemy, and, as though he had the luck of a modern Muscovite army, did not lose more than “one man,” with slight damage to the helmet of a second.
Master Guy, not yet twenty, surpassed the man whom Mr. Thiers calls “ce pur Anglais,” Mr. Pitt, for he became a prime minister ere he had attained his majority. In that capacity he negotiated a peace for the Duke with the Emperor. The two potentates were so satisfied with the negotiator, that out of compliment they offered him the command of their united fleet against the Pagan Soldan of Byzantium. They did not at all expect that he would accept it; but then they were not aware that Master Guy had much of the spirit which Sidney Smith, in after-years, discerned in Lord John Russell—and the enterprising Guy accepted the command of the entire fleet, with quite an entire confidence.
He did therewith, if chroniclers are to be credited, more than we might reasonably expect from Lord John Russell, were that statesman to be in command of a Channel squadron. Having swept the sea, he rather prematurely, if dates are to be respected, nearly annihilated Mohammedanism—and he was as invincible and victorious against every kind of Pagan. It was in the East that he overthrew in single combat, the giants Colbron and his brother Mongadora. He was resting after this contest, and leaning like the well-breathed Hotspur, upon his sword, at the entrance to his tent, when the Turkish governor Esdalante, approaching him, politely begged that he might take his head, as he had promised the same to an Osmanlee lady, who was in a condition of health which might be imperilled by refusal. Master Guy as politely bade him take it if he could, and therewith, they went at it “like French falconers,” and Guy took off the head of his opponent instead of losing his own. This little matter being settled, Guy challenged the infidel Soldan himself, putting Christianity against Islamism, on the issue, and thus professing to decide questions of faith as Galerius did when he left Olympus and Calvary to depend upon a vote of the Roman senate. Master Guy, being thrice armed by the justness of his quarrel, subdued the infidel Soldan, but the latter, to show, as we are told, his insuperable hatred for Christianity, took handfuls of his own blood, and cast it in the face of his conqueror—and no doubt here, the victor had in his mind the true story of Julian insulting “the Galilæan.” We thus see how history is made to contribute to legend.
And now the appetite of the errant lover grew by what it fed upon. He mixed himself up in every quarrel, and could not see a lion and a dragon quietly settling their disputes in a wood, by dint of claws, without striking in for the lion, slaying his foe, and receiving with complacency the acknowledgments of the nobler beast.
He achieved something more useful when he met Lord Terry in a wood, looking for his wife who had been carried off by a score of ravishers. While the noble lord sat down on a mossy bank, like a gentleman in a melodrama, Guy rescued his wife in his presence, and slew all the ravishers, “in funeral order,” the youngest first. He subsequently stood godfather to his friend Terry’s child, and as I am fond of historical parallels, I may notice that Sir Walter Scott performed the same office for a Terry, who if he was not a lord, often represented them, to say nothing of monarchs and other characters.
Master Guy’s return to England was a little retarded by another characteristic adventure. As he was passing through Louvain, he found Duke Otto besieging his father in his own castle—“governor” of the castle and the Duke. Now nothing shocked Master Guy so much as filial ingratitude, and despite all that Otto could urge about niggardly allowance, losses at play, debts of honor, and the parsimony of the “governor,” our champion made common cause with the “indignant parent,” and not only mortally wounded Otto, but, before the latter died, Guy brought him to a “sense of his situation,” and Otto died in a happy frame of mind, leaving all his debts to his father. The legacy was by way of a “souvenir,” and certainly the governor never forgot it. As for Guy, he killed the famous boar of Louvain, before he departed for England, and as he drew his sword from the animal’s flank, he remarked, there lies a greater boar, and not a less beast than Otto himself. However, he took the head and hams with him, for Phillis was fond of both; and as she was wont to say, if there was anything that could seduce her, it was brawn!
When Master Guy stepped ashore at Harwich, where that amphibious town now lies soaking, deputations from all quarters were awaiting him, to ask his succor against some terrible dragon in the north that was laying waste all the land, and laying hold of all the waists which the men there wished to enclose. King Athelstan was then at York hoping to terrify the indomitable beast by power of an army, which in combat with the noxious creature made as long a tail, in retreat, as the dragon itself.
Now whatever this nuisance was which so terribly plagued the good folks in the North, whether a dragon with a tongue thirty feet long, or anything else equally hard to imagine, it is matter of fact that our Master Guy assuredly got the better of it. On his return he met an ovation in York; Athelstan entertained him at a banquet, covered him with honor, endowed him with a good round sum, and thus all the newborn male children in the county became Guys. At least two thirds of them received the popular name, and for many centuries it remained in favor, until disgrace was brought upon it by the York proctor’s son, whose effigy still glides through our streets on each recurring 5th of November.