If our readers have ever taken the trouble to picture to themselves the clerk of Chatham, with his pen and ink-horn hung round his neck, they will have some idea of the figure of our Stratford lawyer in his own office. Only that, whereas we imagine the clerk of Chatham to have been a sort of dreamy, drawling person, Master Pouncet was rather more swift, sententious, and mercurial. Law had sharpened his wit, irritated his temper, levelled his honesty, and urged his avarice.
Any one to have watched him when alone in his glory, and only seen by his clerks, would have taken him to be half insane. The moment, however, a client or a stranger appeared, he put on a new face and a demeanour suited to the occasion; appearing wise in council, amiable in disposition, and staid and sober in manners, whereas before he had been like a chattering ape irritated with a hot chestnut.
"Now do I wonder who these strangers may be," he said, leaving off his writing and jumping round in his seat; "truly I must run down to goodman Doubletongue and confer with him on the subject. Will Shakespeare," he said, jumping back again, "get thee down to——Ah, I forgot that pestilent Shakespeare hath not been to the office for a whole week. Ah, the caitiff! Oh, the villain! See, too," he said, opening his desk and searching amongst his papers, "the vile rubbish he inditeth when he is here in place of copying what is set before him. What! you grin there, do ye? driving wights that ye are. Grin, my masters, whilst ye work, an ye list. But, an ye leave off to grin, see an I brain ye not with this ruler. Shakespeare—ah, a pretty name that, and a precious hounding scamp is the fellow that owns it. Here's goodly stuff toward! Here's loves of the gods and goddesses for you! Here's Venus, Adonis, Cytherea, hid in the rushes; Proserpina and Pluto, besides half a dozen heathen deities, devils, satyrs, and demigods, all dancing the hays in a lump!" So saying, Pouncet Grasp turned over the leaves of a sort of manuscript poem, written upon a quantity of backs of letters and dirty sheets of paper, and, after glancing through the contents, sent them fluttering and flying at the head of one of his clerks.
"There," said he, "that's the way my ink is spoiled, and my documents destroyed. I suppose now, that your friend and crony there," he continued, addressing himself to the young man at whose head he had thrown the manuscript, "I suppose your unintelligible friend calls that incomprehensible and unaccountable rubbish a sort of rough draught of a poem. I'm not learned in such productions, but methinks he that wrote of such lewd doings ought to be whipped at the cart's tail, or put in the stocks at least."
"I was not aware," said the youth addressed, (and who under cover of his industry had been laughing all the time Master Grasp was reading the poem), "I was not aware William Shakespeare has ever written a poem about the gods."
"Si-lence," cried Grasp, sticking his pen behind his ear and looking fierce, as he wheeled round and faced about, first to one and then to another of his clerks. "Si-lence, ye scoundrel scribblers, or by the Lord Harry——"
The clerk, who knew from experience the irritable nature of his taskmaster, took the hint and redoubled his exertions with the pen and parchment before him, only occasionally, as he stole a furtive glance at his companions and observed the lawyer's attention in another direction, lolling out his tongue or executing a hideous grimace at him.
"I pr'ythee, sirs, inform me," said Grasp, again interrupting the silence he had commanded, "when was that mad-headed ape last in this office?"
"Of whom was it your pleasure to speak?" inquired the youth who had received the compliment of the poem at his head.
"Of whom should I speak, sinner that I am, but of him of whom I last spoke—that incomprehensible, uncontrollable varlet—that scribbler of bad verse—that idle companion of thine?"