Much marked of the melancholy Jaques,
Stood on the extremest verge of the swift brook,
Augmenting it with tears."[403:A]
The detection of Shakspeare in his adventurous amusement, was followed, it is said, by confinement for a short time in the keeper's lodge, until the charge had been substantiated against him. A farm-house in the park, situated on a spot called Daisy Hill, is still pointed out as the very building which sheltered the delinquent on this unfortunate occasion.[403:B]
That Sir Thomas had reason to complain of this violation of his property, and was warranted in taking proper steps to prevent its recurrence, who will deny? and yet it appears from tradition, that a reprimand and public exposure of his conduct constituted all the punishment that was at first inflicted on the offender. Here the matter would have rested, had not the irritable feelings of our young bard, inflamed by the disgrace which he had suffered, induced him to attempt a retaliation on the magistrate. He had recourse to his talents for satire, and the ballad which he produced for this purpose was probably his earliest effort as a writer.
Of this pasquinade, which the poet took care should be affixed to Sir Thomas's park-gates, and extensively circulated through his neighbourhood, three stanzas have been brought forward as genuine fragments. The preservation of the whole would certainly have been a most entertaining curiosity; but even the authenticity of what is said to have been preserved, becomes a subject of interest, when we recollect, that the fate and fortunes of our author hinged upon the consequences of this juvenile production.
The first of these fragments, which is the opening stanza, rests upon testimony of considerable weight and respectability; upon the authority of a Mr. Thomas Jones, who was born about 1613 and resided at Tarbick, a village in Worcestershire, eighteen miles from Stratford, where he died, aged upwards of ninety, in 1703. He is considered by Mr. Malone, as the grandson of a Mr. Thomas Jones, who dwelt in Stratford during the period that Shakspeare was an inhabitant of it, and who had four sons between the years 1581 and 1590, one of whom, settling at Tarbick, became the father of the preserver of the fragment.[404:A] This venerable old man could remember having heard from several very aged people at Stratford the whole history of the poet's transgression, and could repeat the first stanza of the ballad which he had written in ridicule of Sir Thomas. A friend of his to whom he was one day repeating this
stanza, which was the whole that he could recollect, had the precaution to take a copy of it from his recitation, and the grandson of the person thus favoured, a Mr. Wilkes, presented a transcript of it to Mr. Oldys and Mr. Capell. Among the collections for a Life of Shakspeare left by the former of these gentlemen, this stanza was found, "faithfully transcribed," says its possessor, "from the copy which his (Mr. Jones's) relation very courteously communicated to me[405:A];" and of Mr. Oldys's veracity it is important to add, that Mr. Steevens considered it as unimpeachable, remarking, at the same time, that "it is not very probable that a ballad should be forged, from which an undiscovered wag could derive no triumph over antiquarian credulity."[405:B] It must be confessed that neither the wit nor the poetry of these lines, which we are about to communicate, deserve much praise, and that the greater part of the point, if it can be termed such, depends upon provincial pronunciation; for in a note on the copy which Mr. Capell possessed, it is said, that "the people of those parts pronounce lowsie like Lucy[405:C]:" but let us listen to the commencement of this once important libel:—
"A parliamente member, a justice of peace,
At home a poor scare-crowe, at London an asse,