Yet, as I might have remarked in the paragraph gone before, it is probably not easy to put conscious and secret superiority entirely between the mind and the opinions of those around who think differently. It is one reason why men of genius love more than the common share of solitude—to recover self-respect. In the midst of the amusing travesty he was drawing in his own mind of the grave scene about him, Shakspere possibly felt at moments as like a detected culprit as he seemed to the gamekeeper and the justice. It is a small penalty to pay for the after worship of the world! The ragged and proverbially ill-dressed peasants who are selected from the whole campagna, as models to the sculptors of Rome, care little what is thought of their good looks in the Corso. The disguised proportions beneath their rags will be admired in deathless marble, when the noble who scarce deigns their possessor a look will lie in forgotten dust under his stone scutcheon.
WARWICK CASTLE.
Were it not for the “out-heroded” descriptions in the guide-books, one might say a great deal of Warwick castle. It is the quality of overdone or ill-expressed enthusiasm to silence that which is more rational and real. Warwick is, perhaps, the best kept of all the famous old castles of England. It is a superb and admirably-appointed modern dwelling, in the shell, and with all the means and appliances preserved of an ancient stronghold. It is a curious union, too. My lady’s maid and my lord’s valet coquet upon the bartizan, where old Guy of Warwick stalked in his coat-of-mail. The London cockney, from his two days’ watering at Leamington, stops his pony-chaise, hired at half-a-crown the hour, and walks Mrs. Popkins over the old drawbridge as peacefully as if it were the threshold of his shop in the Strand. Scot and Frenchman saunter through fosse and tower, and no ghost of the middle ages stalks forth, with closed visor, to challenge these once natural foes. The powdered butler yawns through an embrasure, expecting “miladi,” the countess of this fair domain, who in one day’s posting from London seeks relief in Warwick castle from the routs and soirées of town. What would old Guy say, or the “noble imp” whose effigy is among the escutcheoned tombs of his fathers, if they could rise through their marble slabs, and be whirled over the drawbridge in a post-chaise? How indignantly they would listen to the reckoning within their own port-cullis, of the rates for chaise and postillion. How astonished they would be at the butler’s bow and the proffered officiousness of the valet. “Shall I draw off your lordship’s boots? Which of these new vests from Staub will your lordship put on for dinner?”
Among the pictures at Warwick, I was interested by a portrait of Queen Elizabeth, (the best of that sovereign I ever saw;) one of Machiavelli, one of Essex, and one of Sir Philip Sidney. The delightful and gifted woman whom I had accompanied to the castle observed of the latter, that the hand alone expressed all his character. I had often made the remark in real life, but I had never seen an instance on painting where the likeness was so true. No one could doubt, who knew Sir Philip Sidney’s character, that it was a literal portrait of his hand. In our day, if you have an artist for a friend, he makes use of you while you call, to “sit for the hand” of the portrait on his easel. Having a preference for the society of artists myself, and frequenting their studios habitually, I know of some hundred and fifty unsuspecting gentlemen on canvass, who have procured for posterity and their children portraits of their own heads and dress-coats to be sure, but of the hands of other persons!
The head of Machiavelli is, as is seen in the marble in the gallery of Florence, small, slender, and visibly “made to creep into crevices.” The face is impassive and calm, and the lips, though slight and almost feminine, have an indefinable firmness and character. Essex is the bold, plain, and blunt soldier history makes him, and Elizabeth not unqueenly, nor (to my thinking) of an uninteresting countenance; but, with all the artist’s flattery, ugly enough to be the abode of the murderous envy that brought Mary to the block.
We paid our five shillings for having been walked through the marble hall of Castle Warwick, and the dressing room of its modern lady, and, gratified much more by our visit than I have expressed in this brief description, posted on to Kenilworth.
KENILWORTH.
On the road from Warwick to Kenilworth, I thought more of poor Pierce Gaveston than of Elizabeth and her proud earls. Edward’s gay favorite was tried at Warwick, and beheaded on Blacklow hill, which we passed soon after leaving the town. He was executed in June; and I looked about on the lovely hills and valleys that surround the place of his last moments, and figured to myself very vividly his despair at this hurried leave-taking of this bright world in its brightest spot and hour. Poor Gaveston! It was not in his vocation to die! He was neither soldier nor prelate, hermit nor monk. His political sins, for which he suffered, were no offence against good fellowship, and were ten times more venial than those of the “black dog of Arden,” who betrayed and helped to murder him. He was the reckless minion of a king, but he must have been a merry and pleasant fellow; and now that the world (on our side the water at least) is grown so grave, one could go back with Old Mortality, and freshen the epitaph of a heart that took life more gayly.
As we approached the castle of the proud Leicester, I found it easier to people the road with the flying Amy Robsart and her faithful attendant, with Mike Lambourne, Flibbertigibbat, Richard Varney, and the troop of mummers and players, than with the more real characters of history. To assist the romance, a little Italian boy, with his organ and monkey, was fording the brook on his way to the castle, as if its old towers still held listeners for the wandering minstrel. I tossed him a shilling from the carriage window, and while the horses slowly forded the brook, asked him in his own delicious tongue, where he was from.
“Son’ di Firenze, signore!”