Prothero, alive to everything allied to comicality, burst out into a loud ho, ho, ho! Evans arrayed his naturally gloomy brows in a magisterial frown, and Powell smiled, with an expression of wonder. “What are you reading, friend?” asked Prothero, chuckling as he surveyed the black Welsh wig. “The wisdom of Solomon,” quoth the man of solemnity, drawing the muscles of his face most ludicrously long; “but mark you, worshipful gentlemen, I mean not the Solomon of the scriptures, but our own Cambrian Solomon—that is to say, Catwg the Wise, the excellent and erudite abbot of Llancarvan, and teacher of the Bard Taliesin.”
“That’s all right enough. Catwg was doubtless a clever man, but why do you bring him here?” enquired Prothero, with a broad smile on his face. “Wherever I go, I have resolved to make his wisdom known, and to reprove all deviators from it, in the sage’s own words,” quoth Twm. “Poor man, poor man, he’s crazy, his brain turned, perhaps by too much study,” observed Prothero. “An impudent fellow!” cried Evans; “but you are strangely lenient here in Carmarthenshire; were I the king, I would have such fellows put in Bedlam.”
Twm looked at the clerical magistrate, then read from the book, “If a crown were worn by every fool, we should all of us be kings.” “Gentlemen, he calls us all fools!” cried Evans. Twm, without raising his eyes from the book, read on, “were there horns on the head of every fool, a good sum might be gained by showing a bald man.” “Gentlemen, he makes us all cuckolds!” cried Evans, in his usual sputter; “however it may fit you, gentlemen, I can safely say, that no disgrace as a horn belongs to my brow.”
Twm read on:—“If the shame of every one were written on his forehead, the materials for masks would be surprisingly dear.” “Ho, ho, ho!” roared Prothero, till the hall echoed with his loud laughter, which the Cardiganshire magistrate seemed to take as a personal affront, and sulkily observed, that this was no place for foolery, but for gravity, wisdom, and truth.
Twm read on:—“If no tongue were to speak other than truth and wisdom, the number of mutes would be astonishingly great.” The consequential Inco, mumbled something about his own mode of doing business at Cardigan, and declared that he would commit such a fellow to gaol for three months, at least, for disturbing a court of justice. Twm cut him short with another passage from Catwg:—“Were the talkative to perceive the folly of his chattering, he would save his breath to cool his broth.”
Here Powell of Brecon entered a little into the spirit of the scene, by quoting also from the well-known aphorisms of Catwg, applying the passage to Twm himself;—“If the buffoon were to see the vanity of his feat, he would leave it off for shame.” This feeble hit excited the applause of the good-humoured Prothero, who clapped the speaker heartily on the back, and, amid his eternal ho, ho, ho! exclaimed, “Well said, brother, well said; better silence him with wit than by authority; well done, well done.”
Twm was not slow in taking up the gauntlet which the Breconshire magistrate had thrown at his feet, and so turning pointedly to him, he read;—“If the lover were to see his weakness, terror would drive him to a premature end.” A general laugh at the expense of Powell, instantly followed. To him that passage was considered peculiarly applicable, as the unsuccessful woer of the gay widow of Ystrad Feen. It was a tender string to touch so roughly. Losing his ease and temper at the same instant, he cast a most ungracious frown at the utterer of proverbs, and said in an undertone of threatening energy, “Whoever you may be, it were not wise of you to repeat such conduct towards me again.” “Again?” said Twm, pretending to misunderstand him, “Oh, certainly, I’ll give you the passage again, or any other, to you; ‘If the lover—’” here Powell’s face blazed with anger, as he clenched his fist, and cried, “You had better not.”
Twm began again,—“If the lover—of war, were to see his cruelty, he would fear that every atom in the sunbeam might stab him as a sword.” The dexterous evasion, with the point given to the words “of war,” had its full effect in restoring the good humour, so suddenly disturbed; but that beautiful passage from the aphorisms of the old Welsh abbot failed to elicit the applause which its moral merits deserve.
At this moment the attention of all present was attracted by the noisy entrance of the ex-proprietress of the flannel, who almost deafened them by the vehemence of her complaints; which, however, were too incoherently expressed to be immediately understood.
“Oh! my roll of flannel, my fine, my excellent flannel! all of my own spinning too,—eight and twenty good yards, and a yard and a half wide—my wooden shoe too, that I lost in the crowd—and my poor corns trod off by the villains—my dear sweet flannel, all of my own carding and spinning—nobody but the devil himself, or his first cousin Twm Shon Catty, could have taken it in such a manner—it was whisked from me as if a whirlwind had swept it away.”