“Poor tack! poor tack!” sourly quoth Master Silas. “If your wise doctor could say nothing more about the fool, who died like a rotten sheep among the darnels, his Latin might have held out for the father, and might have told people he was as cool as a cucumber at home, and as hot as pepper in battle. Could he not find room enough on the whinstone, to tell the folks of the village how he played the devil among the dons, burning their fingers when they would put thumbscrews upon us, punching them in the weasand as a blacksmith punches a horse-shoe, and throwing them overboard like bilgewater?
“Has Oxford lost all her Latin? Here is no capitani filius; no more mention of family than a Welchman would have allowed him; no hîc jacet; and, worse than all, the devil a tittle of spe redemptionis, or anno Domini.”
“Willy!” quoth Sir Thomas, “I shrewdly do suspect there was more, and that thou hast forgotten it.”
“Sir!” answered Willy, “I wrote not down the words, fearing to mis-spell them, and begged them of the doctor, when I took my leave of him on the morrow; and verily he wrote down all he had repeated. I keep them always in the tin-box in my waistcoat-pocket, among the eel-hooks, on a scrap of paper a finger’s length and breadth, folded in the middle to fit. And when the eels are running, I often take it out and read it before I am aware. I could as soon forget my own epitaph as this.”
“Simpleton!” said Sir Thomas, with his gentle, compassionate smile; “but thou hast cleared thyself.”
Sir Silas.
“I think the doctor gave one idle chap as much solid pudding as he could digest, with a slice to spare for another.”
William Shakspeare.
“And yet after this pudding the doctor gave him a spoonful of custard, flavoured with a little bitter, which was mostly left at the bottom for the other idle chap.”
Sir Thomas not only did endure this very goodnaturedly, but deigned even to take in good part the smile upon my countenance, as though he were a smile collector, and as though his estate were so humble that he could hold his laced bonnet (in all his bravery) for bear and fiddle.