“‘In due time, my honest friend, you may be admitted to do as much for one of us.’
“‘After such encouragement,’ replied our townsman, ‘I am bound in duty to give you the preference, should I indeed be worthy.’
“‘This was the only smart thing he uttered all the remainder of the day; during the whole of it he appeared to be half-lost, I know not whether in melancholy or in meditation, and soon left us.”
Here endeth all that my kinsman Jacob wrote about William Shakspeare, saving and excepting his excuse for having written so much. The rest of his letter was on a matter of wider and weightier import, namely, on the price of Cotteswolde cheese at Evesham fair. And yet, although ingenious men be not among the necessaries of life, there is something in them that makes us curious in regard to their goings and doings. It were to be wished that some of them had attempted to be better accountants; and others do appear to have laid aside the copybook full early in the day. Nevertheless, they have their uses and their merits. Master Eldridge’s letter is the wrapper of much wholesome food for contemplation. Although the decease (within so brief a period) of such a poet as Master Spenser, and such a patron as the earl, be unto us appalling, we laud and magnify the great Disposer of events, no less for his goodness in raising the humble than for his power in extinguishing the great. And peradventure ye, my heirs and descendants, who shall read with due attention what my pen now writeth, will say, with the royal Psalmist, that it inditeth of a good matter, when it sheweth unto you that, whereas it pleased the queen’s highness to send a great lord before the judgment-seat of Heaven, having fitted him by means of such earthly instruments as princes in like cases do usually employ, and deeming (no doubt) in her princely heart that by such shrewd tonsure his head would be best fitted for a crown of glory, and thus doing all that she did out of the purest and most considerate love for him,—it likewise hath pleased her highness to use her right hand as freely as her left, and to raise up a second burgess of our town to be one of her company of players. And ye, also, by industry and loyalty, may cheerfully hope for promotion in your callings, and come up (some of you) as nearly to him in the presence of royalty, as he cometh up (far off, indeed, at present) to the great and wonderful poet who lies dead among more spices than any phœnix, and more quills than any porcupine. If this thought may not prick and incitate you, little is to be hoped from any gentle admonition, or any earnest expostulation, of
Your loving friend and kinsman,
E. B.
ANNO ÆT. SUÆ 74, DOM. 1599,
DECEMB. 16;
GLORIA DP. DF. ET DSS.
AMOR VERSUS VIRGINEM REGINAM!
PROTESTANTICE LOQUOR ET HONESTO SENSU:
OBTESTOR CONSCIENTIAM MEAM!
PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
LONDON
FOOTNOTES
[8a] Quicken, bring to life.