[89a] In that age there was prevalent a sort of cholera, on which Fracastorius, half a century before, wrote a Latin poem, employing the graceful nymphs of Homer and Hesiod, somewhat disguised, in the drudgery of pounding certain barks and minerals. An article in the Impeachment of Cardinal Wolsey accuses him of breathing in the king’s face, knowing that he was affected with this cholera. It was a great assistant to the Reformation, by removing some of the most vigorous champions that opposed it. In the Holy College it was followed by the sweating sickness, which thinned it very sorely; and several even of God’s vicegerents were laid under tribulation by it. Among the chambers of the Vatican it hung for ages, and it crowned the labours of Pope Leo XII., of blessed memory, with a crown somewhat uneasy.
[105a] Sir Thomas seems to have been jealous of these two towers, certainly the finest in England. If Warwick Castle could borrow the windows from Kenilworth, it would be complete. The knight is not very courteous on its hospitality. He may, perhaps, have experienced it, as Garrick and Quin did under the present occupant’s grandfather, on whom the title of Earl of Warwick was conferred for the eminent services he had rendered to his country as one of the lords of the bedchamber to his Majesty George the Second. The verses of Garrick on his invitation and visit are remembered by many. Quin’s are less known.
He shewed us Guy’s pot, but the soup he forgot;
Not a meal did his lordship allow,
Unless we gnaw’d o’er the blade-bone of the boar,
Or the rib of the famous Dun Cow.
When Nevile the great Earl of Warwick lived here,
Three oxen for breakfast were slain,
And strangers invited to sports and good cheer,
And invited again and again.
This earl is in purse or in spirit so low,
That he with no oxen will feed ’em;
And all of the former great doings we know
Is, he gives us a book and we read ’em.
Garrick.
Stale peers are but tough morsels, and ’t were well
If we had found the fresh more eatable;
Garrick! I do not say ’t were well for him,
For we had pluck’d the plover limb from limb.
Quin.
[106a] Another untoward blot! but leaving no doubt of the word. The only doubt is whether he meant the muzzle of the animal itself, or one of those leathern muzzles which are often employed to coerce the violence of ferocious animals. In besieged cities men have been reduced to such extremities. But the muzzle, in this place, we suspect, would more properly be called the blinker, which is often put upon bulls in pastures when they are vicious.
[108a] This would countenance the opinion of those who are inclined to believe that Shakspeare was a Roman Catholic. His hatred and contempt of priests, which are demonstrated wherever he has introduced them, may have originated from the unfairness of Silas Gough. Nothing of that kind, we may believe, had occurred to him from friars and monks, whom he treats respectfully and kindly, perhaps in return for some such services to himself as Friar Lawrence had bestowed on Romeo,—or rather less; for Shakspeare was grateful. The words quoted by him from some sermon, now lost, prove him no friend to the filchings and swindling of popery.