Merrie England in the olden Time; or, PEREGRINATIONS WITH UNCLE TIM AND MR. BOSKY, OF LITTLE BRITAIN, DRYSALTER. BY GEORGE DANIEL. "Dost thou think because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes and ale?"-SHAKSPEARE. CHAPTER XIII. UNCLE TIMOTHY was a most excursive talker and walker. He had no set phrases; nothing ready cut and dried (which is often very dry) for formal intellectual displays. When he rose in the morning, unless bound by some engagement, he hardly knew whither his footsteps would tend. He was to be seen looking into curiosity shops; rummaging old book-stalls; turning over portfolios of curious prints; making gossiping calls among his good friends, the booksellers; stepping into a book-auction, a panorama, an exhibition of ancient pictures; sometimes rambling in the green fields, and not unfrequently making one of Punch's laughing audiences. The world would have called him idle-but "How various his employments, whom the world Esteems the busy world an idler too!" Though the world's pursuits brought more care to the heart and profit to the purse than his own, he wished they might only prove as innocent and as honest. Uncle Timothy had just got scent of an ancient carved figure of Falstaff, that once adorned the overhanging doorway of the Boar's Head, in Eastcheap; not the original scene of revelry where Prince Hal and Sir John turned night into day. That merry hostelrie, where "lean Jack" slept on benches in the afternoon, and unbuttoned himself after supper, had been replaced by another, bearing the same immortal sign, which rose on its ruins immediately after the fire of London. The Boar's Head (which we well remember) was cut in stone, and let into the brick work under the centre window of the first floor. This house had been recently pulled down, in order to make room for the new London Bridge improvements; but Uncle Timothy heard that the figure had been carefully reserved by the proprietor, as a memorial of so celebrated a site. Thither he journeyed on a voyage of discovery. The owner of the Boar's Head had departed this life; but the neighbours referred him to a nephew, dwelling in an adjoining street, who had succeeded the old gentleman in business. The worthy tradesman received him with courtesy, and proceeded to narrate what had transpired since the demolition of the tavern. The story of the figure was strictly true. His late uncle regarded it as an interesting relic, and his widow, smitten with a kindred feeling, had retired into the country, carrying with her Sir John Falstaff; and it was not at all likely that she would relinquish possession of the fat knight, until commanded by the inexorable separatist that parts the best friends. While Uncle Timothy, on his way homeward, was whistling, not for "want of thought," but the figure, he espied a new Boar's Head in the immediate vicinity of the old one; and, as the attraction was too powerful to be resisted, he walked in, and soon found himself in a spacious apartment, carved, fretted, and mullioned in the ancient style; the furniture was grotesquely ornamented and antique; the holly and miseltoe were disposed in various parts of the room; a huge fire blazed cheerfully; and round a massy oak table, black with age, sat Falstaff, Prince Henry, Sir Toby Belch, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, Sir Hugh Evans, Justice Shallow, Poins, Peto, Touchstone, Corporal Nym, Ancient Pistol, and Lieutenant Bardolph! That "base-string of humility," Francis, waited upon the company; and the shrill tones of Hostess Quickly were heard in an angry colloquy with the "roaring girl," Doll Tearsheet. A boar's head with a lemon in his mouth adorned the centre of the table, and immediately before Sir John Falstaff was a magnificent bowl of sugared sack compounded by the dame in her very best humour, and not excelled by that memorable draught which the oily knight so cosily lapped down, when he swore to mine hostess, "upon a parcel-gilt goblet, sitting in her Dolphin Chamber at the round-table, by a sea-coal fire," that he would marry her and make her "my lady." Every guest had a horn cup silver-mounted; and black jacks of sparkling ale, and cakes in abundance, strewed the festive board. Some racy joke on Bardolph's burning nose had just been fired off, and the company were in high merriment. 66 Surely," said Uncle Timothy to himself, "this is a masquerade. I am an unbidden guest; but the Enchanter's wand is over me, and I cannot either advance or retire." Sir Andrew thrummed his viol-de-gambo; and Sir Toby, having fortified himself with a long draught out of a black jack, with true heartiness of voice and gesture struck up a glee. THE BOAR'S HEAD. SIR TOBY. Because some folks are virtuous, Sir John, shall you and I Forswear our wassail, cakes and ale, and sit us down and sigh? And sack is sack, Sir John, Sir Jack! though in it tastes the lime. The watery eye of Sir John Falstaff twinkled with exquisite delight as he filled himself a cup of sack and responded, PISTOL. BARDOLPH. There's nothing extant, Sir Toby, but cant. A plague of all cowards! Here, Bardolph, my Trigon! And keep a lean Lent. Presuming it long, Let us first have a song, It over a bowl, To honesty, manhood, good fellowship bygone. Pistol, my Ancient ! I'll ne'er prove a stopper, By nose, that's true copper! FALSTAFF. FALSTAFF. GADSHILL & PETO. FALSTAFF. CLOWN. FALSTAFF. SHALLOW. FALSTAFF. FALSTAFF. FRANCIS. ALL. . Corporal Nym— In sack let me swim! My cockscomb to you! I'm true to you, "Tallow!" SIR ANDREW & SIR HUGH. We'll drink as you brew! CHORUS. Poins joins! Hal shall! Dame Partlet the hen! Doll! Francis! Anon! We're all your liege subjects, right glorious Sir John! FALSTAFF, NYM, PRINCE AND POINS. TOUCHSTONE. CHORUS. We are minions of the moon, Buckram'd varlets! coward knaves! Up with staves, and down with braves— Mistress Audrey, in the dance, Shout for the Head of the bristly Boar! Did merrily bound while the cup went round Sing O the green holly! sing O the green holly! The room now seemed to extend in width and in length; the sounds of revelry ceased, and other characters appeared upon the scene. Lady Macbeth, her eyes bending on vacancy, her lips moving convulsively, her voice audible, but in fearful whispers, slept her last sleep of darkness, guilt, and terror. The Weird Sisters danced round their magic cauldron, hideous, anomalous, and immortal! The noble Moor ended "life's fitful season," remorseful and heartbroken. The "Majesty of buried Denmark" revisited "the pale glimpses of the moon." Ariel, dismissed by Prospero, warbled his valedictory strain, and flew to his bright dwelling, "under the blossom that hangs on the bough." The chiefs and sages of imperial Rome swept along in silent majesty. Lear, on his knees, bareheaded, with heavenward eye, quivering lip, and hands clasped together in agony, pronounced the terrible curse, and in his death realised all that can be imagined of human woe. Shylock, the representative of a once-despised and persecuted race, pleaded his cause before the senate, and lost it by a quibble. Oberon, Puck, and the ethereal essences of a Midsummer Night's Dream flitted in the moonbeams. Benedick and Beatrice had their wars of wit and combats of the tongue. The Lady Constance, alternately reproachful, despairing, and frenzied, exhibited a matchless picture of maternal tenderness. Juliet breathed forth her sighs to the chaste stars. Isabella read a lesson to haughty authority, when she asks her brother's forfeited life at the hands of the Duke, that holy seer or sage has seldom equalled, and never surpassed ;' and Ophelia, in her distraction, was simple, touching, and sublime. Though these soul-stirring scenes were perfectly familiar to Uncle Timothy, and from youth to age had been his morning study and his nightly dream, they had never been invested with such an absorbing reality before, and he stood transfixed, a wondering spectator of the glorious vision,-for such to his aching sight it seemed to be. At this moment, the embroidered arras that hung before the oriel window of the tapestried chamber was slowly drawn aside, and the figure of Shakspere, his eyes beaming with immortality, and his lofty brow discoursing of all things past, present, and to come, stood revealed to view! "Flowers of all hues, and without thorn the rose," sprung up spontaneously beneath his feet. And as he walk'd along th' enamell'd bed Of flow'rs, disposed in many a fairy ring, As if his feet had touch'd some hidden spring In the charm'd ear-around-above-beneath! An eminent dignitary of the Church of England was once discoursing with the author on the morality of Shakspere. He regretted that the Bard had not spoken on that most glorious of all subjects, Man's Redemption, beyond a few lines (exquisitely beautiful) in the first scene of Hamlet. The author immediately pointed out the following terse, but transcendant passage from "Measure for Measure." "Why, all the souls that were, were forfeit once; And HE that might the 'vantage best have took, It would pass the bounds of the most exalted eulogy to record the prelate's answer, and how deeply affected he was whilst making it. VOL. 1X. 2 K He spoke-But his voice was of "no sound that the earth knows." The sensations of Uncle Timothy grew intensely painful amounting almost to agony. He made a sudden effort to rush forward, and in making it, awoke! when he found himself seated snugly in an armchair before a bright "sea-coal fire," at the Mother Red Cap, where he had fallen asleep after the exit of the Bartholomew Fair troop, in their progress to the "Rounds." And thus ended Uncle Timothy's Vision of the Boar's Head! CHAPTER XIV. "GENTLEMEN, on this anniversary of St. Bartholomew, let us not forget that we owe his fair to a priest and a jester." "A priest and a jester, Mr. Merripall?-ha! ha! ho!" "In sooth, Brother Stiflegig," replied the comical coffin-maker to his inquiring mute, whose hollow laugh sounded like a double knock, "and the devout monk is no more to be blamed for the disorders that, fungus-like, have grown out of it, than is Sir Christopher Wren for the cobwebs and dust that deface the dome of St. Paul's. Brush away the cobwebs and the dust, but spare the dome. Don't cut off a man's head to cure his toothache, or Îop off his leg to banish his gout in toto!" The latter clause of this remark was much applauded by a sensitive member, who had evinced great anxiety to protect his physiog nomy from the cutting draught of the door; and by another, who was equally careful to keep his ten toes from being trod upon. But the sexton and the two mutes exchanged significant glances, that plainly hinted their non-approval of this anti-professional ultraliberality on the part of the comical coffin-maker. "Gentlemen," resumed Mr. Merripall, rising "THE JOVIAL PRIOR OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW! Sons of the fair, to Father Rahére Chant a stave in a hollow mew; Hosier Lane shout back the strain Through the cloisters of holy Bartholomew. Saunders, Gyngell, merrily mingle; Richardson join in the choir: Two-legg'd dancers, four-legg'd prancers, Now fire away in full chorus ! Peace to the soul of the bald-pated droll! Toss off a toast to his good-humour'd ghost, We were passing by those ancient houses in Duke Street, Smithfield, undecided whether or not to drop in upon the little Drysalter, when our attention was arrested by this chorus of mirth proceeding from one of the many obscure hostelries with which these ancient turnings and windings abound. We had stumbled on the Pig and Tinder-box, near Bartholomew Close. The chair was on his legs.— |