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coasts. But presently all corners were laid for him, and such diligent pursuit and search made, as he was fain to turn back, and get him to the house of Bethlehem, called the priory of Sheen, (which had the privilege of sanctuary,) and put himself into the hands of the prior of that monastery. The prior was thought an holy man, and much reverenced in those days. He came to the king, and besought the king for Perkin's life only, leaving him otherwise to the king's discretion Many about the king were again more hot than ever, to have the king take him forth and hang him. But the king, that had an high stomach, and could not hate any that he despised, bid, "Take him forth, and set the knave in the stocks" and so promising the prior his life, he caused him to be brought forth. And within two or three days after, upon a scaffold set up in the palace court at West. minster, he was fettered and set in the stocks for the whole day And the next day after the like was done by him at the cross in Cheapside, and in both places he read his confession, of which we made mention before; and was from Cheapside conveyed and laid up in the Tower.

But it was ordained that this winding-ivy of a Plantagenet should kill the true tree itself. For Perkin after he had been a while in the Tower, began to insinuate himself into the favour and kindness of his keepers, servants of the lieutenant of the Tower, Sir John Digby, being four in number-Strangeways, Blewet, Astwood, and Long Roger. These varlets, with mountains of promises, he sought to corrupt, to obtain his escape; but knowing well that his own fortunes were made so contemptible as he could feed no man's hopes, and by hopes he must work, for rewards he had none, he had contrived with himself a vast and tragical plot; which was, to draw into his company Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick, then prisoner in the Tower; whom the weary life of a long imprisonment, and the often and renewing fears of being put to death, had softened to take any impression of counsel for his liberty. This young prince he thought these servants would look upon, though not upon himself; and there fore, after that by some message by one or two of them, he had

tasted of the earl's consent, it was agreed that these four should murder their master, the lieutenant, secretly, in the night, and make their best of such money and portable goods of his, as they should find ready at hand, and get the keys of the Tower, and presently let forth Perkin and the earl. But this conspiracy was revealed in time, before it could be executed. And in this again the opinion of the king's great wisdom did surcharge him with a sinister fame, that Perkin was but his bait, to entrap the Earl of Warwick. And in the very instant while this conspiracy was in working, as if that also had been the king's industry, it was fated that there should break forth a counterfeit Earl of Warwick, a cordwainer's son, whose name was Ralph Wilford; a young man taught and set on by an Augustin friar, called Patrick. They both from the parts of Suffolk came forwards into Kent, where they did not only privily and underhand give out that this Wilford was the true Earl of Warwick, but also the friar, finding some light cre dence in the people, took the boldness in the pulpit to declare as much, and to incite the people to come in to his aid. Whereupon they were both presently apprehended, and the young fellow executed, and the friar condemned to perpetual imprisonment. This also happening so opportunely, to represent the danger to the king's estate from the Earl of Warwick, and thereby to colour the king's severity that followed; together with the madness of the friar so vainly and desperately to divulge a treason before it had gotten any manner of strength; and the saving of the friar's life, which nevertheless was, indeed, but the privilege of his order; and the pity in the common people, which if it run in a strong stream, doth ever cast up scandal and envy, made it generally rather talked than believed that all was but the king's device. But howsoever it were, hereupon Perkin, that had offended against grace now the third time, was at the last proceeded with, and by commissioners of oyer and determiner, arraigned at Westminster upon divers treasons committed and perpetrated after his coming on land within this kingdom, for so the judges advised, for that he was a foreigner, and condemned, and a few days after executed at Tyburn; where he did again openly read his confession, and take

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it upon his death to be true.

This was the end of this little

cockatrice of a king, that was able to destroy those that did not espy him first. It was one of the longest plays of that kind that had been in memory, and might perhaps have had another end, if he had not met with a king both wise, stout, and fortunate.

The Ancient Mansion.

CRABBE.

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[CRABBE has been called the Teniers of poetry; by which title it is meant to be conveyed that he painted the minute details of low life with a brilliant fidelity. There is something more in Crabbe than we find in the Dutch painter. He exhibits, indeed, the coarse pleasures of the poor-he has scenes of boisterous merriment and sottish degradation;-but he is also the painter of the strong passions and deep feelings that belong to the common nature of the humble and the great. If he had sufficiently kept his power of delineating character within the limits of pleasurable effects-the greatest test of all high art-if he had not too frequently revelled in descriptions that only excita unmixed disgust-he would have been the Wilkie of poetry-a much higher order of artist than the whole race of Tenierses, and Ostades, and Jan Steens. Crabbe will always be a popular poet, to a certain extent;-although the chances are that as real poetry comes to be better understood, a great deal that he has written will be forgotten and neglected. It was said in his praise, by Mr Jeffrey, in the Edinburgh Review in 1810, "His characters and inci dents are as common as the elements out of which they are compounded are humble; and not only has he nothing prodigious or astonishing in any of his representations, but he has not even attempted to impart any of the ordinary colours of poetry to these vulgar materials. He has no moralising swains or sentimental tradesmen." This is a sarcasm against the poetry of Wordsworth, which it was then the fashion to sneer at. It would not be difficult to show that the "moralising swains and sentimental tradesmen " are really as true to our higher nature-that nature with which poetry has especially to deal-as "the depraved, abject, diseased, and neglected poor-creatures in whom everything amiable or respectable has been extinguished by sordid passions or brutal debauchery"- -are revolting accidents which poetry ought to avoid. Indeed, if Crabbe had not higher delineations than such as these, (which are too common in his writings,) he would not take the rank which he deservedly holds amongst English poets. It is where he does approach to the despised moralists and sentimentalists of another school, that he has the best assurance of an undying fame.

George Crabbe was the son of a humble tradesman at Aldborough, in Suffolk. He was born in 1754. He was apprenticed to a surgeon; but his

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father was unable to afford the means of completing his professional education. In 1780, he went to London, a literary adventurer; sustained many hardships and mortifications; was finally rescued from poverty by the kindness of Edmund Burke; entered the Church; and enjoyed competence and universal esteem till his death in 1832. His collected works, with a life by his son, in eight volumes, were published in 1834.]

"The rooks are shot, the trees are

fell'd,

"Come, lead me, lassie, to the shade, Their notes, indeed, are harsh and rude, Where willows grow beside the brook; But they're a social multitude." For well I know the sound it made When dashing o'er the stony rill— It murmur'd to St Osyth's Mill." The lass replied "The trees are fled, They've cut the brook a straighter bed: No shades the present lords allow, The miller only murmurs now; The waters now his mill forsake, And form a pond they call a lake.” "Then, lassie, lead thy grandsire on, And to the holy water bring; A cup is fasten'd to the stone,

And I would taste the healing spring, That soon its rocky cist forsakes, And green its mossy passage makes." "The holy spring is turn'd aside, The arch is gone, the stream is dried; The plough has levell'd all around, And here is now no holy ground." “Then, lass, thy grandsire's footsteps guide,

To Bulmer's Tree, the giant oak, Whose boughs the keeper's cottage hide, And part the church-way lane o'er

look.

A boy, I climb'd the topmost bough,
And I would feel its shadow now.

'Or, lassie, lead me to the west,
Where grew the elm-trees thick and
tall,

With better fate the giant-tree,
And nest and nursery all expell'd;
Old Bulmer's Oak, is gone to sea.
The church-way walk is now no more
And men must other ways explore:
Though this indeed promotion gains,
For this the park's new wall contains ⚫
And here, I fear, we shall not meet
A shade-although, perchance, a seat."

"Oh, then, my lassie, lead the way

To Comfort's Home, the ancient inn:
That something holds, if we can pay-

Old David is our living kin;
A servant once, he still preserves
His name, and in his office serves!"

"Alas! that mine should be the fate
Old David's sorrows to relate :
But they were brief; not long before
He died, his office was no more,
The kennel stands upon the ground,
With something of the former sound!"

"Oh, then," the grieving man replied,

"No farther, lassie, let me stray; Here's nothing left of ancient pride,

Of what was grand, of what was gay; But all is changed, is lost, is sold

Where rooks unnumber'd build their All, all that's left, is chilling cold;

nest

Deliberate birds, and prudent all;

I seek for comfort here in vain,
Then lead me to my cot again!"

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The Spider and the Bee.

[The following extract will give some notion of the vein of the famous Dear of St Patrick's. But no adequate notion can be afforded by extracts. "Gulliver's Travels," offensive as it is in many respects, may be in the hands of every reader for a shilling or two; and there, and perhaps better even in "The Tale of a Tub," may be fitly learnt the great powers of Swift as a satirist, and his almost unequalled mastery of a clear, vigorous, and idiomatic style. "The Battle of the Books," from which our extract is taken, was one of Swift's earlier performances. It had reference to the great contest which was then going on between the advocates of Ancient Learning and Modern Learning. The bee represents the ancients, the spider the moderns. Such contests are as harmless and as absurd as the more recent disputes amongst our French neighbours, about the comparative merits of the Classic and the Romantic schools. Real criticism can find enough to admire in whatever form genius works The Apologue of the Spider and the Bee was not unjustly applied, some years ago, to a coterie of self-applauding writers, "furnished with a native stock," who, despising accuracy and careful investigation, turned up their noses at those who were labouring to make knowledge the common posses sion of all.

Jonathan Swift was born in 1667, and died in 1745. An excellent edition of his works, in nineteen volumes, was edited by Sir Walter Scott. There is a cheap edition, in two large octavo volumes, published in 1841.]

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Upon the highest corner of a large window there dwelt a certain spider, swollen up to the first magnitude by the destruction of infinite numbers of flies, whose spoils lay scattered before the gates of his palace, like human bones before the cave of some giant. The avenues to his castle were guarded with turnpikes and palisadoes, all after the modern way of fortification. After you had passed several courts you came to the centre, wherein you might behold the constable himself, in his own lodgings, which had windows fronting to each avenue, and ports to sally out upon all occasions of prey or defence. In this mansion he had for some time dwelt in peace and plenty, without danger to his person by swallows from above, or to his palace by brooms from below, when it was the pleasure of fortune to conduct thither a wandering bee, to whose curiosity a broken pane in the glass had discovered itself, and in he went; where, expatiating a while,

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