Westward Ho! Or, The Voyages and Adventures of Sir Amyas Leigh, Knight, of Burrough, in the County of Devon, in the Reign of Her Most Glorious Majesty Queen Elizabeth. Charles Kingsley
know to be a lie, fair Frank; for your heart is as pure this day as when you knelt in your little crib at Burrough, and said—
“Four corners to my bed
Four angels round my head;
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
Bless the bed that I lie on.”
And who could doubt it (if being pure themselves, they have instinctive sympathy with what is pure), who ever looked into those great deep blue eyes of yours, “the black fringed curtains of whose azure lids,” usually down-dropt as if in deepest thought, you raise slowly, almost wonderingly each time you speak, as if awakening from some fair dream whose home is rather in your platonical “eternal world of supra-sensible forms,” than on that work-day earth wherein you nevertheless acquit yourself so well? There—I must stop describing you, or I shall catch the infection of your own euphuism, and talk of you as you would have talked of Sidney or of Spenser, or of that Swan of Avon, whose song had just begun when yours—but I will not anticipate; my Lady Bath is waiting to give you her rejoinder.
“Ah, my silver-tongued scholar! and are you, then, the poet? or have you been drawing on the inexhaustible bank of your friend Raleigh, or my cousin Sidney? or has our new Cygnet Immerito lent you a few unpublished leaves from some fresh Shepherd’s Calendar?”
“Had either, madam, of that cynosural triad been within call of my most humble importunities, your ears had been delectate with far nobler melody.”
“But not our eyes with fairer faces, eh? Well, you have chosen your nymphs, and had good store from whence to pick, I doubt not. Few young Dulcineas round but must have been glad to take service under so renowned a captain?”
“The only difficulty, gracious countess, has been to know where to fix the wandering choice of my bewildered eyes, where all alike are fair, and all alike facund.”
“We understand,” said she, smiling;—
“Dan Cupid, choosing ‘midst his mother’s graces,
Himself more fair, made scorn of fairest faces.”
The young scholar capped her distich forthwith, and bowing to her with a meaning look,
“‘Then, Goddess, turn,’ he cried, ‘and veil thy light; Blinded by thine, what eyes can choose aright?’”
“Go, saucy sir,” said my lady, in high glee: “the pageant stays your supreme pleasure.”
And away went Mr. Frank as master of the revels, to bring up the ‘prentices’ pageant; while, for his sake, the nymph of Torridge was forgotten for awhile by all young dames, and most young gentlemen: and his mother heaved a deep sigh, which Lady Bath overhearing—
“What? in the dumps, good madam, while all are rejoicing in your joy? Are you afraid that we court-dames shall turn your Adonis’s brain for him?”
“I do, indeed, fear lest your condescension should make him forget that he is only a poor squire’s orphan.”
“I will warrant him never to forget aught that he should recollect,” said my Lady Bath.
And she spoke truly. But soon Frank’s silver voice was heard calling out—
“Room there, good people, for the gallant ‘prentice lads!”
And on they came, headed by a giant of buckram and pasteboard armor, forth of whose stomach looked, like a clock-face in a steeple, a human visage, to be greeted, as was the fashion then, by a volley of quips and puns from high and low.
Young Mr. William Cary, of Clovelly, who was the wit of those parts, opened the fire by asking him whether he were Goliath, Gogmagog, or Grantorto in the romance; for giants’ names always began with a G. To which the giant’s stomach answered pretty surlily—
“Mine don’t; I begin with an O.”
“Then thou criest out before thou art hurt, O cowardly giant!”
“Let me out, lads,” quoth the irascible visage, struggling in his buckram prison, “and I soon show him whether I be a coward.”
“Nay, if thou gettest out of thyself, thou wouldst be beside thyself, and so wert but a mad giant.”
“And that were pity,” said Lady Bath; “for by the romances, giants have never overmuch wit to spare.”
“Mercy, dear lady!” said Frank, “and let the giant begin with an O.”
“A –”
“A false start, giant! you were to begin with an O.”
“I’ll make you end with an O, Mr. William Cary!” roared the testy tower of buckram.
“And so I do, for I end with ‘Fico!’”
“Be mollified, sweet giant,” said Frank, “and spare the rash youth of yon foolish knight. Shall elephants catch flies, or Hurlo-Thrumbo stain his club with brains of Dagonet the jester? Be mollified; leave thy caverned grumblings, like Etna when its windy wrath is past, and discourse eloquence from thy central omphalos, like Pythoness ventriloquizing.”
“If you do begin laughing at me too, Mr. Leigh –” said the giant’s clock-face, in a piteous tone.
“I laugh not. Art thou not Ordulf the earl, and I thy humblest squire? Speak up, my lord; your cousin, my Lady Bath, commands you.”
And at last the giant began:—
“A giant I, Earl Ordulf men me call,—
‘Gainst Paynim foes Devonia’s champion tall;
In single fight six thousand Turks I slew;
Pull’d off a lion’s head, and ate it too:
With one shrewd blow, to let St. Edward in,
I smote the gates of Exeter in twain;
Till aged grown, by angels warn’d in dream,
I built an abbey fair by Tavy stream.
But treacherous time hath tripped my glories up,
The stanch old hound must yield to stancher pup;
Here’s one so tall as I, and twice so bold,
Where I took only cuffs, takes good red gold.
From pole to pole resound his wondrous works,
Who slew more Spaniards than I e’er slew Turks;
I strode across the Tavy stream: but he
Strode round the world and back; and here ‘a be!”
“Oh, bathos!” said Lady Bath, while the ‘prentices shouted applause. “Is this hedge-bantling to be fathered on you, Mr. Frank?”
“It is necessary, by all laws of the drama, madam,” said Frank, with a sly smile, “that the speech and the speaker shall fit each other. Pass on, Earl Ordulf; a more learned worthy waits.”
Whereon, up came a fresh member of the procession; namely, no less a person than Vindex Brimblecombe, the ancient schoolmaster, with five-and-forty boys at his heels, who halting, pulled out his spectacles, and thus signified his forgiveness of his whilom broken head:—
“That the world should have been circumnavigated, ladies and gentles, were matter enough of jubilation to the student of Herodotus and Plato, Plinius and – ahem! much more when the circumnavigators are Britons; more, again, when Damnonians.”
“Don’t swear, master,” said young Will Cary.
“Gulielme Cary, Gulielme Cary, hast thou forgotten thy—”
“Whippings? Never, old lad! Go on; but let not the license of the scholar overtop the modesty of the Christian.”
“More