“’Lust seizeth us in youth, ambition in midlife, avarice in old age; but vanity and pride are the besetting sins that drive the angels from our cradle, pamper us with luscious and most unwholesome food, ride our first stick with us, mount our first horse with us, wake with us in the morning, dream with us in the night, and never at any time abandon us.  In this world, beginning with pride and vanity, we are delivered over from tormentor to tormentor, until the worst tormentor of all taketh absolute possession of us for ever, seizing us at the mouth of the grave, enchaining us in his own dark dungeon, standing at the door, and laughing at our cries.  But the Lord, out of his infinite mercy, hath placed in the hand of every man the helm to steer his course by, pointing it out with his finger, and giving him strength as well as knowledge to pursue it.

“’William!  William! there is in the moral straits a current from right to wrong, but no re-flux from wrong to right; for which destination we must hoist our sails aloft and ply our oars incessantly, or night and the tempest will overtake us, and we shall shriek out in vain from the billows, and irrecoverably sink.’”

“Amen!” cried Sir Thomas most devoutly, sustaining his voice long and loud.

“Open that casement, good Silas! the day is sultry for the season of the year; it approacheth unto noontide.  The room is close, and those blue flies do make a strange hubbub.”

William Shakspeare.

“In troth do they, sir; they come from the kitchen, and do savour woundily of roast goose!  And, methinks—­”

Sir Thomas.

“What bethinkest thou?”

William Shakspeare.

“The fancy of a moment,—­a light and vain one.”

Sir Thomas.

“Thou relievest me; speak it!”

William Shakespeare.

“How could the creatures cast their coarse rank odour thus far?—­ even into your presence!  A noble and spacious hall!  Charlecote, in my mind, beats Warwick Castle, and challenges Kenilworth.”

Sir Thomas.

“The hall is well enough; I must say it is a noble hall,—­a hall for a queen to sit down in.  And I stuffed an arm-chair with horse-hair on purpose, feathers over it, swan-down over them again, and covered it with scarlet cloth of Bruges, five crowns the short ell.  But her highness came not hither; she was taken short; she had a tongue in her ear.”

William Shakspeare.

“Where all is spring, all is buzz and murmur.”

Sir Thomas.

“Quaint and solid as the best yew hedge.  I marvel at thee.  A knight might have spoken it, under favour.  They stopped her at Warwick—­to see what? two old towers that don’t match, {105a} and a portcullis that (people say) opens only upon fast-days.  Charlecote Hall, I could have told her sweet Highness, was built by those Lucys who came over with Julius Caesar and William the Conqueror, with cross and scallop-shell on breast and beaver.”