Sir Thomas.

“No fear of that.  Neither, if rightly reported by the youngster, is there so much doctrine in the doctor as we expected.  He doth not dwell upon the main; he is worldly; he is wise in his generation,—­ he says things out of his own head.

“Silas, that can’t hold!  We want props—­fulcrums, I think you called ’em to the farmers; or was it stimulums?”

Sir Silas.

“Both very good words.”

Sir Thomas.

“I should be mightily pleased to hear thee dispute with that great don.”

Sir Silas.

“I hate disputations.  Saint Paul warns us against them.  If one wants to be thirsty, the tail of a stockfish is as good for it as the head of a logician.

“The doctor there, at Oxford, is in flesh and mettle; but let him be sleek and gingered as he may, clap me in St. Mary’s pulpit, cassock me, lamb-skin me, give me pink for my colours, glove me to the elbow, heel-piece me half an ell high, cushion me before and behind, bring me a mug of mild ale and a rasher of bacon, only just to con over the text withal; then allow me fair play, and as much of my own way as he had, and the devil take the hindermost.  I am his man at any time.”

Sir Thomas.

“I am fain to believe it.  Verily, I do think, Silas, thou hast as much stuff in thee as most men.  Our beef and mutton at Charlecote rear other than babes and sucklings.

“I like words taken, like thine, from black-letter books.  They look stiff and sterling, and as though a man might dig about ’em for a week, and never loosen the lightest.

“Thou hast alway at hand either saint or devil, as occasion needeth, according to the quality of the sinner, and they never come uncalled for.  Moreover, Master Silas, I have observed that thy hell-fire is generally lighted up in the pulpit about the dog-days.”

Then turned the worthy knight unto the youth, saying, —

“’T were well for thee, William Shakspeare, if the learned doctor had kept thee longer in his house, and had shewn unto thee the danger of idleness, which hath often led unto deer-stealing and poetry.  In thee we already know the one, although the distemper hath eaten but skin-deep for the present; and we have the testimony of two burgesses on the other.  The pursuit of poetry, as likewise of game, is unforbidden to persons of condition.”

William Shakspeare.

“Sir, that of game is the more likely to keep them in it.”

Sir Thomas,

“It is the more knightly of the two; but poetry hath also her pursuers among us.  I myself, in my youth, had some experience that way; and I am fain to blush at the reputation I obtained.  His honour, my father, took me to London at the age of twenty; and, sparing no expense in my education, gave fifty shillings to one Monsieur Dubois to teach me fencing and poetry, in twenty lessons.  In vacant hours he taught us also the laws of honour, which are different from ours.