“I relish not such mutton-broth divinity,” said Master Silas.  “It makes me sick in order to settle my stomach.”

“We may improve it,” said the knight, “but first let us hear more.”

Then did William Shakspeare resume Dr. Glaston’s discourse.

“’Ethelbert!  I think thou walkest but little; otherwise I should take thee with me, some fine fresh morning, as far as unto the first hamlet on the Cherwell.  There lies young Wellerby, who, the year before, was wont to pass many hours of the day poetising amid the ruins of Godstow nunnery.  It is said that he bore a fondness toward a young maiden in that place, formerly a village, now containing but two old farm-houses.  In my memory there were still extant several dormitories.  Some love-sick girl had recollected an ancient name, and had engraven on a stone with a garden-nail, which lay in rust near it, —

“Poore ROSAMUND.”

I entered these precincts, and beheld a youth of manly form and countenance, washing and wiping a stone with a handful of wet grass; and on my going up to him, and asking what he had found, he shewed it to me.  The next time I saw him was near the banks of the Cherwell.  He had tried, it appears, to forget or overcome his foolish passion, and had applied his whole mind unto study.  He was foiled by his competitor; and now he sought consolation in poetry.  Whether this opened the wounds that had closed in his youthful breast, and malignant Love, in his revenge, poisoned it; or whether the disappointment he had experienced in finding others preferred to him, first in the paths of fortune, then in those of the muses,—­he was thought to have died broken-hearted.

“’About half a mile from St. John’s College is the termination of a natural terrace, with the Cherwell close under it, in some places bright with yellow and red flowers glancing and glowing through the stream, and suddenly in others dark with the shadows of many different trees, in broad, overbending thickets, and with rushes spear-high, and party-coloured flags.

“’After a walk in Midsummer, the emersion of our hands into the cool and closing grass is surely not the least among our animal delights.  I was just seated, and the first sensation of rest vibrated in me gently, as though it were music to the limbs, when I discovered by a hollow in the herbage that another was near.  The long meadow-sweet and blooming burnet half concealed from me him whom the earth was about to hide totally and for ever.

“‘Master Batchelor,’ said I, ‘it is ill-sleeping by the water-side.’

“’No answer was returned.  I arose, went to the place, and recognised poor Wellerby.  His brow was moist, his cheek was warm.  A few moments earlier, and that dismal lake whereunto and wherefrom the waters of life, the buoyant blood, ran no longer, might have received one vivifying ray reflected from my poor casement.  I might not indeed have comforted—­I have often failed; but there is one who never has; and the strengthener of the bruised reed should have been with us.