“’Be patient!  From the higher heavens of poetry, it is long before the radiance of the brightest star can reach the world below.  We hear that one man finds out one beauty, another man finds out another, placing his observatory and instruments on the poet’s grave.  The worms must have eaten us before it is rightly known what we are.  It is only when we are skeletons that we are boxed and ticketed, and prized and shewn.  Be it so!  I shall not be tired of waiting.’”

“Reasonable youth!” said Sir Thomas; “yet both he and Glaston walk rather A-straddle, methinks.  They might have stepped up to thee more straightforwardly, and told thee the trade ill suiteth thee, having little fire, little fantasy, and little learning.  Furthermore, that one poet, as one bull, sufficeth for two parishes, and that where they are stuck too close together they are apt to fire, like haystacks.  I have known it myself; I have had my malignants and scoffers.”

William Shakspeare.

“I never could have thought it!”

Sir Thomas.

“There again!  Another proof of thy inexperience.”

William Shakspeare.

“Mat Atterend!  Mat Atterend! where wert thou sleeping?”

Sir Thomas.

“I shall now from my own stores impart unto thee what will avail to tame thee, shewing the utter hopelessness of standing on that golden weathercock which supporteth but one at a time.

“The passion for poetry wherewith Monsieur Dubois would have inspired me, as he was bound to do, being paid beforehand, had cold water thrown upon it by that unlucky one, Sir Everard.  He ridiculed the idea of male and female rhymes, and the necessity of trying them as rigidly by the eye as by the ear,—­saying to Monsieur Dubois that the palate, in which the French excel all mortals, ought also to be consulted in their acceptance or rejection.  Monsieur Dubois told us that if we did not wish to be taught French verse, he would teach us English.  Sir Everard preferred the Greek; but Monsieur Dubois would not engage to teach the mysteries of that poetry in fewer than thirty lessons,—­having (since his misfortunes) forgotten the letters and some other necessaries.

“The first poem I ever wrote was in the character of a shepherd, to
Mistress Anne Nanfan, daughter of Squire Fulke Nanfan, of
Worcestershire, at that time on a visit to the worshipful family of
Compton at Long Compton.

“We were young creatures,—­I but twenty-four and seven months (for it was written on the 14th of May), and she well-nigh upon a twelve-month younger.  My own verses, the first, are neither here nor there; indeed, they were imbedded in solid prose, like lampreys and ram’s-horns {181a} in our limestone, and would be hard to get out whole.  What they are may be seen by her answer, all in verse:-

“’Faithful shepherd! dearest Tommy! 
I have received the letter from ye,
   And mightily delight therein. 
But mother, she says, “Nanny!  Nanny! 
How, being staid and prudent, can ye
   think of A man and not of sin?”