Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley (christmas read aloud .txt) 📕

“Ancients, quotha? Why, the legend of King Arthur, and Chevy Chase too, of which even your fellow-sinner Sidney cannot deny that every time he hears it even from a blind fiddler it stirs his heart like a trumpet-blast. Speak well of the bridge that carries you over, man! Did you find your Redcross Knight in Virgil, or such a dame as Una in old Ovid? No more than you did your Pater and Credo, you renegado baptized heathen, you!”

“Yet, surely, our younger and more barbarous taste must bow before divine antiquity, and imitate afar—”

“As dottrels do fowlers. If Homer was blind, lad, why dost not poke out thine eye? Ay, this hexameter is of an ancient house, truly, Ned Spenser, and so is many a rogue: but he cannot make way on our rough English roads. He goes hopping and twitching in our language like a three-legged terrier over a pebble-bank, tumble and up again, rattle and crash.”

“Nay, hear, now—

‘See ye the blindfolded pretty god that feathered archer, Of lovers’ miseries which maketh his bloody game?’*

True, the accent gapes in places, as I have often confessed to Harvey, but—”

* Strange as it may seem, this distich is Spenser’s own; and the other hexameters are all authentic.

Harvey be hanged for a pedant, and the whole crew of versifiers, from Lord Dorset (but he, poor man, has been past hanging some time since) to yourself! Why delude you into playing Procrustes as he does with the queen’s English, racking one word till its joints be pulled asunder, and squeezing the next all a-heap as the Inquisitors do heretics in their banca cava? Out upon him and you, and Sidney, and the whole kin. You have not made a verse among you, and never will, which is not as lame a gosling as Harvey’s own—

‘Oh thou weathercocke, that stands on the top of Allhallows, Come thy ways down, if thou dar’st for thy crown, and take the wall on us.’

Hark, now! There is our young giant comforting his soul with a ballad. You will hear rhyme and reason together here, now. He will not miscall ‘blindfolded,’ ‘blindfold-ed, I warrant; or make an ‘of’ and a ‘which’ and a ‘his’ carry a whole verse on their wretched little backs.”

And as he spoke, Amyas, who had been grumbling to himself some Christmas carol, broke out full-mouthed:—

“As Joseph was a-walking He heard an angel sing— ‘This night shall be the birth night Of Christ, our heavenly King.

His birthbed shall be neither In housen nor in hall, Nor in the place of paradise, But in the oxen’s stall.

He neither shall be rocked In silver nor in gold, But in the wooden manger That lieth on the mould.

He neither shall be washen With white wine nor with red, But with the fair spring water That on you shall be shed.

He neither shall be clothed In purple nor in pall, But in the fair white linen That usen babies all.’

As Joseph was a-walking Thus did the angel sing, And Mary’s Son at midnight Was born to be our King.

Then be you glad, good people, At this time of the year; And light you up your candles, For His star it shineth clear.”

“There, Edmunde Classicaster,” said Raleigh, “does not that simple strain go nearer to the heart of him who wrote ‘The Shepherd’s Calendar,’ than all artificial and outlandish

‘Wote ye why his mother with a veil hath covered his face?’

Why dost not answer, man?”

But Spenser was silent awhile, and then,—

“Because I was thinking rather of the rhymer than the rhyme. Good heaven! how that brave lad shames me, singing here the hymns which his mother taught him, before the very muzzles of Spanish guns; instead of bewailing unmanly, as I have done, the love which he held, I doubt not, as dear as I did even my Rosalind. This is his welcome to the winter’s storm; while I, who dream, forsooth, of heavenly inspiration, can but see therein an image of mine own cowardly despair.

‘Thou barren ground, whom winter’s wrath has wasted, Art made a mirror to behold my plight.’*

Pah! away with frosts, icicles, and tears, and sighs—”

* “The Shepherd’s Calendar.”

“And with hexameters and trimeters too, I hope,” interrupted Raleigh: “and all the trickeries of self-pleasing sorrow.”

“—I will set my heart to higher work than barking at the hand which chastens me.”

“Wilt put the lad into the ‘Faerie Queene,’ then, by my side? He deserves as good a place there, believe me, as ever a Guyon, or even as Lord Grey your Arthegall. Let us hail him. Hallo! young chanticleer of Devon! Art not afraid of a chance shot, that thou crowest so lustily upon thine own mixen?”

“Cocks crow all night long at Christmas, Captain Raleigh, and so do I,” said Amyas’s cheerful voice; “but who’s there with you?”

“A penitent pupil of yours—Mr. Secretary Spenser.”

“Pupil of mine?” said Amyas. “I wish he’d teach me a little of his art; I could fill up my time here with making verses.”

“And who would be your theme, fair sir?” said Spenser.

“No ‘who’ at all. I don’t want to make sonnets to blue eyes, nor black either: but if I could put down some of the things I saw in the Spice Islands—”

“Ah,” said Raleigh, “he would beat you out of Parnassus, Mr. Secretary. Remember, you may write about Fairyland, but he has seen it.”

“And so have others,” said Spenser; “it is not so far off from any one of us. Wherever is love and loyalty, great purposes, and lofty souls, even though in a hovel or a mine, there is Fairyland.”

“Then Fairyland should be here, friend; for you represent love, and Leigh loyalty; while, as for great purposes and lofty souls, who so fit to stand for them as I, being (unless my enemies and my conscience are liars both) as ambitious and as proud as Lucifer’s own self?”

“Ah, Walter, Walter, why wilt always slander thyself thus?”

“Slander? Tut.—I do but give the world a fair challenge, and tell it, ‘There—you know the worst of me: come on and try a fall, for either you or I must down.’ Slander? Ask Leigh here, who has but known me a fortnight, whether I am not as vain as a peacock, as selfish as a fox, as imperious as a bona roba, and ready to make a cat’s paw of him or any man, if there be a chestnut in the fire: and yet the poor fool cannot help loving me, and running of my errands, and taking all my schemes and my dreams for gospel; and verily believes now, I think, that I shall be the man in the moon some day, and he my big dog.”

“Well,” said Amyas, half apologetically, “if you are the cleverest man in the world what harm in my thinking so?”

“Hearken to him, Edmund! He will know better when he has outgrown this same callow trick of honesty, and learnt of the great goddess Detraction how to show himself wiser than the wise, by pointing out to the world the fool’s motley which peeps through the rents in the philosopher’s cloak. Go to, lad! slander thy equals, envy thy betters, pray for an eye which sees spots in every sun, and for a vulture’s nose to scent carrion in every rosebed. If thy friend win a battle, show that he has needlessly thrown away his men; if he lose one, hint that he sold it; if he rise to a place, argue favor; if he fall from one, argue divine justice. Believe nothing, hope nothing, but endure all things, even to kicking, if aught may be got thereby; so shalt thou be clothed in purple and fine linen, and sit in kings’ palaces, and fare sumptuously every day.”

“And wake with Dives in the torment,” said Amyas. “Thank you for nothing, captain.”

“Go to, Misanthropos,” said Spenser. “Thou hast not yet tasted the sweets of this world’s comfits, and thou railest at them?”

“The grapes are sour, lad.”

“And will be to the end,” said Amyas, “if they come off such a devil’s tree as that. I really think you are out of your mind, Captain Raleigh, at times.”

“I wish I were; for it is a troublesome, hungry, windy mind as man ever was cursed withal. But come in, lad. We were sent from the lord deputy to bid thee to supper. There is a dainty lump of dead horse waiting for thee.”

“Send me some out, then,” said matter-of-fact Amyas. “And tell his lordship that, with his good leave, I don’t stir from here till morning, if I can keep awake. There is a stir in the fort, and I expect them out on us.”

“Tut, man! their hearts are broken. We know it by their deserters.”

“Seeing’s believing. I never trust runaway rogues. If they are false to their masters, they’ll be false to us.”

“Well, go thy ways, old honesty; and Mr. Secretary shall give you a book to yourself in the ‘Faerie Queene’—‘Sir Monoculus or the Legend of Common Sense,’ eh, Edmund?”

“Monoculus?”

“Ay, Single-eye, my prince of word-coiners—won’t that fit?—And give him the Cyclops head for a device. Heigh-ho! They may laugh that win. I am sick of this Irish work; were it not for the chance of advancement I’d sooner be driving a team of red Devons on Dartside; and now I am angry with the dear lad because he is not sick of it too. What a plague business has he to be paddling up and down, contentedly doing his duty, like any city watchman? It is an insult to the mighty aspirations of our nobler hearts,—eh, my would-be Ariosto?”

“Ah, Raleigh! you can afford to confess yourself less than some, for you are greater than all. Go on and conquer, noble heart! But as for me, I sow the wind, and I suppose I shall reap the whirlwind.”

“Your harvest seems come already; what a blast that was! Hold on by me, Colin Clout, and I’ll hold on by thee. So! Don’t tread on that pikeman’s stomach, lest he take thee for a marauding Don, and with sudden dagger slit Cohn’s pipe, and Colin’s weasand too.”

And the two stumbled away into the darkness, leaving Amyas to stride up and down as before, puzzling his brains over Raleigh’s wild words and Spenser’s melancholy, till he came to the conclusion that there was some mysterious connection between cleverness and unhappiness, and thanking his stars that he was neither scholar, courtier, nor poet, said grace over his lump of horseflesh when it arrived, devoured it as if it had been venison, and then returned to his pacing up and down; but this time in silence, for the night was drawing on, and there was no need to tell the Spaniards that any one was awake and watching.

So he began to think about his mother, and how she might be spending her Christmas; and then about Frank, and wondered at what grand Court festival he was assisting, amid bright lights and sweet music and gay ladies, and how he was dressed, and whether he thought of his brother there far away on the dark Atlantic shore; and then he said his prayers and his creed; and then he tried not to think of Rose Salterne, and of course thought about her all the more. So on passed the dull hours, till it might be past eleven o’clock, and all lights were out in the battery and the shipping, and there was no sound of living thing but the monotonous tramp of the two sentinels beside him, and now and then a grunt from the party