AN AUDACIOUS CRITICISM.

In the case of crime, every person who is concerned in its detection looks very properly to motive: the law, indeed, in its award of punishment, disregards it, but then, as a famous authority (and himself in authority), namely, Mr. Bumble, observes, ‘the law is a hass.’ Where mankind falls into error is in looking for motive in all cases, whether criminal or otherwise. A very large number of persons are actuated by causes for which motive is far too serious a term. They are often moved by sudden impulse, nay, even by whim or caprice, to take very important steps. When interrogated, after the mischief has been done, as to why they did this or that, they reply, ‘I don’t know,’ and are discredited. Yet, as a matter of fact, the motive was so slight, or rather so momentary (for it was probably strong enough while it lasted), that they have really forgotten all about it.

William Henry Erin, of whose character the world subsequently took a very different and erroneous view, was essentially a man of impulse. He had attributes, it is true, of another and even of an antagonistic kind. He was very punctual and diligent in his habits, he was neat and exact in his professional work; though a poet, his views of life, or at all events of his own position in it, were practical enough, yet he was impatient, passionate, and impulsive. His proposition to Margaret Slade had been made with such stress and energy that it was no wonder (albeit she knew his character better than most people) that she thought it founded upon some scheme for the future already formed in his own mind. Of its genuineness there could be no shadow of doubt, but she also took it for granted that he had some ground for expectation, which, at all events to his own mind, seemed solid, that within the space of time he had mentioned, something would occur to place him in a better social position. Her impression, or rather her apprehension (for she did not much believe in his literary talents—a circumstance, by-the-bye, which showed that she was by no means over head and ears in love with him), was that he trusted to the publication of his poems to place him on the road to prosperity; his use of the words ‘fame and fortune’ certainly seemed to point to that direction, and what other road was there open to him?

Whereas, as a matter of fact, there was not even that poor halfpennyworth of substratum for his hopes. Circumstances—the finding himself alone with her he loved on Shakespeare’s courting-seat—had, of course, been the immediate cause of his amazing appeal, but they were also the chief cause. The knowledge that Frank Dennis was of the party and could gain her ear at any moment, with the certainty of Mr. Erin’s advocacy to back him, had, moreover, made the young man madly jealous. To secure his beloved Margaret, even for a little while, from so dreaded a rival, was something gained; and then there was the chapter of accidents. We know not what a day may bring forth, how much less what may happen within six months! William Henry was but a boy, yet how many a grown man trusts to such contingencies! In the city, ‘twenty-four hours to turn about in’ is often considered time enough for a total change of fortune. It might be added that, unless Margaret should turn traitress and reveal his secret (which was impossible), he had nothing to lose and everything to gain by his delay; but, to do the young man justice, that idea had not entered into his mind. Passion with the bit between her teeth had run away with him.

As to precocity, it must be remembered that he lived in reckless days, when men did not wait as they do now till they were five-and-forty years of age to marry; by that time, with enterprise and luck, many a gentleman was in the enjoyment of his third, or even his fourth honeymoon.

Still, William Henry was not unconscious that he had taken an audacious step, and felt a genuine sense of relief on finding that Mr. Samuel Erin had provided himself in that armchair with a relic and not a weapon.

This invaluable acquisition—which, when it was brought to London, was placed on a little elevation made on purpose for it in his study, with a brass plate at its foot (after the manner of chairs in our Madam Tussaud’s) with the words ‘Anne Hathaway’s Chair’ upon it—had the effect of putting its possessor into good humour for the remainder of his stay at Stratford, a circumstance which had the happiest results for those about him. William Henry, for his part, was in the seventh heaven. It is not only our virtues which have the power of bestowing happiness upon us—at all events, for a season. Shakespeare himself makes a striking observation on that matter in one of his sonnets; having spoken plainly enough of certain errors, gallantries of which he has repented, he adds, with an altogether unexpected frankness,—

But, by all above,

These blenches gave my heart another youth.

He does not put his tongue in his cheek at morality, far from it; but he rolls the sweet morsel, the remembrance of forbidden pleasure, under his tongue. It is one of the mistakes that our divines fall into to deny to our little peccadilloes any pleasure at all, whereas the fact is that the blossom of them is often very fair and fragrant, though the fruit is full of ashes, and, like the goodly apple, rotten at the core.

And thus it was with William Henry, who, without, indeed, having committed any great enormity, had certainly not been justified in obtaining the loan of his cousin’s love; the consciousness of his temporary possession of it made a very happy man of him for a season. He made no ungenerous use of his advantage, he did not take an ell because he had gained an inch; but he hugged himself in that new-found sense of security as one basks in the summer sunshine. Those days at Stratford were the happiest days of his life. Considering the means by which they were obtained, one can hardly apply to them the usual phrase ‘a foretaste of heaven;’ but they were happy days snatched from a life which was fated to hold few such. It was, perhaps, out of gratitude to him whose memory had helped him to this happiness, that the young man really began to take an interest in Shakespearean matters; and this again reacted to his advantage, since it gratified Mr. Erin, whose good-will, difficult to gain by other means, was approached by that channel with extraordinary facility.

In association with Mr. Jervis the young man ransacked the little town for mementoes of its patron saint, and was fortunate enough to discover a few, which, though of doubtful authenticity, were very welcome to the enthusiastic collector. If they were not the rose, i.e. actual relics, they were near the rose, as proximity is counted in such cases. No doubt it is the same with more sacred relics—in a deficiency of toe-nails of any particular saint it must be something, though not of course so rapturous, to secure a toe-nail of some saint in the next century. As regards Shakespeare, it is certainly one of the marvels in connection with that marvellous man that not a scrap of the handwriting, save his autograph, of one who wrote so much ever turns up to reward the pains of the searcher; nay, there is only one letter extant, even of those that were written to him—a commonplace request for a loan from the man who afterwards became his son-in-law; under which circumstances, when one comes to think about it, there may be some excuse for the language used by Mr. Samuel Erin to that reckless incendiary, Mr. Williams, of Clopton House.

If to be indifferent, as William Henry had been suspected of being, to the charms of Shakespeare was a crime in Mr. Erin’s eyes, it may be easily imagined how he resented the least imputation of any portion of his idol having been composed of clay. There were circumstances connected with his union with Anne Hathaway, and also with that little adventure of his with Justice Shallow’s deer, which were dangerous to allude to in Mr. Erin’s presence; and if the moral qualities of his hero (albeit, we may have gathered, Mr. Erin was himself, though Protestant, by no means Puritan) could not in safety be called in question, any suggestion of weakness in him as a writer was still more unendurable. Nevertheless, even prudent Frank Dennis contrived to put his foot in it in this very matter, and thereby narrowly escaped falling out of Mr. Erin’s good graces for the term of his natural life. It was during an expedition to Charlecote; the little party, having left their vehicle at the gate, were walking through the park, Mr. Erin wrapped in contemplation—endeavouring perhaps to identify the very oak (in ‘As You Like It’) where the poor sequestered stag had ‘come to languish’—while the young people a few paces behind were indulging in a little quiet banter upon the forbidden subject of deer-stealing.

‘I suppose that he did steal that deer?’ observed Margaret slily in a hushed whisper.

‘There is no doubt of it,’ answered Frank; ‘he had to fly from Stratford to London for that very reason, to get out of Sir Thomas’s way.’

‘Nay, nay,’ put in William Henry, I am afraid with some slight imitation of his father’s solemn manner when dealing with the sacred topic; ‘let us not say steal, it was what “the wise do call convey.” We do a good deal of it in New Inn ourselves.’

‘Yonder are our “velvet friends,”’ said Mr. Erin, pointing to a herd of deer in the distance.

The allusion caused some trepidation in his companions, as chiming in only too opportunely with their late disloyal remarks; and it was much to their relief that Mr. Erin proceeded, as was his wont, to indulge himself in quotation.

‘And indeed, my lord,

The wretched animal heaved forth such groans
That their discharge did stretch his leather coat
Almost to bursting; and the big round tears
Coursed one another down his innocent nose
In piteous chase.’

‘What a graphic picture! “His innocent nose.” Who but Shakespeare would have dared to write “his innocent nose?”’

‘Very true, sir,’ said William Henry gravely. ‘“His innocent nose.”’

Not a muscle of his face betrayed the drollery within him. He certainly possessed some tricks of the actor’s trade. Margaret stooped to pluck a daisy, an action which sufficed to account for the colour rushing to her cheeks. Frank Dennis, whose wits were not of the nimble sort fitted for such sudden emergency, felt he was about to suffocate. It seemed to him he had no alternative between speech—the act of saying something, no matter what—and an explosion.

‘With regard to deer shedding tears,’ he observed, ‘I have a friend who is a great naturalist, who tells me, as a matter of fact, that they can’t do it.’

‘Can’t do what?’ inquired Mr. Erin curtly.

‘He says that from the peculiar formation of the ducts of the deer, or perhaps from the absence of them—— I know nothing about the matter myself, sir,’ put in the unhappy Frank precipitately, for the antiquary was looking daggers at him.

‘You know quite as much about it as your friend then,’ thundered Mr. Erin. ‘Great heavens! that a man like him, or you, or anybody, should venture to pick a hole in one of the noblest descriptions of the language: to find faults in Shakespeare himself! You remind me, sir, of the sacrilegious fellow in France, the other day, who gave it as his opinion that if he had been present at the Creation, he could have suggested improvements.’

‘But indeed, sir, it was not my opinion.’

‘It is quite as bad to quote those of infamous persons as to originate them yourself.’

Mr. Frank Dennis had very little of the serpent in him, not even its prudence; his sense of justice was shocked by this outrageous speech.

‘But it is a mere question of fact and science—— ‘

‘Science,’ interrupted the other vehemently, ‘that is the argument of the Atheist against the Scriptures. Science, indeed! what is science when compared with the genius of Shakespeare? He told you, sir, that deer shed tears, and if they don’t, why—damn their eyes—they ought to!’

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The argument was, at least, conclusive; nothing more remained to be said, or was said. Mr. Erin stalked on like a turkey-cock ruffled; his idol had been insulted, and he felt that he had done well to be angry. Every deer he saw stimulated his wrath. ‘Confound the fellow!’ he murmured as he passed the antlered herd, ‘it would serve him right if they tossed him.’ It even crossed his mind perhaps that Margaret was right after all in receiving Dennis’s attentions so coldly; that he was certainly a very pig-headed young man.

Frank Dennis, too, good-natured as he was, was not a little put out. For the moment he felt almost as disrespectful towards Shakespeare as Sydney Smith’s friend was to the Equator; but his eye fell on Margaret, and he put a bridle on his tongue.

His sense of annoyance soon faded away, but with the antiquary it was not so easily effaced. This incident was of considerable advantage to William Henry and his little plan. In a company of three, when one of them has fallen out of our favour, one naturally rather ‘cottons’ to the other, if it is only to show the offender what he has forfeited by his misconduct; and from thenceforward Mr. Erin showed himself at least less severe towards the young man who bore his name. Nay, what was of more consequence, the symptoms he had exhibited of favouring Frank Dennis’s pretensions to his niece’s hand manifestly slackened; he no longer troubled himself to throw the young people together. On the other hand, though of course with no idea that there was risk in it (for he both despised him and ‘despised his youth’), he suffered William Henry and Margaret to ‘foregather’ as much as they pleased. He still felt so resentful to Frank’s sacrilegious ideas as respected the customs of deer when under emotion, that it was distasteful to him to be shut up with him as a companion; and in order to mitigate his society he took an inside place for William Henry (notwithstanding that, except in the matter of MSS. and first editions, he had a frugal mind) in the coach to town.