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CHAPTER V.

THE COLLEGE FELLOW.

ASTER LEE, I hasten to record the honour which so honourable and learned a gentleman doth my poor rude house of Barne-elms by appearing among us. We are but

sparing of our books and our knowledge, sir, after Trinitas and Corpus Christi, but we know how to value attainments in others, and we joy to learn each fresh question discussed in the Studentiumthe spiritual El Dorado, eh, Master Lee? though the Goth put a poor interpretation on books, and would leave them to the Greeks, crying 'Græcis hanc pestem relinquite, quæ dubium non est quin brevi omnem iis vigorem ereptura Martiosque spiritus exhaustura sit; ut ad arma tractanda plane inhabiles futuri sint.' You take me, Master Lee?' appealed the squire, addressing the poor scholar with much greater ceremony and respect than he had greeted Dick the courtier.

Master Lee answered sedately, that he was

beholden to Master Yorke, and that he prayed to be permitted to return with his own hand, and with his duty for the same, Master Yorke's Chronica Hollandiæ, lent to him on the occasion of their meeting at the house of their worshipful friend, Dr. Sandys.'

That was the age of book-lending. Contemporary diaries prove how much men were indebted to their neighbours' libraries, how weighty was the trust involved in a rare volume, and how a philosopher could chronicle as a notable horror :- 2nd August, my terrible dream that Master Kelly wold by force bereave me of my bokes, toward daybreak.'

Master Lee was grave as any doctor, and although he made a suitable reverence to Master Yorke's daughters, he scarcely looked at them; yet Cambridge and its Halls had heard of their family beauty.

Master Yorke was intent upon doing the honours of his country-house with all his ability to his brother scholar, holding in his unworldly wisdom— as uncommon and as fine a feature then, as after the creation of Don Quixote, and as in the generation which has made much of Tom Newcomethat a poor man of high intellect and extensive erudition deserved the utmost service and homage that he could bestow, and paid him a compliment by consenting to receive his tribute. Albeit Master Lee was no swiller or drinker, Master Yorke would

call loudly for his best Malmsey, and filling his tallest glasses, press it on his guest, temperate as himself, yea, as those foreign printers and writers with whom Master Yorke had herded abroad, and on whose spare habits and deep researches he ever insisted fondly, while he questioned him with gusto of the last doings at the University-whether he had tested the elixir of salts, what new piece Henslowe had issued in London, and wherein the doctors at home had agreed in their dispute on hexameters.

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Lee satisfied him in his direct fashion and at large, that there was little doing in letters; men were mad on those adventures in the other world, would sooner be buccaneers than bookmen-or else they sought court favour, would rather tilt in armour than read in a gown for a prize; the infection was felt at the colleges, although tournaments were forbidden within five miles; then there was the Irish business taking the public mind. The most promising affair that had occurred at the schools very lately, and it fell out at Oxford, was but a contest betwixt a couple of lads-to wit, a public disputation carried on with much spirit by one Master Philip Sidney and another Master Richard Carew, a gentleman commoner of Christchurch, only fourteen years old, and yet of three years' standing, before my Lords Warwick and Leicester, the two uncles of the first, and in which both the speakers argued most fairly. It was good to distinguish rising merit, and recognise

the world's interest in the same.

Certes, youths

were soon men in this generation; he had knowledge of my Lord Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex's son, being about to take his degree of Master of Arts, and he but sixteen. By reason of the tricks of the Franciscan friars, surprising children into their order,' and into the colleges, the Chancellor and University had long ago made an order, never very attentively observed, that none should be taken upon the books under eighteen years of age. Now-a-days the only use of this prohibition was to fright scholars of small stature with the peculiar tradition that 'none are to commence who are not higher than the beadle's staff,' and whatever they made a moan of in his memory, they could not complain of any want of precocity.

Master Yorke stroked his beard, and said he was happy to hear of these young clerks, and finished without a particle of satire, that he doubted not their high rank had as little as possible to do with their youthful credit, and he hoped their parts would shine out in their future lives, and render the reign of Elizabeth glorious. Then the two talked of the new college, and whether worthy Dr. Caius were a papist, or no; and of Master Cartwright's late sermons, and the scholars' renunciation of the surplices; and next, as neither was over fond of polemics, but much preferred pure learning, Master Yorke craved Master Lee's opinion of those 'spiritual creatures, and fire all in a flame,' of whose appear

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ance in certain chambers at midnight many had notice; and had the young man experimented in horoscopes, or formed any conclusion on the laws of judicial astrology; was he clearly avised how far the presence of certain planets, in certain houses and under special signs, indicated humours and conditions of body and mind, and fortunate and malignant occurrents, and whether by their beams, or some impalpable vapour, they affected, moulded, and controlled the will-a doctrine which, when driven to an extreme, some maintained a most desperate and blasphemous tampering with the text of Holy Scripture.

To all these searching and overpowering demands on his information and reflection, Master Lee responded simply and a little coldly, as if he suspected a witch-finder's pincers and boring-awl at his elbow, while he was as well convinced that learned Master Yorke was devoid of wicked intent, as the people in the north believed that the dove was without the gall. But all the same, the 'spiritual creatures,' haunting weak minds, or evoked by strong ones, conveyed so little valuable truth of this wonderful world and its philosophy, that Master Lee cared not for them. If the stars, those dim intelligences, had yielded the secret of their elements and their courses, in place of interpreting the paltry and passing accidents affecting private and mean men, he would have thought it much more to the purpose, and within the cycle of their age and dignity.