KENILWORTH. CHAPTER I. Ay, I know you have arsenick, Vitriol, sal-tartre, argaile, alkaly, Cinoper: I know all. This fellow, Captain, The Alchemist. TRESSILIAN and his attendants pressed their route with all dispatch. He had asked the smith, indeed, when their departure was resolved on, whether he would not rather chuse to avoid Berkshire, in which he had played a part so conspicuous. But Wayland returned a confident answer. He had employed the short interval they passed at Lidcote Hall in transforming himself in a wonderful manner. His wild and overgrown thicket of beard was now restrained to two small moustachios on the upper lip, turned up in a military fashion. A tailor from the village of Lidcote (wel. paid) had exerted his skill, under his customer's directions, so as completely to alter Wayland's outward man, and take off from his appearance almost twenty years of age. Formerly, besmearsed with soot and charcoal-overgrown with hair, and bent double with the nature of his labour disfigured too by his odd and fantastic dress, he Iseemed a man of fifty years old. But now, in a handsome suit of Tressilian's livery, with a sword -by his side, and a buckler on his shoulder, he looked like a gay ruffling serving-man, whose age might be betwixt thirty and thirty-five, the very ~ prime of human life! His loutish savage-looking demeanour seemed equally changed, into a forwardy sharp, and impudent alertness of look and action. * When challenged by Tressilian, who desired to know the cause of a metamorphosis so singular and so absolute, Wayland only answered by singing a stave from a comedy, which was then new, and was supposed, among the more favour -able judges, to augur some genius on the part of the author. We are happy to preserve the couplet, which ran exactly thus,ofist A. „noudest momotaro ein visar bag if hotrozo bed (bing "Ban, ban, ca Caliban #RO (encingub' Get a new master-Be a new man." 90676xqq£ 21 igoil for; nom brexige Although Tressilian did not recollect the verses, yet they reminded him that Wayland had once been a stage-player, a circumstance which, of itself, accounted indifferently well for the readiness Bwith which he could assume so total a change of personal appearance. The artist himself was so confident of his disguise being completely changed, or of his having completely changed his disguise, which may be the more correct mode of speaking, that he regretted they were not to pass near his old place of retreat. **! -, v@་ཟླ#rc)}y bus❝I could venture," he said, " in my present dress, and with your worship's backing, to face bMaster Justice Blindas, even on a day of Quar-ter Sessions; and I would like to know what is › become of Hobgoblin, who is like to play the devil in the world, if he can once slip the string, and leave his grannie and his Dominie.-Ay, and the scathed vault!" he said, "I would willingly have seen what havoc the explosion of so much gunpowder has made among Doctor Demetrius Doboobie's retorts and phials. I warrant me, my fame haunts the Vale of the White Horse long after my body is rotten; and that many a lout ties up his horse, lays down his silver groat, and pipes like a sailor whistling in a calm, for Wayland Smith to come and shoe his tit for him. But the horse will catch the founders ere I answer the call. In this particular, indeed, Wayland proved a true prophet; and so easily do fables rise, that an obscure tradition of his extraordinary practice in farriery prevails in the Vale of White Horse even unto this day;* and neither the tradition of Alfred's Victory, nor of the celebrated Pusey Horn, are better preserved in Berkshire than the wild legend of Wayland Smith. bThe haste of the travellers admitted their making no stay upon their journey, save what the refreshment of the horses required; and as many Mãĵo cảnⱭ odi asw on Jolt See Camden's Britannia.-GOUGH's Edition, vol. I. essing tails p. 221. |