clouds. So you must give it to me written down; for supposing I can't read or write, I can give it to my confessor, and he may pack it into me, and remind me of it whenever I need it." “Ah, sinner that I am," answered Don Quixote, “what a sorry look it has in governors, not to be able to read and write! For you must know, Sancho, that for a man not to know how to read, or to be left-handed, argues one of two things; either that he was born of very low and vulgar parents, or else that he himself was so ill conditioned and perverse that he could neither be taught good manners nor good learning. This indeed is a great deficiency in you, and I wish you could at least learn to sign your name." "But I do know how to sign my name; for when I was head of a brotherhood in my village, I learned to make letters, such as they put on bundles, and this they said was my name; and besides, I will pretend that my right hand is lame, and make somebody else sign for me, for there is a remedy for every thing but death; and now I have the rule and the rod in my own hands, I will do as I like, for he whose father is a judge needn't be afraid of a trial; and since I am governor, which is more than being a judge, let them look to it. They may fight and backbite, but if they come for wool, they shall go back shorn. When Heaven means well with a man, all the house knows it, and a rich man's follies go for wisdom in this world; and as I am rich, being a governor, and generous too, as I mean to be, nobody will see any faults in me. Cover yourself with honey, and you will have plenty of flies. A man is worth just as much as he has got, my grandmother used to say, and you'll never be avenged of a man of substance." "Confound you and your proverbs!" said Don Quixote, interrupting him. "Here you have been stringing them together for an hour, and putting me to the torture with every one of them. These proverbs, I assure you, will some day bring you to the gallows. Your subjects will depose you, or at least rebel; and tell me, blockhead, where do you find such proverbs, or how in your stupidity you apply them; for I work as if I were digging to find only one, and apply it properly." "Why, 'fore Heaven, master mine," quoth Sancho, "your worship is offended with a very small matter this time. Nobody can be the worse for my using my own estate, and I have no other, nor any goods either, except proverbs, and more proverbs. Why, now this minute four have popped up to my lips, as pat to the purpose as pears to a pannier. But they shan't come out, not they; I'll be silent, and be called Gravity." "No you won't, Sancho," said Don Quixote; "you can't hold your tongue-you're always talking amiss and getting into scrapes. However, I should just like to know what these four mighty pat proverbs are, that you have thought of; for I have a good memory myself, and cannot remember a single one." Why, what better could there be?" said Sancho- "Never trust your thumb between another man's grinders; and when a man says, 'Get out of my house; what's my wife to you?' there is no answering that man; and whether the jug hits the stone, or the stone the jug, it's a bad thing for the jug. Now, all these fit like a glove. For no one should take it upon himself to be free with his governor, or with any body above him, for if he does he'll suffer for it; as he will who puts his finger between two grinders, and even if they ain't grinders, if they are double teeth, it's all the same. Then, again, there is no use in answering the governor, whatever he may say, any more than a man who says, 'Get out of my house; what's my wife to you?' And then as to the stone hitting the jug, a blind man can see through that. And so I say, he that spies a mote in his neighbor's eye had better look to the beam in his own, so that nobody may say, the dead body was frightened at the man without a head. Then, too, your wor ship won't deny that the fool knows more in his own house than a wise man does in a stranger's." "Yes I will, Sancho," replied Don Quixote, "for a fool knows nothing in his own house, nor in any body's else. No safe building of knowledge can rest on the foundations of folly. But let us say no more about the matter, Sancho; for, after all, if you govern badly, the fault will be yours, but the disgrace will be mine. However, I console myself with the thought that I have truly done my duty by you, and counselled you to the best of my judgment; and so I acquit myself of my obligation and promise. God guide you, Sancho, and govern you in your government, and relieve me from the scruple of conscience that sticks to me, that you will turn your whole island upside down a thing which I could prevent by explaining to the duke what you are, and telling him plainly that this little, round, fat body of yours is nothing but a sack full of proverbs and mischief." 66 Nay, sir," quoth Sancho, "if your worship does not think me the man for this government, I give it up at once; for I'm sure the paring of one of my soul's nails is dearer to me than my whole body. I hope I can live plain, dry Sancho, on bread and onions, as well as Governor Sancho on partridges and capons; for when we are asleep we are all alike, high and low, poor and rich. Then, if your worship will only recollect, you will remember that it was all your worship that put me upon this notion of a government, for I know no more about governing islands than a buzzard. And if it is really likely that the evil one will get me if I am a governor, why, there is an end of the matter; for I'd much rather be plain Sancho, and go to heaven, than be governor, and go to the other place." "Thank Heaven, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "your last words show, in my opinion, that you deserve to be governor of a thousand islands. You have a good heart, without which all the knowledge in the world is nothing worth. Commend yourself to God, hold fast your integrity, strive always- I mean with intent and firm effort to do the best you can, whatever happens; for Heaven always favors good purposes. And now let us to dinner, for their graces must be waiting for us." [GEORGE CRABBE was born at Aldborough, in the county of Suffolk, England, Decerber 24, 1754, and died February 8, 1832. He was a clergyman of the church of England. In early manhood he was rescued from poverty and despair, and his future fortunes secured, by the generous kindness of Edmund Burke. His poetical works, consisting of tales and sketches, in the heroic stanza, were published after his death, in eight small volumes; the first containing a well-written memoir by one of his sons. Crabbe was a writer of truly original genius. His poetry is remarkable for simplicity, energy, pathos, and stern truth. He describes men and manners as they are, and does not paint them in hues borrowed from the imagination. The sufferings, the temptations, and the virtues of the poor have found in him a faithful chronicler. His pictures are sometimes a little repulsive from their sharp and severe truth; since the very form of verse seems to require something of idealizing light. His poetry is less popular with the young than with those who have lived long enough to appreciate its fidelity to nature and its sad sincerity. This description of the ocean is from The Borough, a poem delineating the scenes and characters of a seaport town in England. As a literary exercise, it may be compared with Byron's well-known and magnificent stanzas, inspired by the same subject, at the close of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. It is hardly possible for two poetical pictures of the same object to be more unlike. Byron's is of "imagination all compact." His lines are a series of grand generalizations, and transcripts of the emotions which the sight of the ocean awakens in minds of poetical sensibility. Crabbe's verses are a minutely accurate daguerreotype of the actual scene, in which every thing is reproduced with perfect fidelity; but the poet himself seems to stand aside, and merely acts the part of one who explains the successive scenes of a panorama.] TURN to the watery world! but who to thee (A wonder yet unviewed) shall paint the sea? When lulled by zephyrs, or when roused by storms, And oft the foggy banks on ocean lie, Lift the fair sail,* and cheat th' experienced eye. Be it the summer noon; a sandy space Yet sometimes comes a ruffling cloud, to make As an awakened giant with a frown Might show his wrath, and then to sleep sink down. View now the winter storm! above, one cloud, All where the eye delights, yet dreads to roam, Upon the billows rising — all the deep Is restless change; the waves so swelled and steep, The effect of a bank of fog is to give to ships an apparent height greater than the real. |