Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/80

 him, and Launce substitutes his own vicious cur who behaves badly in Silvia's presence, and is whipped out. This is just what Proteus is doing in love. Launce's shift is the shabbiness of Proteus, and Silvia dismisses it as summarily as she disposed of Crab; for she is not "so shallow, so conceitless," as to trust such a born flirt as Proteus. Shakspeare certainly has not left a shred of sentiment hanging to the back of Proteus's meanness; for Launce, who is a kind of choragus of it, is furnished with the most vigorous vulgarity which the vernacular contains. Especially we see what a satirical dog Crab is.

"The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together; our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not: and our crimes would despair if they were not cherished by our virtues."

With that for our text, let us approach some characters of Shakspeare.

When the requisition of the English government for the surrender of Mason and Slidell in the Trent affair was made through Lord Lyons, Judge Hoar rode out to see an old Concord farmer whom he highly respected, to tell him the news, which he did with considerable excitement. The farmer listened coolly, and said, "Well, if those fellows are really going in for the rebels and slavery, you tell Lord Lyons he may have my copy of Shakspeare."

But I suspect that New England farmers are content to be patriotic without cultivating the poet's page.