Chips From Englisgh [!] Literature - Tapa blanda

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1881. Excerpt: ... His poetical essays on Mrs. Ford's eye emulating the diamond, on the right arched bent of her brow, on the firm fixture of her foot, are cruelly disturbed by the arrival of the despised cuckold so that the enterprising knight is obliged to force his gigantic mass into the linen basket. Twice more the poet makes him tumble into this blunt trape. After the whipping cheer he is not saved the public humilation nor the town and court gossip, nay he is not even suffered to keep the money won from Mr. Ford. He is upbraided with being old, cold and withered, of untolerable entrails, as poor as Job as wicked as Job's wife. Unmasked, overreached, mocked at by old and young, he raises in his despair both comic and woeful the last rocket of his humour against the Welsh goat by which he is ridden against the coxcomb of frize wherewith his humbled age is adorned. Then he surrenders at discretion and offers the key to his comfortles conduct as well as to the true Shakespearian idea of his part and in a certain sense perhaps of the whole piece by bursting out into the words: „I was three times on the point" &c. Indeed he was 3 or 4 times on the point of repentance, but in bad company even a saint is corrupted. He was innocent as the lamb before knowing Hal and now he is little better than one of the wicked. Thus he swears by the Lord to give over his life, turn true man, in a word to repent (and that as he adds) suddenly whilst being in some liking. Poor soul has misused the king's press damnably, has even forgotten what the inside of a church is made of, all for that company that villanous company. But what are good purposes, what favourable opportunities for bettering, when flesh is so overpowering as in the fat knight. In the state of innocence Adam fell, what s...