 | Life and sayings of Mrs. Partington and others
of the family |  |
108
MATTER OF FACT.
“Shakspeare's well enough,” said Mr. Slow, “but
he don't come up to my idee of po'try. There is too
much of your hifalutin humbug about him. What he
says don't seem to 'mount to nothing. As for Falstaff,
he's a miser'ble and disreputable old fellow, and Hamlick's
as mad as a bed-bug. Why did n't he knock his old
father-in-law over, and done with it, and not make sich a
hillibolu about it? Shakspeare is n't what he is cracked
up to be, and if he does n't improve, I would n't give two
per cent. for his chance of immortality. Who b'leves
this 'ere, for instance?
`Orpheus' lute was strung with poets' sinews,
Whose golden touch could soften steel and stones,
Make tigers tame, and huge levithians
Forsake unsounded deeps to dance on sand!'
Whose golden touch could soften steel and stones,
Make tigers tame, and huge levithians
Forsake unsounded deeps to dance on sand!'
't was n't nothin' but catgut; and as for its softening
steel and stones, and taming tigers, and making levithians
dance on the sand, that 'ere 's all bosh, and too ridic'lous
for any man to b'leve.”
Mr. Slow looked fearfully oracular as he said this, and
the subject was suspended.
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