Habits and men, with remnants of record touching the makers of bothDoran, Dr. (John)
Philosophy
Habits and men, with remnants of record touching the makers of both
Doran, Dr. (John)
Manners and customs
Just twenty years later another volume was printed with nearly a
similar title. The alleged object was to give a biography of the
renowned tailor and soldier, Sir John Hawkwood; and for this reason we
will give the later work priority of notice. There will be amusement,
if not instruction, in remarking how exquisitely our ancestors wrote
biographical works in the days of dark King James.
This black-letter biography describes Hawkwood as a modest tailor lad who
fell honestly in love with his master’s daughter, Dorinda. But Dorinda
had a soul above buttons, and having given up her heart unasked to
Impolite, a young, foolish heir, she cut the thread of Hawkwood’s desire
with the shears of cruelty, and tore away from his protestations in a
heat that even the paternal goose had never known.
Hawkwood, for a gallant man, committed an ungallant action; he discovered
the lover of Dorinda by reading the correspondence locked up in the
lady’s cabinet, and he avenged himself by writing a note in the lady’s
name which brought poor Impolite to a meeting, whereat he was seized and
led to a madhouse as incurably insane through the sweet passion of love.
The victim was subjected to a treatment which would undoubtedly have
rendered a sane man mad, but he prattled so respectfully of medicines to
the doctor, that the latter dismissed him as “cured.” In the meantime
Dorinda refused to ratify her bond with a discharged lunatic; and the
uncle of Impolite, a sort of melodramatic Gaspero, hired two ruffians,
Bragwell and Daniel, to mutilate Hawkwood, as a punishment for his
having been the cause of the breaking off of the match.
These gentlemen fell upon the bold young tailor as, “ever frolic and
gay,” he was returning from Green-Goose Fair, held at Bow, on St.
Wilielmus’s day, “so much honoured by the tailors as their patron.” But
the ruffians found a Tartar, and Hawkwood incontinently slew both. The
gallant apprentice, having slept upon the matter, resolved to go abroad,
in order to avoid unpleasant inquiries; and having composed a score of
execrable verses to his mistress, wherein he committed worse murder upon
the Muses than before upon the ruffians, and having thrust the same under
the bedroom-door of the cruel Dorinda, he went his solitary way with a
heavy heart and a small bundle under his arm.
Winstanley, the author of this delectable bit of historical romance,
exhibits a merry trait of originality by suddenly announcing that the
murdered ruffians were, after all, like our friend Mr. John Robinson in
the song, “not dead at all;” and delicately does he narrate how those
respectable individuals, by coming to themselves, found that they were in
the very worst possible society. Forthwith they slew a sheep, and having
cut out the heart thereof, they exhibited the same to Gaspero, as the
heart of the valiant tailor, and received from their employer not only
their wages of sin, but an invitation to stay and dine and spend the
night at his house.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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