And here I might end my legend, but that it has a moral in it Guy did a foolish but a common thing, he launched out into extravagant expenses, and, suddenly, he found himself sick, sad, and insolvent. Whether, therewith, his wife was soured, creditors troublesome, and bailiffs presuming, it is hard to say. One thing, however, is certain, that to save himself from all three, Earl Guy did what nobles often do now, in the same predicament, “went abroad.” Guy, however, travelled in primitive style. He went on foot, and made his inn o’nights in church-yards, where he colloquized with the skulls after the fashion of Hamlet with the skull of “poor Yorick.” He had given out that he was going to Jerusalem, but hearing that the Danes were besieging Athelstan at Winchester, he went thither, and, in modest disguise, routed them with his own unaided hand. Among his opponents, he met with the giant Colbron whom he had previously slain in Orient lands, and the two fought their battles o’er again, and with such exactly similar results as to remind one of the peculiar philosophy of Mr. Boatswain Cheeks. This appearance of Colbron in two places is a fine illustration of the “myth,” and I mention it expressly for the benefit of the next edition of the Right Reverend Doctor Whateley’s “Historical Fallacies.” But to resume. Guy, imparting a confidential statement of his identity and intentions to the King, left him, to take up his abode in a cave, in a cliff, near his residence; and at the gates of his own castle he received, in the guise of a mendicant, alms of money and bread, from the hands of his wife. I strongly suspect that the foundation of this section of our legend rests upon the probable fact that Phillis was of that quality which is said to belong to gray mares; and that she led Guy a life which made him a miserable Guy indeed; and that the poor henpecked man took to bad company abroad, and met with small allowance of everything but reproach at home And _so_ he “died.” A dramatic author of Charles I.’s reign, has, however, resuscitated him in “A Tragical History of Guy, Earl of Warwick,” enacted several times in presence of that monarch, and professedly written by a certain “B. J.,” whom I do not at all suspect of being Ben Jonson. The low comedy portion of this tragic drama is of the filthiest sort, dealing in phrases and figures which I can hardly conceive would now be tolerated in the lowest den of St. Giles’s, certainly not out of it. If Charles heard this given more than once, as the titlepage intimates, “more shame for him.” If his Queen was present, she haply may not have understood the _verba ad summam caveam spectantia_, and if a daughter could have been at the royal entertainment, why then the very idea revolts one, and pity is almost lost in indignation. That the author himself thought well of the piece, which he printed in 1661, is proved by the defiant epigraph which says:-- “Carpere vel noli nostra vel ede tua.”