Lavengro: The Scholar, the Gypsy, the PriestBorrow, George
General
Lavengro: The Scholar, the Gypsy, the Priest
Borrow, George
England -- Fiction; Romanies -- Fiction
Peace to your memories dignified rector and yet more dignified clerk! by
this time ye are probably gone to your long homes, and your voices are no
longer heard sounding down the aisles of the venerable church; nay,
doubtless, this has already long since been the fate of him of the
sonorous "Amen!"--the one of the two who, with all due respect to the
rector, principally engrossed my boyish admiration--he, at least, is
scarcely now among the living! Living! why, I have heard say that he
blew a fife--for he was a musical as well as a Christian professor--a
bold fife, to cheer the Guards and the brave Marines as they marched with
measured step, obeying an insane command, up Bunker's height, whilst the
rifles of the sturdy Yankees were sending the leaden hail sharp and thick
amidst the red-coated ranks; for Philoh had not always been a man of
peace, nor an exhorter to turn the other cheek to the smiter, but had
even arrived at the dignity of a halberd in his country's service before
his six-foot form required rest, and the grey-haired veteran retired,
after a long peregrination, to his native town, to enjoy ease and
respectability on a pension of "eighteen-pence a day"; and well did his
fellow-townsmen act when, to increase that ease and respectability, and
with a thoughtful regard for the dignity of the good church service, they
made him clerk and precentor--the man of the tall form and of the audible
voice, which sounded loud and clear as his own Bunker fife. Well, peace
to thee, thou fine old chap, despiser of dissenters, and hater of
papists, as became a dignified and high-church clerk; if thou art in thy
grave the better for thee; thou wert fitted to adore a bygone time, when
loyalty was in vogue, and smiling content lay like a sunbeam upon the
land, but thou wouldst be sadly out of place in these days of cold
philosophic latitudinarian doctrine, universal tolerism, and
half-concealed rebellion--rare times, no doubt, for papists and
dissenters, but which would assuredly have broken the heart of the loyal
soldier of George the Third, and the dignified high-church clerk of
pretty D---.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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