The monastery; The abbot.

448 WAVERLEY NOVELS.
returned, mingling in every scene of the piece, and interrupting the business, without having, any share himself in the action, and ever and anot
transferring his gibes from the actors on the stage to the audience who sate
around, prompt to applaud the whole.
The wit of the piece, which was not of the most polished kind, was
chiefly directed against the superstitious practices of the Catholic religion;
and the stage artillery had on this occasion been levelled by no less a person than Doctor Lundin, who had not only commanded the manager of the
entertainment to select one of the numerous satires which had been written
against the Papists, (several of which were cast in a dramatic form,) but
had even, like the Prince of Denmark, caused them to insert, or according
to his own phrase, to infuse here and there, a few pleasantries of his own
penning, on the same inexhaustible subject, hoping thereby to mollify the
rigour of the Lady of Lochleven towards pastimes of this description. He
failed not to jog Roland's elbow, who was sitting in state behind him, and
recommend to his particular attention those favourite passages. As for the
page, to whom the very idea of such an exhibition, simple as it was, was
entirely new, he beheld it with the undiminished and ecstatic delight with
which men of all ranks look for the first time on dramatic representation,
and laughed, shouted, and clapped his hands as the performance proceeded.
An incident at length took place, which effectually broke off his interest in
the business of the scene.
One of the principal personages in the comic part of the drama was, as
we have already said, a qumestionary or pardoner, one of those itinerants
who hawked about from place to place relics, real or pretended, with which
he excited the devotion at once, and the charity of the populace, and generally deceived both the one and the other. The hypocrisy, impudence, and
profligacy of these clerical wanderers, had made them the subject of satire
from the time of Chaucer down to that of Heywood. Their present representative failed not to follow the same line of humour, exhibiting pig's
bones for relics, and boasting the virtues of small tin crosses, which had
been shaken in the holy porringer at Loretto, and of cockleshells, which
had been brought from the shrine of Saint James of Compostella, all which
he disposed of to the devout Catholics at nearly as high a price as antiquaries are now willing to pay for baubles of similar intrinsic value. At
length the pardoner pulled from his scrip a small phial of clear water, of
which he vaunted the quality in the following verses:Listneth. gode people, everiche one Was wont to wash her bodie and lirn
For inl the hlode of Babylone, Miickle vertue hath that strene,
Far eastward I wot it lyetlh, As ye shall se er that ye pas,
And is the first londe the sonne espieth, Ernsample by this little glasl'her, as he cometh fro out the s6; Through night6s cold and dayds hote
In this ilk londe, as thinketh me, Hiderward I have it brought;
Right as holie legendes tell, Hath a wife made slip or side,
Srlottreth from a roke a well, Or a maiden stepp'd aside,
And falleth into are bath of ston, Putteth this water under her nese,
Where chaste Susanne, in times long gon, Wold she nold she, she shall snesce.
The jest, as the reader skilful in the antique language of the drama muet
at once perceive, turned on the same pivot as in the old minstrel tales of
the Drinking Horn of King Arthur, and the Mantle made Amiss. But the
audience were neither learned nor critical enough to challenge its want of
originality. The potent relic was, after such grimace and buffoonery-as
befitted the subject, presented successively to each of the female personages
of the drama, not one of whom sustained the supposed test of discretion;
but, to the infinite delight of the audience, sneezed much louder and longer
than perhaps they themselves had counted on. The jest seemed at last
worn threadbare, and the pardoner was passing on to some new pleasantry,
when the jester or clown of the drama, possessing himself secretly of the
phial which contained the wondrous liquor, applied it suddenly to the nose
of a young woman, who, with her black silk muffler, or screen drawn over
her face, was sitting in the foremost rank of the spectators, intent apparently