The monastery; The abbot.

108 WAVERLEY NOVELS.
broke in upon iae knight's finest speeches with as little remorse as ho
would have driven the point of his lance through a laced doublet.
Sir Piercie Shafton, a man of rank and high birth, by no means en
couraged or endured this familiarity, and requited the intruder either with
total neglect, or such laconic replies as intimated a sovereign contempt for
the rude spearman, who affected to converse with him upon terms of
equality.
The Miller held his peace; for, as his usual conversation turned chiefly
on his clapper-and toll-dish, he had no mind to brag of his wealth in presence of Christie of the Clinthill, or to intrude his discourse on the English
cavalier.
A little specimen of the conversation may not be out of place, were it
but to show young ladies what fine things they have lost by living when
Euphuism is out of fashion.
"Credit me, fairest lady," said the knight, " that such is the cunning of
our English courtiers, of the hodiernal strain, that, as they have infinitely
refined upon the plain and rusticial discourse of our fathers, which, as I
may say, more beseemed the mouths of country roisterers in a May-game
than that of courtly gallants in a galliard, so I hold it ineffably and unutterably impossible, that those who may succeed us in that garden of wit
and courtesy shall alter or amend it. Venus delighted but in the language
of Mercury, Bucephalus will stoop to no one but Alexander, none can
sound Apollo's pipe but Orpheus."
" Valiant sir," said Mary, who could scarcely help laughing, "we have
but to rejoice in the chance which hath honoured this solitude with a
glimpse of the sun of courtesy, though it rather blinds than enlightens us."
" Pretty and quaint, fairest lady," answered the Euphuist. " Ah, that I
had with me my Anatomy of Wit-that all-to-be-unparalleled volume-that
quintessence of human wit-that treasury of quaint invention-that exquisitively-pleasant-to-read, and inevitably-necessary-to-be-remembered manual,
of all that is worthy to be known - which indoctrines the rude in civility,
the dull in intellectuality, the heavy in jocosity, the blunt in gentility, the
vulgar in nobility, and all of them in that unutterable perfection of human
utterance, that eloquence which no other eloquence is sufficient to praise,
that art which, when we call it by its own name of Euphuism, we bestow
on it its richest panegyric."
"By Saint Mary," said Christie of the Clinthill, "if your worship had
told me that you had left such'stores of wealth as you talk of at Prudhoe
Castle, Long Dickie and I would have had them off with us if man and
horse could have carried them; but you told us of no treasure I wot of,
save the silver tongs for turning up your mustachoes."
The knight treated this intruder's mistake-for certainly Christie had no
idea that all these epithets which sounded so rich and splendid, were lavished
upon a small quarto volume-with a stare, and then turning again to Mary
Avenel, the only person whom he thought worthy to address, he proceeded
in his strain of high-flown oratory, " Even thus," said he, " do hogs contemn
the splendour of Oriental pearls; even thus are the delicacies of a choice
repast in vain offered to the long-eared grazer of the common, who turneth
from them to devour a thistle. Surely as idle is it to pour forth the treasures
of oratory before the eyes of the ignorant, and to spread the dainties of the
intellectual banquet before those who are, morally and metaphysically
speaking, no better than asses."
" Sir Knight, since that is your quality," said Edward, "we cannot strive
with you in loftiness of language; but I pray you in fair courtesy, while you
honour my father's house with your presence, to spare us such vile comparisons."
" Peace, good villagio," said the knight, gracefully waving his hand, " I
prithee peace, kind rustic; and you, my guide, whom I may scarce call