e spoke like music. I found it pathetic in spite
of my knowing that the whole scene was lighted up by Bardolph's nose.
When I was just bursting out crying--for the deer's tongue was
lolling out and quick pantings were at his side; he had little ones at
home--Great Will remembered his engagement to sell Shylock a pound of
the carcase; determined that no Jew should eat of it, he bethought him
that Falstaff could well spare a pound, and he said the Jew would not
see the difference: Falstaff only got off by hard running and roaring
out that he knew his unclean life would make him taste like pork and
thus let the Jew into the trick.

My father related all this with such a veritable matter-of-fact air,
and such liveliness--he sounded the chase and its cries, and showed
King Lear tottering, and Hamlet standing dark, and the vast substance of
Falstaff--that I followed the incidents excitedly, and really saw them,
which was better than understanding them. I required some help from him
to see that Hamlet's offer of a three-legged stool at a feverish
moment of the chase, was laughable. He taught me what to think of it by
pitching Great Will's voice high, and Hamlet's very low. By degrees I
got some unconscious knowledge of the characters of Shakespeare.

There never was so fascinating a father as mine for a boy anything under
eight or ten years old. He could guess on Saturday whether I should name
William Pitt on the Sunday; for, on those occasions, 'Slender Billy,'
as I hope I am not irreverent in calling him, made up for the dulness of
his high career with a raspberry-jam tart, for which, my father told me
solemnly, the illustrious Minister had in his day a passion. If I named
him, my father would say, 'W. P., otherwise S. B., was born in the year
so-and-so; now,' and he went to the cupboard, 'in the name of Politics,
take this and meditate upon him.' The shops being all shut on Sunday, he
certainly bought it, anticipating me unerringly, on the Saturday, and,
as soon as the tart appeared, we both shouted. I fancy I remember his
repeating a couplet,

'Billy Pitt took a cake and a raspberry jam,
When he heard they had taken Seringapatam.'

At any rate, the rumour of his having done so, at periods of strong
excitement, led to the inexplicable display of foresight on my father's
part.

My meditations upon Pitt were, under this influence, favourable to the
post of a Prime Minister, but it was merely appetite that