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Updated: May 6, 2025
He flatters himself he is indifferent honest; yet he is rarely taken for anything better than a spy, and there is no absurd and disreputable means of livelihood but has been attributed to him in some heat of official or popular distrust.... For the life of me I cannot understand it. I, too, have been knolled to church, and sat at good men's feasts; but I bear no mark of it.
Dickens's real speech to the lazy and laughing civilisation of Southern Europe would really have run in the Shakespearian words: but whoe'er you be Who in this desert inaccessible, Under the shade of melancholy boughs Lose and neglect the creeping hours of time. If ever you have looked on better things, If ever been where bells have knolled to church.
Everyone felt it to be singularly inappropriate, and Miss Watson said it gave her quite a turn to hear the relish with which he knolled out: "Wit with his wantonness Tasteth death's bitterness: Hell's executioner Hath no ears for to hear What vain art can reply! I am sick, I must die God have mercy on us." She regarded him with disapproving eyes as a thoroughly uncomfortable character.
"I don't doubt, sir," said he, with the utmost solemnity of declamation, "but you look with horror upon every object that surrounds you in this uncomfortable place; but, nevertheless, here are some, who, as my friend Shakespeare has it, have seen better days, and have with holy bell been knolled to church; and sat at good men's feasts, and wiped their eyes of drops that sacred pity hath engendered.
"I thought that all things had been savage here, and therefore I put on the countenance of stern command; but whatever men you are that in this desert, under the shade of melancholy boughs, lose and neglect the creeping hours of time, if ever you have looked on better days, if ever you have been where bells have knolled to church, if you have ever sat at any good man's feast, if ever from your eyelids you have wiped a tear and know what it is to pity or be pitied, may gentle speeches now move you to do me human courtesy!"
Also on the 26. daie of Januarie, there chanced a maruellous earthquake in Northfolke, in the Ile of Elie, and in Suffolke, so that men as they stood on the ground were ouerthrowne therewith, and buildings so shaken, that the belles in stéeples knolled: the like had also chanced in the Aduent season then last before passed. Wil. Paruus. Polydor.
Below them, out there around the old Plaza, the city drummed through its work with a lazy, soothing rumble. Nearer at hand, Chinatown sent up the vague murmur of the life of the Orient. In the direction of the Mexican quarter, the bell of the cathedral knolled at intervals. The sky was without a cloud and the afternoon was warm.
But when a man enters suddenly upon that celestial picnic, a man who is not sick of cities, but sick of hunger, a man who is not weary of courts, but weary of walking, then Shakespeare lets through his own voice with a shattering sincerity and cries the praise of practical human civilisation: If ever you have looked on better days, If ever you have sat at good men's feasts, If ever been where bells have knolled to church, If ever from your eyelids wiped a tear Or know what 'tis to pity and be pitied.
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