Kenilworth
Page 350You have displaced the mirth, broke the good meeting
With most admired disorder.
--MACBETH.
It was afterwards remembered that during the banquets and revels which
occupied the remainder of this eventful day the bearing of Leicester and
of Varney were totally different from their usual demeanour. Sir Richard
Varney had been held rather a man of counsel and of action than a votary
of pleasure. Business, whether civil or military, seemed always to be
his proper sphere; and while in festivals and revels, although he well
understood how to trick them up and present them, his own part was that
of a mere spectator; or if he exercised his wit, it was in a rough,
caustic, and severe manner, rather as if he scoffed at the exhibition
But upon the present day his character seemed changed. He mixed among
the younger courtiers and ladies, and appeared for the moment to be
actuated by a spirit of light-hearted gaiety, which rendered him a match
for the liveliest. Those who had looked upon him as a man given up
to graver and more ambitious pursuits, a bitter sneerer and passer of
sarcasms at the expense of those who, taking life as they find it,
were disposed to snatch at each pastime it presents, now perceived with
astonishment that his wit could carry as smooth an edge as their own,
his laugh be as lively, and his brow as unclouded. By what art of
damnable hypocrisy he could draw this veil of gaiety over the black
thoughts of one of the worst of human bosoms must remain unintelligible
extraordinary powers, and those powers were unhappily dedicated in all
their energy to the very worst of purposes.
It was entirely different with Leicester. However habituated his
mind usually was to play the part of a good courtier, and appear gay,
assiduous, and free from all care but that of enhancing the pleasure
of the moment, while his bosom internally throbbed with the pangs of
unsatisfied ambition, jealousy, or resentment, his heart had now a
yet more dreadful guest, whose workings could not be overshadowed or
suppressed; and you might read in his vacant eye and troubled brow that
his thoughts were far absent from the scenes in which he was compelling
himself to play a part. He looked, moved, and spoke as if by a
some degree lost the promptitude of command over the acute mind and
goodly form of which it was the regent. His actions and gestures,
instead of appearing the consequence of simple volition, seemed, like
those of an automaton, to wait the revolution of some internal machinery
ere they could be performed; and his words fell from him piecemeal,
interrupted, as if he had first to think what he was to say, then how
it was to be said, and as if, after all, it was only by an effort of
continued attention that he completed a sentence without forgetting both
the one and the other.