Vane's note. But ran he never so quick, he had built a
full-sized castle in the air before he reached Bow Street.
The letter hinted at an order upon his muse for amatory verse; delightful
task, cheering prospect.
Bid a man whose usual lot it is to break stones for the parish at
tenpence the cubic yard--bid such an one play at marbles with some stone
taws for half an hour per day, and pocket one pound one--bid a poor horse
who has drawn those stones about, and browsed short grass by the
wayside-- bid him canter a few times round a grassy ring, and then go to
his corn--in short, bid Rosinante change with Pegasus, and you do no more
than Mr. Vane's letter held out to Triplet.
The amatory verse of that day was not up-hill work. There was a beaten
track on a dead level, and you followed it. You told the tender creature,
with a world of circumlocution, that, "without joking now," she was a
leper, ditto a tigress, item marble. You next feigned a lucid interval,
and to be on the point of detesting your monster, but in twenty more
verses love became, as usual, stronger than reason, and you wound up your
rotten yarn thus:
You hugged a golden chain. You drew deeper into your wound a barbed
shaft, like--(any wild animal will do, no one of them is such an ass, so
you had an equal title to all). And on looking back you saw with horrible
complacency that you had inflicted one hundred locusts, five feet long,
upon oppressed humanity.
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