Health and pleasure, heavenly treasure.
Smiling, here united dwell.
‘Here, nymphs and swains, indulge your hearts,
Share the joys the scene imparts;
Here be strangers to all dangers
All but those of Cupid’s darts!’
It is not impossible that a local speculator may have bribed the muse of one or other of the ever-ready Grub Street poets to compose these verses, which read very like a lyrical advertisement of the place; while the broad-sheet form in which they first appeared was the usual one in which such poetical puffs were presented.
Nothing can be more Arcadian than the conceits and images in this effusion; no one reading it at this time of day would imagine danger lurking in the shape of footpads in St. Pancras Vale, where Smollett makes one of his heroes walk with a drawn sword by the side of his mistress’s coach on her way to town from the Flask Walk. It was better to fall into the hands of the redoubted Turpin himself than into those of these cruel and rapacious robbers.[259] He, on the other hand, affected a certain bonhomie in his proceedings, and loved best to disembarrass his victims of their property without unnecessary violence. His wit appears to have been heavier than his hand.
‘You will soon be caught!’ cried out an angry but non-combative gentleman, one of two in a chaise, whom, besides others, he had robbed on a certain Sunday on the road between Hampstead and Highgate.
‘So I have thought myself,’ returned Dick, ‘but believe I am in no danger from you!’