"Ay, 'tis autumn already with this copy," he said, glancing casually at the page he held in his hand. "Why who wrote this?"
"You did, Mr. Lovely, you did."
"I wrote this—this d——d vile verse, this—" and Charles read aloud the lines that so dismayed our heroine. "I wrote this damnable doggerel? By G——, Mr. Virgin, I never wrote this."
"Why, who else could have written it?"
"That's what I want to know. Come back, you hound," shouted the irate author, grabbing his publisher by the tails of his coat, just as he was edging his way back to the shop. "Come back," he said, jerking him over Mr. Bayle's Dictionary. "You moth-eaten vagabond, you impostor, you thief." Charles began to belabour Mr. Virgin with a folio copy of the Anatomy of Melancholy. Round and round the little back parlour he thumped the publisher; the dust rose from innumerable ancient tomes. Surely never were books so rudely disturbed since the niece and the Padre flung the library of the illustrious Don Quixote de la Mancha out of the window, and burned a hundred volumes of chivalry.
"How came these d——d lines into my book, eh, sir, answer me that, sir," and having dissected the Anatomy of Melancholy, Charles picked up Sir Roger L'Estrange's translation of Æsop to continue the assault.
"I don't understand, Mr. Lovely, sir. Pray desist, Mr. Lovely, your honour, sir. The printer must have printed them."
"'Sdeath and fury! you rascal, I know that. Who wrote them, who wrote them?"
In order to supply the correct twirl to this note of interrogation, Charles flung the little bookseller to the farthest corner of his little back parlour, at the same time arming himself with half a dozen fresh volumes.
Mr. Virgin cowered in the dust and cobwebs.