Triptolemus had walked round, and round again, about the distance of half a mile, spouting Shakespeare to “the unconscious wind,” when, as he was about to take “round the third,” instead of looking at the earth, his inspired glance was directed to the sky; and at the instant he exclaimed, “thus far into the bowels of the land,” he vanished into the earth through the before mentioned trap door! and awakening from his surprize, he found himself half smothered in a bed of manure, at the bottom of the steps.—When he had in some degree recovered from his alarm, and ascertained that his person had escaped injury, his first reflection was upon the fall of Lucifer,
“From night to morn—from morn to dewy eve,
A summer’s day!”
He then looked round him and fancied himself in Johnson’s happy valley, himself the prince, and, like him, discontented with his lot, when he was suddenly aroused to a sense of his real situation by the pointed application of a pitchfork, unceremoniously handled by a sturdy boor, who saluted him with, “Where the devil didst thee come from?” His indignant spirit now gave vent to its uncontrollable fury, in a torrent of blank verse! He felt that, like Hamlet, he could
“Do such deeds
As hell itself would quake to look upon.”
But, like Posthumous, he was doubtful which to select. His soul was in arms!—and the thrice valiant embryo Richmond exclaimed,
“Thrice is he arm’d that hath his quarrel just;
And he but naked, tho’ lock’d up in steel,
Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted.”
“I fell into this damned place through your neglect in leaving the trap door open, you bloody and devouring boar,”—eyeing him all the while with a glance that seemed to say, “If I thought you wholesome, I’d turn cannibal.”
The bumkin, however, took no further notice of it than to assure him, if he did not presently take to his heels, he would toss him out on the prongs of his fork.
O! what a field for fancy did this threat open to his susceptible mind! The tattered hat of the unceremonious gardener was converted into a coronet of snakes that reared their threatening crests and hissed furiously at the astonished hero. His ruddy face assumed the Gorgon’s look, turning him almost into stone. The weapon in his hand grew fiery red, and for a foot there seemed a cloven hoof.
An attempted application of the torturing steel however, gave motion to his limbs;—away he scampered up the steep ascent, not daring to turn a solitary glance behind, until he reached the spot from whence he fell.