You, familiar with Hory, see at least how, by the choice of the ground, he has obliged himself to stepping cautiously and tenderly over it. He leads to it—he does not begin with it. Arrived at the comparison, he proposes it rather implicitly than explicitly—admire the Rhetorician. He will avert jealousy—he will propitiate kindness.
BULLER.
Artful Dodger.
TALBOYS.
He has acknowledged—you might have given us the line—a fault. Nothing seriously wrong though. As if Apollo had shot a plague with golden arrows upon the City, all are turned Versifiers—young and old—and grave and gay—wise and foolish—the skilled and the unskilled—the called and the uncalled.
BULLER.
You write verses well yourself, Talboys.
TALBOYS.
I am as willing as most people to bandy compliments, but here you must excuse me. Out of the small fault, rises the Eulogy. This diffusive delusion—this epidemic, yet lively, and airy, and sprightly, and harmless insanity, gives out from its bosom some good uses, and first on the madman himself. As one disease expels another, the musolept is, through the very force of his disorder, free from the taint of cupidity—of the burning desire for worldly wealth. The simple man has room in his heart but for one love. Verse is his passion—his bliss, his all-absorbing vocation. Has his banker failed with his little cash-balance in his hands? He laughs. Has one of his two slaves run away? He laughs. Has a fire at the bookseller's consumed the copies of his last work? 'Tis unlucky—but he laughs. It is not he that speculates upon, or waylays, the unguarded trust of his friend or acquaintances—not he that handles with adhesive fingers the gold of his young orphan-ward. And for his fare, it is an anchorite's—pulse and brown bread.
BULLER.