At page 39, there is some prospect of a progress in the story. Here we are introduced to a Mr. Acus and his fair daughter, Miss Alice.
Acus had been a dashing Bond street tailor
Some few short years before, who took his measures
So carefully he always cut the jailor
And filled his coffers with exhaustless treasures;
Then with his wife, a son, and three fair daughters,
He sunk the goose and straightway crossed the waters.
His residence is in the immediate vicinity of Wilton. The daughter, Miss Alice, who is said to be quite a belle, is enamored of one Waldron, a foreigner, a lion, and a gentleman of questionable reputation. His character (which for our life and soul we cannot comprehend) is given within the space of some forty or fifty stanzas, made to include, at the same time, an essay on motives, deduced from the text “whatever is must be,” and illuminated by a long note at the end of the poem, wherein the systime (quere systéme?) de la Nature is sturdily attacked. Let us speak the truth; this note (and the whole of them, for there are many,) may be regarded as a glorious specimen of the concentrated essence of rigmarole, and, to say nothing of their utter absurdity per se, are so ludicrously uncalled-for, and grotesquely out of place, that we found it impossible to refrain, during their perusal, from a most unbecoming and uproarious guffaw. We will be pardoned for giving a specimen—selecting it for its brevity.
Reason, he deemed, could measure every thing,
And reason told him that there was a law