especially after a man like Henry Hawkridge--passes my
comprehension. Did you read a paper of his, a few months back, in
The Wayside, a preposterous rehabilitation of Elkanah Settle? Ha!

ha! That's what such men are driven to. Elkanah Settle! And he
hadn't even a competent acquaintance with his paltry subject.
Will you credit that he twice or thrice referred to Settle's
reply to "Absalom and Achitophel" by the title of "Absalom
Transposed," when every schoolgirl knows that the thing was
called "Achitophel Transposed"! This was monstrous enough, but
there was something still more contemptible. He positively, I
assure you, attributed the play of "Epsom Wells" to Crowne! I
should have presumed that every student of even the most trivial
primer of literature was aware that "Epsom Wells" was written by
Shadwell. . . . Now, if one were to take Shadwell for the subject
of a paper, one might very well show how unjustly his name has
fallen into contempt. It has often occurred to me to do this.
"But Shadwell never deviates into sense." The sneer, in my
opinion, is entirely unmerited. For my own part, I put Shadwell
very high among the dramatists of his time, and I think I could
show that his absolute worth is by no means inconsiderable.
Shadwell has distinct vigour of dramatic conception; his
dialogue. . . .'

And as he talked the man kept describing imaginary geometrical
figures with the end of his walking-stick; he very seldom raised
his eyes from the ground, and the stoop in his shoulders grew
more and more pronounced, until at a little distance one might
have taken him for a hunchback. At one point Jasper made a pause
to speak of the pleasant wooded prospect that lay before them;