one, and to the other, with audible asides. Richard he treated as a new
instrument of destruction about to be let loose on the slumbering
metropolis; Hippias as one in an interesting condition; and he got so
much fun out of the notion of these two journeying together, and the
mishaps that might occur to them, that he esteemed it almost a personal
insult for his hearers not to laugh. The wise youth's dull life at
Raynham had afflicted him with many peculiarities of the professional
joker.

"Oh! the Spring! the Spring!" he cried, as in scorn of his sallies they
exchanged their unmeaning remarks on the sweet weather across him. "You
seem both to be uncommonly excited by the operations of turtles, rooks,
and daws. Why can't you let them alone?"

'Wind bloweth,
Cock croweth,
Doodle-doo;
Hippy verteth,
Ricky sterteth,
Sing Cuckoo!'

There's an old native pastoral!--Why don't you write a Spring sonnet,
Ricky? The asparagus-beds are full of promise, I hear, and eke the
strawberry. Berries I fancy your Pegasus has a taste for. What kind of
berry was that I saw some verses of yours about once?--amatory verses to
some kind of berry--yewberry, blueberry, glueberry! Pretty verses,
decidedly warm. Lips, eyes, bosom, legs--legs? I don't think you gave
her any legs. No legs and no nose. That appears to be the poetic taste
of the day. It shall be admitted that you create the very beauties for a
chaste people.