s to obtain her? 'Madness' is the
word that hits the mark, but it does not fully embrace the meaning. To be
in this state, says the Philosopher, is to be 'On The Hippogriff;' and to
this, as he explains, the persons who travel to Love by the road of
sentiment will come, if they have any stuff in them, and if the one who
kindles them is mighty. He distinguishes being on the Hippogriff from
being possessed by passion. Passion, he says, is noble strength on fire,
and points to Emilia as a representation of passion. She asks for what
she thinks she may have; she claims what she imagines to be her own. She
has no shame, and thus, believing in, she never violates, nature, and
offends no law, wild as she may seem. Passion does not turn on her and
rend her when it is thwarted. She was never carried out of the limit of
her own intelligent force, seeing that it directed her always, with the
simple mandate to seek that which belonged to her. She was perfectly
sane, and constantly just to herself, until the failure of her voice,
telling her that she was a beggar in the world, came as a second blow,
and partly scared her reason. Constantly just to herself, mind! This is
the quality of true passion. Those who make a noise, and are not thus
distinguishable, are on Hippogriff.

--By which it is clear to me that my fantastic Philosopher means to
indicate the lover mounted in this wise, as a creature bestriding an
extraneous power. "The sentimentalist," he says, "goes on accumulating
images and hiving sensations, till such time as (if the stuff be in him)
they assume a form of vitality, and hurry him headlong. This is not
passion, though it amazes men, and does the madder thing."

In fine, it is Hippogriff. And right loath am I to continue my
partnership with a fellow who will not see things on the surface, and is,
as a necessary consequence, blind to the fact that the public detest him.
I mean, this garrulous, super-subtle, so-called Philosopher, who first
set me upon the building of 'The Three Volumes,' it is true, but whose
stipulation that he should occupy so large a portion of them has made
them rock top-heavy, to the forfeit of their stability. He maintains that
a story should not always flow, or, at least, not to a given measure.
When we are knapsack on back, he says, we come to eminences where a
survey of our journey past and in advance is desireable, as is a distinct
pause in any business, here and there. He points proudly to th