voured
to force the door open, and the noise of his efforts recalled the doctor
from his reverie.

This poetical republican, being so disagreeably disturbed, started up
in a passion, and, opening the door, no sooner perceived who had
interrupted him, than he flung it in his face with great fury, and
cursed him for his impertinent intrusion, which had deprived him of the
most delightful vision that ever regaled the human fancy. He imagined,
as he afterwards imparted to Peregrine, that, as he enjoyed himself in
walking through the flowery plain that borders on Parnassus, he was met
by a venerable sage, whom, by a certain divine vivacity that lightened
from his eyes, he instantly knew to be the immortal Pindar. He was
immediately struck with reverence and awe, and prostrated himself before
the apparition, which, taking him by the hand, lifted him gently from
the ground and, with words more sweet than the honey of the Hybla
bees, told him, that, of all the moderns, he alone was visited by
that celestial impulse by which he himself had been inspired, when he
produced his most applauded odes. So saying, he led him up the sacred
hill, persuaded him to drink a copious draught of the waters of the
Hippocrene, and then presented him to the harmonious Nine, who crowned
his temples with a laurel wreath.

No wonder that he was enraged to find himself cut off from such sublime
society. He raved in Greek against the invader, who was so big with
his own purpose, that, unmindful of the disgrace he had sustained, and
disregarding all the symptoms of the physician's displeasure, he applied
his mouth to the door, in an eager tone. "I'll hold you any wager," said
he, "that I guess the true cause of Mr. Pickle's imprisonment." To this
challenge he received no reply, and therefore repeated it, adding, "I
suppose you imagine he was taken up for fighting a duel, or affronting a
nobleman, or lying with some man's wife, or some such matter: but, egad!
you was never more mistaken in your life; and I'll lay my Cleopatra
against your Homer's head, that in four-and-twenty hours you shan't
light on the true reason."

The favourite of the muses, exasperated at this vexatious perseverance
of the painter, who he imagined had come to tease and insult him, "I
would," said he, "sacrifice a cock to Esculapius, were I assured that
any person had been taken up for extirpating such a troublesome Goth as
you are from the face of the earth. As for your boasted