the blanket; or where
Parson Adams, in the inextricable confusion of events, very undesignedly
gets to bed to Mrs. Slip-slop. Let me caution the reader against this
impression of Joseph Andrews; for there is a picture of Fanny in it which
he should not set his heart on, lest he should never meet with anything
like it; or if he should, it would, perhaps, be better for him that he had
not. It was just like ---- ----! With what eagerness I used to look
forward to the next number, and open the prints! Ah! never again shall I
feel the enthusiastic delight with which I gazed at the figures, and
anticipated the story and adventures of Major Bath and Commodore Trunnion,
of Trim and my Uncle Toby, of Don Quixote and Sancho and Dapple, of Gil
Blas and Dame Lorenza Sephora, of Laura and the fair Lucretia, whose lips
open and shut like buds of roses. To what nameless ideas did they give
rise,--with what airy delights I filled up the outlines, as I hung in
silence over the page!--Let me still recall them, that they may breathe
fresh life into me, and that I may live that birthday of thought and
romantic pleasure over again! Talk of the _ideal_! This is the only true
ideal--the heavenly tints of Fancy reflected in the bubbles that float
upon the spring-tide of human life.

Oh! Memory! shield me from the world's poor strife,
And give those scenes thine everlasting life!

The paradox with which I set out is, I hope, less startling than it was;
the reader will, by this time, have been let into my secret. Much about
the same time, or I believe rather earlier, I took a particular
satisfaction in reading Chubb's Tracts, and I often think I will get them
again to wade through. There is a high gusto of polemical divinity in
them; and you fancy that you hear a club of shoemakers at Salisbury,
debating a disputable text from one of St. Paul's Epistles in a
workmanlike style, with equal shrewdness and pertinacity. I cannot say
much for my metaphysical studies, into which I launched shortly after with
great ardour, so as to make a toil of a pleasure. I was presently
entangled in the briars and thorns of subtle distinctions,--of "fate,
free-will, fore-knowledge absolute," though I cannot add that "in their
wandering mazes I found no end;" for I did arrive at some very
satisfactory and potent conclusions; nor will I go so far, however
ungrateful the subject might seem, as to exclaim with Marlowe's
Faustus--"Would I had never seen Wittenber