curst Croat! On the Wallachian border mayst
thou gather philosophy from meditation."

CHAPTER XLIV

Dexterously as Wilfrid has turned Tracy to his uses by means of the
foregoing correspondence, in doing so he had exposed himself to the
retributive poison administered by that cunning youth. And now the
Hippogriff seized him, and mounted with him into mid-air; not as when
the idle boy Ganymede was caught up to act as cup-bearer in celestial
Courts, but to plunge about on yielding vapours, with nothing near him
save the voice of his desire.

The Philosopher here peremptorily demands the pulpit. We are subject,
he says, to fantastic moods, and shall dry ready-minted phrases picture
them forth? As, for example, can the words 'delirium,' or 'frenzy,'
convey an image of Wilfrid's state, when his heart began to covet Emilia
again, and his sentiment not only interposed no obstacle, but trumpeted
her charms and fawned for her, and he thought her lost, remembered that
she had been his own, and was ready to do any madness 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