h
Lady Chesterfield, when she kept him all night shivering in an old
out-house, was better. Jacob Hall's prowess was not forgotten, nor the
story of Miss Stuart's garters. I was getting on in my way with that
delicate _endroit_ in which Miss Churchill is first introduced at court
and is besieged (as a matter of course) by the Duke of York, who was
gallant as well as bigoted on system. His assiduities, however, soon
slackened, owing (it is said) to her having a pale, thin face: till one
day, as they were riding out hunting together, she fell from her horse,
and was taken up almost lifeless. The whole assembled court was thrown
by this event into admiration that such a body should belong to such a
face(4) (so transcendent a pattern was she of the female form), and the
Duke was fixed. This, I contended, was striking, affecting, and grand,
the sublime of amorous biography, and said I could conceive of nothing
finer than the idea of a young person in her situation, who was the
object of indifference or scorn from outward appearance, with the proud
suppressed consciousness of a Goddess-like symmetry, locked up by 'fear
and niceness, the handmaids of all women,' from the wonder and worship
of mankind. I said so then, and I think so now: my tongue grew wanton
in the praise of this passage, and I believe it bore the bell from its
competitors. Wells then spoke of Lucius Apuleius and his Golden Ass,
which contains the story of Cupid and Psyche, with other matter rich and
rare, and went on to the romance of Heliodorus, Theagenes and Chariclea
and in it the presiding deities of Love and Wine appear in all their
pristine strength, youth, and grace, crowned and worshipped as of yore.
The night waned, but our glasses brightened, enriched with the pearls
of Grecian story. Our cup-bearer slept in a corner of the room, like
another Endymion, in the pale ray of a half-extinguished lamp, and
starting up at a fresh summons for a further supply, he swore it was too
late, and was inexorable to entreaty. Mounsey sat with his hat on and
with a hectic flush in his face while any hope remained, but as soon
as we rose to go, he darted out of the room as quick as lightning,
determined not to be the last that went.--I said some time after to the
waiter, that 'Mr. Mounsey was no flincher.' 'Oh! sir,' says he, 'you
should have known him formerly, when Mr. Hume and Mr. Ayrton used to
be here. Now he is quite another man: he seldom stays later than one or