ges,
till the reader feels as Coleridge's auditors must have felt when he
talked about "Ball and Bell, Bell and Ball." But the Greek letter
episode, or rather, the episode about the Greek letter which never was
written, is, if possible, more flagrantly rigmarolish.
The-cop-and-bore-and-woman digression contains some remarkable
description as a kind of solace to the Puck-led traveller; the other is
bare of any such comfort. The Bishop's old housekeeper, who was De
Quincey's landlady, told him, it seems, that the Bishop had cautioned
her against taking in lodgers whom she did not know, and De Quincey was
very angry. As he thought he could write Greek much better than the
Bishop, he meditated expostulation in that language. He did not
expostulate, but he proceeds instead to consider the possible effect on
the Bishop if he had. There was a contemporary writer whom we can
imagine struck by a similar whimsy: but Charles Lamb would have given us
the Bishop and himself "quite natural and distinct" in a dozen lines,
and then have dropped the subject, leaving our sides aching with
laughter, and our appetites longing for more. De Quincey tells us at
great length who the Bishop was, and how he was the Head of Brasenose,
with some remarks on the relative status of Oxford Colleges. Then he
debates the pros and cons on the question whether the Bishop would have
answered the letter or not, with some remarks on the difference between
strict scholarship and the power of composing in a dead language. He
rises to real humour in the remark, that as "Methodists swarmed in
Carnarvonshire," he "could in no case have found pleasure in causing
mortification" to the Bishop, even if he had vanquished him. By this
time we have had some three pages of it, and could well, especially with
this lively touch to finish, accept them, though they be something
tedious, supposing the incident to be closed. The treacherous author
leads us to suppose that it is closed; telling us how he left Bangor,
and went to Carnarvon, which change gradually drew his thoughts away
from the Bishop. So far is this from being the case, that he goes back
to that Reverend Father, and for two mortal pages more, speculates
further what would happen if he had written to the Bishop, what the
Bishop would have said, whether he would not have asked him (De Quincey)
to the Palace, whether, in his capacity of Head of a House, he would not
have welcomed him to that seat of learning, and f