esting," he writes in one place,
"to fancy R. P., or 'Mr. Robert Paltock of Clement's Inn,' a gentle
lover of books, not successful enough, perhaps, as a barrister to lead a
public or profitable life, but eking out a little employment or a bit
of a patrimony with literature congenial to him, and looking oftener
to 'Purchase Pilgrims' on his shelves than to 'Coke on Littleton.' We
picture him to ourselves with 'Robinson Crusoe' on one side of him and
'Gaudentio di Lucca' on the other, hearing the pen go over his paper
in one of those quiet rooms in Clement's Inn that look out of its
old-fashioned buildings into the little garden with the dial in it held
by the negro: one of the prettiest corners in London, and extremely fit
for a sequestered fancy that cannot get any further. There he sits,
the unknown, ingenious, and amiable Mr. Robert Paltock, thinking of an
imaginary beauty for want of a better, and creating her for the delight
of posterity, though his contemporaries were to know little or nothing
of her. We shall never go through the place again without regarding him
as its crowning interest.... Now a sweeter creature [than Youwarkee] is
not to be found in books; and she does him immortal honour. She is all
tenderness and vivacity; all born good taste and blessed companionship.
Her pleasure consists but in his; she prevents all his wishes; has
neither prudery nor immodesty; sheds not a tear but from right feeling;
is the good of his home and the grace of his fancy. It has been well
observed that the author has not made his flying women in general light
and airy enough... And it may be said, on the other hand, that the
kind of wing, the graundee, or elastic drapery which opens and shuts
at pleasure, however ingeniously and even beautifully contrived, would
necessitate creatures whose modifications of humanity, bodily and
mental, though never so good after their kind, might have startled the
inventor had he been more of a naturalist; might have developed a being
very different from the feminine, sympathising, and lovely Youwarkee.
Muscles and nerves not human must have been associated with inhuman
wants and feelings; probably have necessitated talons and a beak! At
best the woman would have been wilder, more elvish, capricious, and
unaccountable. She would have ruffled her whalebones when angry; been
horribly intimate, perhaps, with birds' nests and fights with eagles;
and frightened Wilkins out of his wits with dashing