e it (_da avertant!_) to look a gift-story in
the mouth, or cruelly to surmise (as those who doubt the plunge of
Curtius) that the inseparate conjuncture of man and beast, the
centaur-phenomenon that staggered all Dunstable, might have been the
effect of unromantic necessity; that the horse-part carried the
reasoning willy-nilly; that needs must when such a devil drove; that
certain spiral configurations in the frame of Thomas Westwood,
unfriendly to alighting, made the alliance more forcible than voluntary.
Let him enjoy his fame for me, nor let me hint a whisper that shall
dismount Bellerophon. But in case he was an involuntary martyr, yet if
in the fiery conflict he buckled the soul of a constant haberdasher to
him, and adopted his flames, let accident and him share the glory. You
would all like Thomas Westwood. [2]

How weak is painting to describe a man! Say that he stands four
feet and a nail high by his own yard-measure, which, like the sceptre of
Agamemnon, shall never sprout again, still, you have no adequate idea;
nor when I tell you that his dear hump, which I have favored in the
picture, seems to me of the buffalo,--indicative and repository of mild
qualities, a budget of kindnesses,--still, you have not the man. Knew
you old Norris of the Temple, sixty years ours and our father's friend?
He was not more natural to us than this old Westwood, the acquaintance
of scarce more weeks. Under his roof now ought I to take my rest, but
that back-looking ambition tells me I might yet be a Londoner! Well, if
we ever do move, we have encumbrances the less to impede us; all our
furniture has faded under the auctioneer's hammer, going for nothing,
like the tarnished frippery of the prodigal, and we have only a spoon or
two left to bless us. Clothed we came into Enfield, and naked we must go
out of it. I would live in London shirtless, bookless. Henry Crabb is at
Rome; advices to that effect have reached Bury. But by solemn legacy he
bequeathed at parting (whether he should live or die) a turkey of
Suffolk to be sent every succeeding Christmas to us and divers other
friends. What a genuine old bachelor's action! I fear he will find the
air of Italy too classic. His station is in the Hartz forest; his soul
is be-Goethed. Miss Kelly we never see,--Talfourd not this half year;
the latter flourishes, but the exact number of his children, God forgive
me, I have utterly forgotten: we single people are often out in our
count ther