To Valentine, in these rosy hours, life seemed full of hope and
brightness. He transferred his goods and chattels from Omega Street,
Chelsea, to the pleasant lodging in the Edgware Road, where he was nearer
Charlotte, and out of the way of his late patron Captain Paget, in the
event of that gentleman's return from the Continent.
Fortune favoured him. The gaiety of heart which came with his happiness
lent a grace to his pen. Pleasant thoughts and fancies bedecked his
pages. He saw everything in the rosy light of love and beauty, and there
was a buoyant freshness in all he wrote. The Pegasus might be but a
common hackney, but the hack was young and fresh, and galloped gaily as
he scented the dewy morning air. It is not every poet whose Pegasus
clears at a bound a space as wide as all that waste of land and sea the
watchman views from his tall tower on the rock.
Mr. Hawkehurst's papers on Lauzun, Brummel, Sardanapalus, Rabelais, Lord
Chesterfield, Erasmus, Beau Nash, Apelles, Galileo, and Philip of
Orleans, were in demand, and the reading public wondered at this prodigy
of book-making. He had begun to save money, and had opened a deposit
account at the Unitas Bank. How he gloated over the deposit receipts in
the stillness of the night, when he added a fresh one to his store! When
he had three, for sums amounting in all to forty pounds, he took them to
Charlotte, and she looked at them, and he looked at them, as if the poor
little bits of printed paper had been specimens of virgin ore from some
gold mine newly discovered by Mr.
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