not kept pace with our literary fecundity in that respect we had a good deal more theatrical capital lying idle on our hands than we had at the time when we first made Mr. Levy's acquaintance at Captain Talboys'. So we sent an answer by the seedy messenger, to the effect that we had something that would doubtless suit the requirements of a Parnassus audience, and would look in upon Mr. Levy that evening, and talk the matter over with him.
That afternoon, however, we were favoured with a visit from Mr. Levy, who, having occasion to call at his solicitor's in Clement's Inn, to instruct him to defend an action by the Dramatic Authors' Society for an infraction of copyright, availed himself of the fact of his being in our neighbourhood, to look in upon us, and to arrange preliminaries.
We submitted our plot to Mr. Levy. A lady and gentleman, of high rank, who have been betrothed in early infancy (as is customary in the best English families), but who had taken the deepest dislike to each other, owing to the fact that the gentleman was said to possess an inordinate and unnatural passion for baked sheep's head—a dish which the lady held in aristocratic abhorrence—and that the lady was never happy unless she was devouring peppermint—a confection for which the gentleman entertained the profoundest disgust—meet unexpectedly in the centre of the maze at Hampton Court. The mutual embarrassment and annoyance caused by this most awkward rencontre is enhanced by the fact that, owing to the ingenious disposition of the labyrinth, neither of them is able to find a way out of
