upon by the shrewd and merry malice of the latter, until he finds himself distressingly suspended in a basket from her lofty window late in a chilly night, to the great amusement of divers spectators previously invited there for that purpose.
Much more subtle and hence much more intellectually satisfying is the trap in which another amorous gentleman, the Reverend Mr. Slope, is caught by another clever lady, Signora Neroni.[1]
"Mr. Slope was madly in love, but hardly knew it. The
signora spitted him, as a boy does a cockchafer on a cork, that
she might enjoy the energetic agony of his gyrations. And
she knew very well what she was doing."
In their memorable interview the accomplished Phoedria
led this poor Cymochles into a fearful, tangled web,
there to struggle and flounder until she released him with
mocking scorn, having illustrated perfectly Meredith's
remark about another and more famous egoist:[2]
"A lover pretending too much by one foot's length of pretense,
will have that foot caught in her trap."
Even then, however, fate had not done her worst, for
the cockchafer was literally to be slapped in the face by
the more direct and active Eleanor Bold. The comment
on this latter scene may be cited as an example of the mock
heroic vein occasionally used in the service of satire from
Swift and Fielding on.[3]
"But how shall I sing the divine wrath of Mr. Slope, or how
invoke the tragic muse to describe the rage which swelled the
celestial bosom of the bishop's chaplain? Such an undertaking
