"When young people are about to be married, I sometimes write in that style; but it doesn't take. People think, perhaps, that I am jesting at them, but no one thinks I am jesting at his horse or his ox when I speak well of them. There was an old lady who had a peacock; I sent her some lines upon the bird; she never forgot it, and when she died she left me the bird stuffed and ten pounds." "Mr. Parkinson, you put me very much in mind of the Welsh bards." "The Welsh what?" "Bards. Did you never hear of them?" "Can't say that I ever did." "You do not understand Welsh?" "I do not." "Well, provided you did, I should be strongly disposed to imagine that you imitated the Welsh bards." "I imitate no one," said Mr. Parkinson; "though if you mean by the Welsh bards the singing bards of the country, it is possible we may resemble one another; only I would scorn to imitate anybody, even a bard." "I was not speaking of birds, but bards--Welsh poets--and it is surprising how much the turn of your genius coincides with theirs. Why, the subjects of hundreds of their compositions are the very subjects which you appear to delight in, and are the most profitable to you--beeves, horses, hawks--which they described to their owners in colours the most glowing and natural, and then begged them as presents. I have even seen in Welsh an ode to a peacock." "I can't help it," said Parkinson, "and I tell you again that I imitate nobody." "Do you travel much about?" "Aye, aye. As soon as I have got my seed into the ground, or my crop into my barn, I lock up my home and set out from house to house and village to village, and many is the time I sit down beneath the hedges and take out my pen and inkhorn. It is owing to that, I suppose, that I have been called the flying poet." . . . [_Wanting_.] "It appears to me, young man," said Parkinson, "that you are making game of me." "I should as much scorn to make game of any one, as you would scorn to imitate any one, Mr. Parkinson." "Well, so much the better for us both. But we'll now talk of my affair. Are you man enough to give me an opinion upon it?" "Quite so," said I, "Mr. Parkinson. I understand the case clearly, and I unhesitatingly assert that any action for battery brought against you would be flung out of court, and the bringer of said action be obliged to pay the costs, the original assault having been perpetrated by himself when he flung the liquor in your face; and to set your mind perfectly at ease I will read to you what Lord Chief Justice Blackstone says upon the subject."