"Pretty Patty Honeywood, Fresh, and fair, and plump, Into your affections I should like to jump! Into your good graces I should like to steal; That you lov'd me truly I should like to feel. "Pretty Patty Honeywood, You can little know How my sea of passion Unto you doth flow; How it ever hastens, With a swelling tide, To its strand of happiness At thy darling side. "Pretty Patty Honeywood, Would that you and I Could ask the surpliced parson Our wedding knot to tie! Oh! my life of sunshine Then would be begun, Pretty Patty Honeywood, When you and I were one." But by far his greatest poetical achievement was his "Legend of the Fair Margaret," written in Spenserian metre, and commenced at this period of his career, though never completed. The plot was of the most dismal and intricate kind. The Fair Margaret was beloved by two young men, one of whom (Sir Frederico) was dark, and (necessarily, therefore) as badly disposed a young man as you would desire to keep out of your family circle, and the other (Sir Verdour) was light, and (consequently) as mild and amiable as any given number of maiden aunts could wish. As a matter of course, therefore, the Fair Margaret perversely preferred the dark Sir Frederico, who had poisoned her ears, and told her the most abominable falsehoods about the good and innocent Sir Verdour; when just as Sir Frederico was about to forcibly carry away the Fair Margaret- Why, just then, circumstances over which Mr. Verdant Green had no control, prevented the ~denouement~, and the completion of "the Legend." [258 ADVENTURES OF MR. VERDANT GREEN] CHAPTER VI. MR. VERDANT GREEN JOINS A NORTHUMBERLAND PIC-NIC. <VG258.JPG> SOME weeks had passed away very pleasantly to all - pleasantly even to Mr. Verdant Green; for, although he had not renewed his apple-tree conversation with Miss Patty, and was making progress with his "Legend of the Fair Margaret," yet - it may possibly have been that the exertion to make "dove" rhyme with "love," and "gloom" with "doom," occupied his mind to the exclusion of needless sorrow - he contrived to make himself mournfully amiable, even if not tolerably happy, in the society of the fair enchantress. The Honeywood party were indeed a model household; and rode, and drove, and walked, and fished, and sketched, as a large family of brothers and sisters might do - perhaps with a little more piquancy than is generally found in the home-made dish.