I have already mentioned our poets at Epsom, and their biting epigrams. Here is another, which was sent to me at this time: "Kitty, a nymph who fain would climb, But yet may tumble down, Her charms she tries with voice and eyes First on a rustic clown. "But bumpkin squire won't serve her turn When gentle Harry woos her, So farewell Will, for Kitty still Will laugh, although you lose her. "Yet higher still than Hal or Will Her thoughts, ambitious, soar'd: 'Go, Will and Hal: my promise shall Be transferred to my Lord.'" I suppose the verses were written at the request of Peggy Baker; but after all they did me very little harm, and, indeed, nothing could do me either good or harm at Epsom any more, because my visit was brought to a sudden close by an event which, as will be seen, might have been most disastrous for us all. The selfishness and boorish behaviour of Will Levett not only kept us from walking on the Terrace in the afternoon, but also kept poor Nancy at home altogether. She would either come to our lodgings and sit with me lamenting over her bumpkin brother, or she would sit at home when Sir Robert was testy and her ladyship querulous, throwing the blame of her son's rudeness sometimes upon her husband, who, she said, had never whipped the boy as he ought to have been whipped, in accordance with expressed Scripture orders strictly laid down; or upon Nancy, whose pert tongue and saucy ways had driven him from the Hall to the kennel; or upon myself, who was so ungrateful, after all that had been done for me, as to refuse her son, in spite of all his protestations of affection. It was hard upon poor Nancy, the ordinary butt and victim of her brother's ill-temper, that she should be taunted with being the cause of it; and one could not but think that had madam been more severe with her son at the beginning, things might have gone better. When a mother allows her son from the very beginning to have all his own way, it is weak in the father to suffer it: but she must not then turn round when the mischief is done, and reproach her daughter, who took no part in the first mischief, with being the cause of it; nor should she call a girl ungrateful for refusing to marry a man whose vices are so prominent and conspicuous that they actually prevent his virtues from being discerned. Beneath that smock-frock, so to speak, that village rusticity, behind that blunt speech and rough manner, there may have been the sound kind heart of a gentleman, but the girl could not take that for granted. The sequel proved indeed that she was right in refusing, even had she been free; for Will died, as he lived, a profligate and a drunkard of the village kind. So that even his poor mother was at last fain to acknowledge that he was a bad and wicked man, and but for some hope derived from his deathbed, would have gone in sorrow to her dying day.