So she could write when she was young. But her fairies, if they survived at all, grew up into hippopotami. Too generously her prayer was granted: Give me the free and noble style, Which seems uncurb’d, though it be wild. She became capable of involutions, and contortions and conceits of which the following is among the shortest, but not the most terrific: The human head may be likened to a town: The mouth when full, begun Is market day, when empty, market’s done; The city conduct, where the water flows, Is with two spouts, the nostrils and the nose. She similised, energetically, incongruously, eternally; the sea became a meadow, the sailors shepherds, the mast a maypole. The fly was the bird of summer, trees were senators, houses ships, and even the fairies, whom she loved better than any earthly thing, except the Duke, are changed into blunt atoms and sharp atoms, and take part in some of those horrible manœuvres in which she delighted to marshal the universe. Truly, “my Lady Sanspareille hath a strange spreading wit”. Worse still, without an atom of dramatic power, she turned to play-writing. It was a simple process. The unwieldy thoughts which turned and tumbled within her were christened Sir Golden Riches, Moll Meanbred, Sir Puppy Dogman, and the rest, and sent revolving in tedious debate upon the parts of the soul, or whether virtue is better than riches, round a wise and learned lady who answered their questions and corrected their fallacies at considerable length in tones which we seem to have heard before.