The Expedition of Humphry Clinker

128 TOBIAS SMOLLETT
many years by writing novels, at the rate of five pounds a volume;
but that branch of business is now engrossed by female authors,
who publish merely for the propagation of virtue, with so much ease
and spirit, and delicacy, and knowledge of the human heart, and
all in the serene tranquillity of high life, that the reader is not only
enchanted by their genius, but reformed by their morality.
After dinner, we adjourned into the garden, where, I observed,
Mr. S—— gave a short separate audience to every individual in a
small remote filbert walk, from whence most of them dropt off one
after another, without further ceremony; but they were replaced
by fresh recruits of the same clan, who came to make an after-
noon’s visit; and, among others, a spruce bookseller, called Birkin,
who rode his own gelding, and made his appearance in a pair of new
jemmy boots, with massy spurs of plate. It was not without reason,
that this midwife of the Muses used exercise a-horseback, for he
was too fat to walk a-foot, and he underwent some sarcasms from
Tim Cropdale, on his unweildy size and inaptitude for motion.
Birkin, who took umbrage at this poor author’s petulance in pre-
suming to joke upon a man so much richer than himself, told him,
he was not so unweildy but that he could move the Marshalsea
court for a writ, and even overtake him with it, if he did not very
speedily come and settle accounts with him, respecting the expence
of publishing his last Ode to the king of Prussia, of which he had
sold but three, and one of them was to Whitefield the methodist.
Tim affected to receive this intimation with good humour, saying,
he expected in a post or two, from Potsdam, a poem of thanks from
his Prussian majesty, who knew very well how to pay poets in their
own coin; but, in the mean time, he proposed, that Mr. Birkin and
he should run three times round the garden for a bowl of punch,
to be drank at Ashley’s in the evening, and he would run boots
against stockings. The bookseller, who valued himself upon his
mettle, was persuaded to accept the challenge, and he forthwith
resigned his boots to Cropdale, who, when he had put them on,
was no bad representation of captain Pistol in the play.
Every thing being adjusted, they started together with great
impetuosity, and, in the second round, Birkin had clearly the
advantage, larding the lean earth as he puff’d along. Cropdale had
no mind to contest the victory further; but, in a twinkling, dis-
appeared through the back-door of the garden, which opened into
a private lane, that had communication with the high road.—The