Page:A happy half-century and other essays.djvu/220

 which he meant verse begged or ordered for some such desperate emergency as Lady Blessington's, was, in his eyes, an intellectual feat. It represented difficulties overcome, like those wonderful old Italian frescoes fitted so harmoniously into unaccommodating spaces. Nothing can be more charming than "Piscator and Piscatrix," and nothing can be more insipid than the engraving which inspired the lively rhymes:

The verses may be read in any edition of Thackeray's ballads; but when we have hunted