Her splendid prose Alvan could do what the sprig of poetry can but suggest.

Never would malicious fairy in old woman's form have offered Alvan a cup of milk to paralyze his bride's imagination of him confronting perils.

Yet, O shameful contrariety of the fates! he who could, will not; he who would, is incapable.

Let it not be supposed that the desire of her bosom was to be run away with in person.

Her simple human nature wished for the hero to lift her insensibly over the difficult opening chapter of the romance--through 'the forest,' or half imagined: that done, she felt bold enough to meet the unimagined, which, as there was no picture of it to terrify her, seemed an easy gallop into sunland .-- Yes, but in the grasp of a great prose giant, with the poetic departed! Naturally she turned to caress the poetic while she had it beside her.