Despite his worship of Lavinia, whom he elevated into a sort of divinity, and who satisfied the more refined part of his nature and his love of romance, he was not insensible to the animal charms of Sally Salisbury.

The cunning jade was familiar with all the arts of her profession.

She knew how to kiss, and the kiss she bestowed upon him in the park haunted him just as did the kiss he had received whether he would or not on the night when she sheltered him in her house.
Thus it came about that the despondent young man was torn between varying emotions, and by the time he was within hail of Grub Street he was without will of his own and at the mercy of any who chose to exercise influence over him.
Chance led him to encounter a party of boon companions whose company he had vowed to relinquish.

One of these was in funds, having abandoned political pamphleteering for the writing of biographies of notorious personages, both men and women--the latter preferably--in which truth and fiction were audaciously blended, and the whole dashed with scandalous anecdotes which found for such stuff a ready sale.
Jarvis and his friends having had their fill of liquor at one tavern, were proceeding to another when they met Lancelot Vane, and they bore him away without much protest.

It was by no means the first time that Vane had drowned his sorrows in drink.
Meanwhile Rofflash was on the prowl.