Captain Baskelett was gifted with the art, which is a fine and a precious one, of priceless value in society, and not wanting a benediction upon it in our elegant literature, namely, the art of stripping his fellow-man and so posturing him as to make every movement of the comical wretch puppet-like, constrained, stiff, and foolish.  He could present you heroical actions in that fashion; for example: 

’A long-shanked trooper, bearing the name of John Thomas Drew, was crawling along under fire of the batteries.  Out pops old Nevil, tries to get the man on his back.  It won’t do.  Nevil insists that it’s exactly one of the cases that ought to be, and they remain arguing about it like a pair of nine-pins while the Muscovites are at work with the bowls.  Very well.  Let me tell you my story.  It’s perfectly true, I give you my word.  So Nevil tries to horse Drew, and Drew proposes to horse Nevil, as at school.  Then Drew offers a compromise.  He would much rather have crawled on, you know, and allowed the shot to pass over his head; but he’s a Briton, old Nevil the same; but old Nevil’s peculiarity is that, as you are aware, he hates a compromise—­won’t have it—­retro Sathanas! and Drew’s proposal to take his arm instead of being carried pickaback disgusts old Nevil.  Still it won’t do to stop where they are, like the cocoa-nut and the pincushion of our friends, the gipsies, on the downs:  so they take arms and commence the journey home, resembling the best of friends on the evening of a holiday in our native clime—­two steps to the right, half-a-dozen to the left, etcaetera.’

Thus, with scarce a variation from the facts, with but a flowery chaplet cast on a truthful narrative, as it were, Captain Baskelett could render ludicrous that which in other quarters had obtained honourable mention.  Nevil and Drew being knocked down by the wind of a ball near the battery, ‘Confound it!’ cries Nevil, jumping on his feet, ’it’s because I consented to a compromise!’—­a transparent piece of fiction this, but so in harmony with the character stripped naked for us that it is accepted.  Imagine Nevil’s love-affair in such hands!  Recovering from a fever, Nevil sees a pretty French girl in a gondola, and immediately thinks, ’By jingo, I’m marriageable.’  He hears she is engaged.  ’By jingo, she’s marriageable too.’  He goes through a sum in addition, and the total is a couple; so he determines on a marriage.  ’You can’t get it out of his head; he must be married instantly, and to her, because she is going to marry somebody else.  Sticks to her, follows her, will have her, in spite of her father, her marquis, her brother, aunts, cousins, religion, country, and the young woman herself.  I assure you, a perfect model of male fidelity!  She is married.  He is on her track.  He knows his time will come; he has only to be handy.  You see, old Nevil believes in Providence, is perfectly sure he will one day hear it cry out, “Where’s Beauchamp?”—­“Here I am!”—­“And here’s your marquise!”—­“I knew I should have her at last,” says Nevil, calm as Mont Blanc on a reduced scale.’