Let not ambition mock their useful toil, their homely joys nor destiny obscure, nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smile the short and simple -

Thank you Mr Gray, quite enough of your patronising guff, please remain in the graveyard until called.

But ambition is rather out of fashion. Homely joys are all the rage. Shooting for the stars now involves aiming only at those closest to earth. If Dickens were writing today he might well be composing Moderate Expectations.

TV viewers may recall the disappointing Rhodes drama series on the BBC some months ago. It may well be that the series failed because epic tales of grand ambition (whether realised or not) are no longer popular. Cecil Rhodes's mission statement, at the age of 19, included "the bringing of the civilised world under British rule and the recovery of the United States of America", and I recall my esteemed colleague, TV critic, Eddie Holt, contrasting this at the time with "own poor craturs, who would be happy with getting the points to secure a place in college".

Ambition itself has changed in other ways, as was revealed when a woman named Susan Constable recently sued a dating agency for introducing her to a series of Mr Wrongs. It is peculiar incidentally that our telephone directories list so many Mr Wrights and no Wrongs at all (that I know of), and yet unfortunate women meet Mr. Wrong all the time. (And no number of Wrongs will make a Wright). Perhaps women should be more wary of all men with unlisted numbers.

Anyway. Those not familiar with the story might imagine Ms Constable had set her sights optimistically high; but in reality she claimed to have sought only "a non-smoker who could drive". This certainly narrows the field, but hardly clears it of potential mates. Possibly before approaching the agency she had first tried the personal columns (where by all accounts the odds are good, but the goods are odd).

A female commentator in the Observer subsequently described this attitude of limited aspiration as "a classic female mistake": Ms Barbara Ellen said it would come as no surprise to learn "that Eve moped around the Garden of Eden, confiding to her mates that all she wanted from life was a man with 11 ribs and a good sense of humour".

Or perhaps all Eve wanted was mates in whom to confide, and no man at all. Who can say?

I cannot get into "what women want" here, my space being limited to some five million words. A "classic female mistake" it may well be (though no man would be allowed get away unscathed with such a pronouncement), but that is hardly very gratifying for anyone eventually chosen as Mr Right. No one has considered what it must be like for a man to discover his wife or girlfriend has "settled" for him, not having set her sights any higher. "Darling, you were the height of my ambition, all I ever wanted" is hardly a line likely to boost male self-confidence. Incidentally, if Ms Constable (who may have a policing streak in her) is successful in her legal action, many women may like to know if a statute of limitations applies.

And if she is successful, other dating agencies may have to reconsider their approach to clients. I notice that " Who's Who for the Unattached", which advertises on the back page of this newspaper, has recently been warning off the kind of client it does not wish to attract. A typical advertisement for this company reads: "Dishonest, unfriendly, hirsute lady seeks. . .DON'T CALL US. Everybody else can." But everybody else clearly can't, since the agency has to date also warned off an aesthetically challenged, ill-mannered octogenarian, an incredibly unpleasant cantankerous woman (raw garlic enthusiast), an insincere, bad-humoured, dull gent and a boring, unattractive halitosis sufferer. (I am quoting directly from the advertisements). That means at least five people have been shunned by the agency.

This seems a little inadvisable. In the first place, any of these individuals might well recognise their description and take it amiss. And if the agency is implying it only deals in attractive people (indeed almost perfect people, from its own perspective) then it may be open to legal action by a disgruntled client if someone not up to scratch slips through the net.