The Sun.
London, England, 1854-08-16 00:00:00

THE NEW SATIRE.

Firmilian ; or, the Student of Badajoz. A Spas-
modic Tragedy, By T. Percy Jones. Black-
wood and Sons.
Whoever wrote this " spasmodic tragedy" ;of
Firmilian is evidently one well qualified to—
" Laugh and shake in Rabellais' easy chair."
For we accept it, at once, not, as a weekly contem-
porary has already somewhat egregiously done, as
a serious effort at the sublime, but as a sly satire
on the spasmodic school of poetry rather popular of
late among -certain young poetasters of the present
generation—in other words, as a fresh and lively
illustration of the result of the " one step" beyond
the sublime--into the region of the ridiculous.
The truth of this, we take it, is emblazoned upon
the very title-page. The author's name there given
we receive without an instant's hesitation as a
simple nom de
plume. Nay—we are almost dis-
posed to reiterate our recognition of the veritable
" Simon Pure" through the harlequin mask of T.
Percy Jones, of Streatham—no other, let us say
candidly, as we have intimated before in these
columns, no other than W. Edmonstoune Aytouri, of
Edinburgh. We suspected that one of the twin
humorists to whom we have been indebted so often
long ago for many a hearty guffaw over the gay
" Ballads of Bon Gaultier," we suspected that one
of these delightful humorists had something to do
with the matter now in hand upon the occasion
when Firmilian was first introduced to the notice
of the reading public through extracts and critical
commentaries, the latter half solemn, half jocose,
in the May number of Blackwood's Magazine. We
acknowledged our conviction plainly, almost in so
many words, in The Sun of Monday evening, July
the 3d, our conviction that is, that " T. P. Jones"
was the alias of Aytoun, just as " Boz" was that
of Dickens, or as " Drapier" was that of
Swift, or as "M. A. Titmarsh" was that
of Thackeray. We are only confirmed in
this belief by reflection and after having read
through the whole Fifteen Scenes, extending
over 153 pages of the spasmodic tragedy of Firmi-
lian, now in its integrity or entirety issued in an
elegant little volume from the Messrs. Blackwood's
establishment. We may be mistaken, of course,
in our conjecture. But we cannot for the life of
us resist the notion that for this clever, humorous,
satirical " poem" we have reason to thank not a
T. P. Jones in the flesh, but a W. E. Aytoun in
the spirit, not a new and more preposterous poet-
ling of Cockaigne, but
It
• • • • He who sung
Of Mister Colt . •
• who framed
Of Widdicomb, the wild and wondrous song
who chaunted.

" How WOrds;orth battling for the laureat's wreath,
Bore to the dust the terrible Fitzball :
khliosdrgienagdsei:ftohre
the Snapping
glori
glories
Turtle's e 'tshwe ocmobm:
How N. P. Willis, for his country's good,
In complete steel, all bowie-knifed at point,
who, in his own grandiloquent L'Envoy, thus pre-
paresg tra-
vestie—
T
" For you, bright-harped' Tennyson shall sing -
Macaulay chaunt a more than Roman lay •
And Bulwer Lytton, Lytton Bulwer erst,
Unseen amidst a metaphysic fog,
Howl melancholy homage to the man ;
For you once more Montgomery shall rave
In all his rapt rabidity of rhyme ;
Nankeen'd Cockaigne shall pipe his puny note,
And our Young England's penny trumpet blow."
Open Firmilian, as every book should be opened,
at the beginning, and the method of its madness is
at once apparent. The tragic mask is awry—and
you see at a glance underneath the wrinkling lines
of laughter, the dimpling cheek, and the sparkling
eye of the humorist. The motley of the droll
glimmers out here and there through all the pomp
of the trappings donned by the assumed tragedian.
Firmilian (of course a poet) is seated (of course in
his study) reading—meditating a caracolle upon
the back of poor old hackneyed Pegasus, whereby
" to witch the world with noble horsemanship !"
Preparing, that is to say, for the production of a
poetic masterpiece such as shall [hear him, as he
himself describes it l]
" . . recreate stupendous harmonies,
More grand in diapason than the roll
Among the mountains of the thunder-psalm."
It is a favourite trick, this, of the Young Poets of
the Now—not, we may well believe, of the Here-
after ! Well, Firmilian, like so many brothers of
the lyre his contemporaries, aspires to write this
grand poem so often dreamt of of late, as he him-
self represents it—
" To make his song a trumpet, and to shake
The earth to its foundations."
He selects, as the fitting theme for the revelation
of his genius—CAIN—ignoring the existence, to be
sure, of a mere trifle upon the same subject like
Lord Byron's " Mystery. ' But—here is the diffi-
culty recognised by the student of Badajoz on the
instant. How befittingly describe the Remorse of
Cam without having first had experience of remorse
oneself? " Aye, there's the rub." Firmilian
asks himself—plump—in a single line, pregnant
with crimes to come by way of answer, this some-
what startling question—
" What do I know as yet of homicide ?"

His reply is no less tersely expressed, prompt, and
sententious " Nothing." Doubtless, however,
the words "as yet" have entered his mind as a
consolation. " What do I know as yet of homi-
cide 1" He may compensate by the Future for
any Past and Present deficiency. He may still
make up for lost time. His resolve is taken—to
do so ! Through homicide he m 4 be enabled at
length to realise remorse—and, having realised it,
he may write becomingly the biblical tragedy of
Cain. Having recognised this, he naturally enough
puts an end to all his doubts by declaring simply
—" It is resolved." First, however, for something
to inspirit him for the speedily carrying out his
determination.

" A draught of wine ! (Dries.)
"Ha ! this revives me !"
A melodramatic proceeding something kindred
to that of Mr. Richard Swiveller, when,
" leaning his left arm heavily upon the table
and raising his voice and his right leg after the
manner of a theatrical bandit" he inquired " The
Baron Sampson° Brass° and his fair sister are, (you
tell me) at the Play ?"
Or rather still more resem-
bling Mr. Swiveller's behaviour directly after-
wards, when exclaiming, ,6 'Ha ! 'Tis well. But
no matter. Some wine there. Ho !' he illustrated
these melodramatic morsels by handing the tan-
kard to himself with great humility, receiving it
Ftoirimnfiouramn.us
Refreshed thered
bth
haughtily, drinking from it thirstily, and smacking
his lips fiercely." As the historian takes occasion
amaze-
ment of the Marchioness. However, to return to
h tot 0 thefw i
n e,
the
Student of Badajoz thus expresses g the rapturous
effects of the potation, indicatingexpresses
atthe close
then
—much
its
efficacy in adding newforce to his resolve, about
winning Remorse through Homicide.
Like joy thro How
fthe nectar thrills
ugh all m
In the Pantheon that cYahrme ! There's not a god
Thou purple lipped Lyasu rival thee,
As thou art bounteous. '; And thou'rt strong
To stand beside the •t h Were I Ganymede,
Of the Olympian re pi c ers at the feast
vel, 'and to •
The foaming cups to Hebe give
To see thee trip u- :
I, iron
ho I'd laugh
Prostrate old Neptune. Vulcan's,rl4. heels,
With all his weight of armourfling bullying Mars,
Down with a clatter on the on his back,
heavenly floor !
Not Jove himself dare rial
Lord of the panthers ! Lo,a_fall. with thee,
And the high purpose of
tay/Rodrlnk again,
grows. firm,
As the sweet venom circles in u
It is resolved ! - Come, then my. veins—
With
G lt
Thou raven-mother,--eame
andrioua ui ,
„fill my cup
With thy black beverage.
table
Then comes, in inevi sequence, the inquiry—
" But the victim ?" Who is it to be ? His be-
loved Y—Lilian. - His betrothed ?—Mariana—of
the " moated grange." [Both, observe ! slyly re-
minding one of Tennysonian widens.) ...
His orien-
tal beauty 7—lndiana. One after another these
are rejected (for the present at least) as victims,
the destruction of whom would scarcely afford him
remorse sufficiently poignant--for his
purpose.
He resolves at length upon
killing—by poison
infused into the wine cups at a gay supper that
evening—his three intimate personal friends
and fellow-students, Garcia
Perez Alphonso
D'Aguilar, and Alonzo Olivarez. His project is
carried out, after a squabble about the sensuous, or
rather, we should say,
_the sensual, charms of a
negress, in the course of a n eniegiu_
m pronounced
upon whom Firmilian indicates for the first time--
and we rejoice to note also for the only time—his
right to his humorously affected position as a repre-
sentative of the Spasmodic School of Poetry, by an
outburst of gross and exaggerated pruriency. The
passage is absolutely revolting, from its rank volup-
tuousness. Reverting to the plot—the deed is, as
we have said, done, and done, too, most effectively,
but not by any means effectually. The first crime
is committed—Perez, D'Aguilar and Olivarez are
poisoned, dead, even interred--but, alas ! there is
no remorse afterwards for Firmilian. His earliest
adventure has failed deplorably. He must try
again—attempt some crime of larger and deadlier
atrocity. A hint is happily taken from a conver-
sation overheard by the Student of Badajoz—a
dialogue between a Graduate and a Priest in the
cloisters. The result of this hint, and of Firmilian's
after meditation over it, is magnificent. He turns
Guy Fawkes on a colossal scale—blows up a whole
cathedral, with its priests and its congregation.
Listen ! The scene is the " exterior of the Cathe-
dral of St. Nicholas—Choir heard chaunting with-
in." Enter Firmilian :
" How darkly hangs you cloud above the spire !
There's thunder iu the air
What if the flash
Should rend the solid walls, and reach the vault
1 Where my terrestrial thunder lies prepared,
And so, without tho action of my hand,

ING, AUGUST 16, 1854.

Whirl up those thousand bigots in its blaze,
And leave me guiltless, save in the intent?
" That were a vile defraudment of my aim.
A petty larceny o' the element,
An interjection of exceeding wrong !
Let the hoarse thunder rend the vault of heaven,
Yea, shake the stars by myriads from their boughs,
As Autumn tempests shake the fruitage down ;
Let the red lightning shoot athwart the sky,
Entangling comets by their spooming hair,
Piercing the zodiac belt, and carrying dread
To old Orion, and his whimpering hound ;
But let the glory of this dead be mine !
ORGAN and CHOIR.
s ad honore
• . Sublimatuin
Nicholai preiulis;
Pietatis ante rorem
Cunctis pluit populis :
Ut via parem nut majorem
Habeat in seculis.
FIRMILIAN.
Yet I weep to hear the wretches sing !
There rolls the organ anthem down the aisle,
And thousand voices join in its acclaim.
All they are happy—they are on their knees ;
Round and above them stare the images
Of antique saints and martyrs. Censers steam
With their Arabian charge of frankincense,
And every heart, with inward fingers, counts
A blissful rosary of pious prayer !'
And so the scene advances with the alternate
reveries of the Poet-Student and snatches of
Psalmody from the Organ and Choir within the
Cathedral—until the event arrives at its denoue-
ment. Firmiliau has been wavering somewhat in
his design, when he thus breaks from his previous
doubtings and bewilderment :
" I must be resolute. Lose this one chance,
Which bears me to th' Acropolis of guilt,
And this, our age, foregoes its noblest song.
I must be speedy—
ORGAN and CHOIR. -
A defunctis suscitatur
Fortum qui commiserat •
Et Judmus baptizatur
Furtum qui recuperat :
Illi vita restauratur,
Hic ad fidem properat.
FIRMILIAN.
No more was needed to confirm my mind !
That stanza blows all thoughts of pity off,
As empty straws are scattered by the wind !
For I have. been the victim of the Jews,
Who, by vile barter, have absorbed my means.
Did I not pawn—for that same flagrant stuff,
Which only waits a spark to be dissolved,
And, having done its mission, must disperse
As a thin smoke into the ambient air—
My diamond cross, my goblet, and my books?
What ! would they venture to baptise the Jew?
The cause assumes a holier aspect, then ;
And, as a faithful son of Rome, I dare
To merge my darling passion in the wrong
That is projected against Christendom !
Pity, avaunt ! I may not longer stay.
[Exit into the vaults. A short pause.
After which he re-appears.]
This done ! I vanish like the lightning bolt.
ORGAN and CHOIR.
Nicholai sacerdotum
Decus, honor, filoria
Plebem camera, clerum totum—

147.1;

[Thc Cathedral is blown up.]"

An episode, coming directly afterwards, one
relating the death of a covetous Confessor crushed
under the blows of a ponderous mace, wielded by
the armed effigy of the Cid, at the end of a sub-
terranean gallery—although indirectly another of
the crimes of Firmilian—demands nothing more
than a passing mention in the presence of his
more stupendous and more heinous blood-guilti-
ness. We follow him to the spot from which he has
himself witnessed the blowing-up of the cathedral
—the summit of the Pillar of Simeon St. Stylites.
[Another sly Tenuysonian reminiscence, observe !]
Firmilian loquitur

"'Twas a grand spectacle ! The solid earth
Seemed from its quaking entrails to eruct
The gathered lava of a thousand years,
Like an imposthunas bursting up from hell !
In a red robe of flame, the riven towers,
Pillars and altar, organ loft and screen,
With a singed swarm of mortals intermixed,
Were whirled in anguish to the shuddering stars,
And all creation trembled at the din.
It was my doing—mine alone ! and I
Stand greater b 3 this deed than the vain fool
That thrust his torch beneath Diana's shrine.
For what was it inspired Erostratus
But a weak vanity to have his name
Blaze out for arson in the catalogue?
•

And yet—and yet—what hoots the sacrifice'!"
Another failure ! The colossal homicide—the ho-
micide colossal in guilt, perched up on the top of
St. Simeon's column, discovers that in his last
effort to gain remorse he has been too wholesale.
What were these victims, he asks, who had gone
soaring up to heaven among the fragments of the
exploded cathedral?

" Nothing ! Mere human atoms, breathing clods,
Uninspired dullards, unpoetic slaves,
The rag, and tag, and bobtail of mankind.;
Whom having scorched to cinders, I no more
Feel ruth for what I did, than if my hand
Had thrust a stick of sulphur in the nest
Of some poor hive of droning humble-bees,
And smoked them into silence."
He is still lamenting over the blunder of his late
adventure, when, according to his own appoint-
ment, there comes panting and toiling up the spiral
staircase inside the Pillar, up to the narrow and
unguarded surface of its summit, Haverillo, an-
other student and poet of Badajoz, the friend of
Firmilian, ono who has lent Firmilian much
money, and whose kindly fellowship in many things
would seem to promise advantageously consider-
able remorse as the result of a cold-blooded
assassination. Firmilian is resolved to avail
himself of so tempting an opportunity. It were
needless to give the whole scene during the earlier
part of which the horrid purpose of his friend
gradually dawns upon the knowledge of Haverillo.
Its close, however, is too rich altogether to pass
unquoted. Haverillo has at last cried out—
" Madman, stand off !" —to which Firmilian
responds—

" There's but four feet of space
To spare between us. I'm not hasty, I !
Swans sing before their death, and it may be
That dying poets feel that impulse to :
Then, prythee, be canorous. You may sing
One of those ditties which have won you gold,
And my meek audience of the vapid strain
Shall count with Phoebus a full discharge
For all the ducats. Will you not begin ?

HAVERILLO.

Leave off this horrid jest, Firmilian !

FIRMILIAN.
Jest ! 'Tis no jest ! This pillar's very high—
Shout, and no one can hear you from the square—
Wilt sing, I say ?

HAVERILLO.
Listen, Firmilian
I have a third edition in the press,
Whereof the proceeds shall be wholly thine—
Spare me

FIRMILIAI,I.
A third edition ! Atropos—
Forgive me that I ta.ried !
HAVERILLO.

Mercy !—Ah !
[FiRmILIAN hurls him from the column.r,
The result of which is absolutely delicious in its
extravagance, beyond the death of Haverillo, that
of the critic Apollodorus. The meaning of the
satirist being more within the reach of general ap-
preciation, we would conjecture supposing we
were to print the name of the last mentioned per-
sonage somewhat differently, calling him not
" Apollodorus the Critic," but The Critic " Apol-
lodorus." Ho has been meditating in the Square
below the Pillar, this same ill-starred Apollodorus,
brooding over the thoughts consequent upon his
first inquiry—
" Why do men call me a presumptuous cur,
A vupouring blockhead, and a turgid fool,

A common nuisance, and a charlatan ?"
When [we cannot apologise for the length of our
quotation]—

Enter SANCHO, a Costerntonger, singing.
Down iu the garden behind the wall,
Merrily grows the bright-green leek;
The old sow grunts as the acorns fall,
The winds blow heavy, the little pigs squeak.
One for the littsr, and three for the teat—
Hark to the music, Juanna my sweat !

APOLLODORUS.
Now, heaven be thanked ! here is a genuine bard,
A creature of high impulse, one unsoiled
By coarse conventionalities of rule.
He labours not to sing, for his bright thoughts
Resolve themselves at once into a strain
Without the aid of balanced artifice.
All hail, great poet !

SANCHO.

Save you, my merry master ! Need you any leeks or
01110113? Here's the primest cauliflower, though I say it,
in all Badajoz. Set it up at a distance of some ten yards,
and I'll forfeit my ass if it does not look bigger than the
Alcayde's wig. Or would these radishes suit your turn t
There's nothing like your radish for cooling the blood and
purging distempered humours.

APOLLODORTIS.
I do admire thy vegetables much,
But will not buy them. Pray you, pardon me
For one short word of friendly obloquy.
Is't possible a being so endowed
With music, song, and sun-aspiring thoughts,
Can stoop to chaffer idly in the streets,
And, for a huckster's miserable gain,
Renounce the urgings of his destiny ?
Why, man, thine ass should be a Pegasus,
A sun-reared charger snorting at the stars,
And scattering all.the Pleiads at his heels—
Thy cart should be an orient-tinted car,
Such as Aurora drives into the day,
What time the rosy-fingered Hours awake—
Thy reins—
SANCHO.
Lookye, master, I've dusted a better jacket than yours
before now, so you had best keep a• civil tongue in you
head. Once for all, will you buy
IJmy radishes?
APOLLODORS.
No !
SANCHO.

Then go to the devil and shake yourself !
[Exit.
APOLLODORrs.
The foul fiend seize thee and thy cauliflowers
I was indeed a most egregious ass
To take this lubber clodpole for a bard,
And worship that dull fool. Pythi oa Apollo
Hear me-0 hear ! Towards the ffrmament
I gaze with longing eyes ; and, in the name
O?millions th jilting for poetic draughts,
I do beseech thee, send a poet down I

Let him descend, e'en as a meteor falls,
Rushing at noonday—
[He is crushed by the fall of the
body of HAVERILLO.
Is not this, we may ask, full justification of what
we have said about this scene's delicious extrava-
gance ? The one which occurs soon afterwards, the
garden scene where Mariana as the rose, Lilian asthe
lily, and Indiana as the night-stock, are introduced
to each other by Firmilian (to their mutual indig-
nation), we might be tempted to quote from in like
manner, but that the length to which our remarks
upon this spasmodic tragedy have already extended
warns us to draw our comments as speedily as may
be to a conclusion,- though not, let us admit, with-
out reluctance. Not without reluctance, fain as
we are to linger over a production the perusal of
which has afforded us so much genuine pleasure
and novel satisfaction. Never, perhaps, was a
satire penned with more rollicking abandon
than Firmilian. This the nature of the incidents
already mentioned iwill have sufficiently indi-
cated. It is revealed yet more, as by a sort of
climax of extravagance in the closing scene by
Night, in the midst of Fog and Mist, upon a Barren
Moor near Badajoz, where Firmilian, the hero, is
perceived through the " darkness visible" flying,
in a tardy remorse for his crimes, from the pursuit
of the avenging Familiars of the Inquisition.
Everything in this description is so wondrously
good, as constituting a burlesque " tail-piece" to
the whole performance, that we can by no means
refrain from giving it verbatim from the point
where the Student of Badajoz exclaims, while I
pausing for a moment in the foggy wilderness—
Where am I ? If my mind deceives me not,
Upon that common where, two years ago,
An old blind beggar came and craved an alms,
Thereby destroying a stupendous thought
Just bursting in my mind—a glorious bud
Of poesy, but blasted ere its bloom !
I bade the old fool take the leftward path,
Which leads to the deep quarry, where he fell—
At least I deem so, for I heard a splash—
But as I was gazing on the gibbous moon,
lowermy
ei ewleosrtmialasflhigehl
How flight
To care durst
cold it not
is
fo rsuc h anl
Ha !—What is that ? I see around me lights
insectThemst comes thicker on.
Dancing and flitting, yet they do not seem
Like torches either and there's music too , .
I'll pause and listen.
Chorus of IGNES FATUI.
Follow, follow, follow !
Over hill and over hollow ;
It is ours to lead the way,
When a sinner's footsteps stray—
Cheering him with light and song,
On his doubtful path along.
Hark, bark ! The watch-dog bark.
There's a cra-h, and a splash, and a blind man's cry,
But the Poet looks tranquilly up at the sky !
FIRMILIAN.
Is it the echo of an inward voice,
Or spirit-words that make my flesh to creep,
And send the cold blood choking to my heart ?
I'll shift my ground a little—
Chorus of IGNES FATIJI.
Flicker, flicker, flicker !
Quicker still, and quicker.
Four young men sate down to dine,
And still they passed the rosy wine;
Pure was the cask, but in the flask
There lay a certain deadly powder—
Ha ! his heart is beating louder !
Ere the day had passed away,
Gracia Perez lifeless lay
Hark ! his mother wails Alphonzo,
Never more shall strong Alonzo
Drink the wine of Ildefronso.
FIRMILIAN.
O horror ! horror ! 'twas by me they died:
I'll move yet fmther on—
Chorus of IGNES FATUI.
In the vaults under
Bursts the red thunder ;
Up goes the cathedral,
Priest, people, and bedral
Ho ! ho ! ho ! ho !
FIRMILIAN.
My brain is whirling like a potter's wheel !
O Nemesis !
Chorus of IGNES FATUI.
The Muses sing in their charm'd ring,
And Apollo weeps for him who sleeps,
Alas ! on a hard and a stony pillow—
Haverillo ! Haverillo !
FIRMILIAN.

I shall go mad !
Chorus of IGNES FATUI•
Give him some respite—give him some praise—
One good deed he has done in his days ;
Chaunt it, and sing it, and tell it in chorus—
He has flattened the cockscomb of Apollodorus !
FIRMILIAN.
Small comfort that ! The death of a shard-beetle,
Albeit the poorest and the paltriest thing
That crawls round refuse, cannot weigh a grain
Against the pondrous avalanche of guilt
That hangs above me ! ome miserable !
I'll grope my way yet further.
Chorus of IGNES FATUI.
Firmilian ! Firmilian !
What have you done to Lilian?
There's a cry from the grotto, a sob by the stream,
A woman's loud wailing, a little babe's scream !
How fared it with Lilian,
In the pavilion,
Firmilian, Firmilian !
FIRMILIAN.
Horror ! I'm lost !
Chorus of IGNES FATUI.
Ho! ho! ho!
Deep in the snow
Lies a black maiden from Africa's shore !
Hasten and shake her—
You never shall wake her—
She'll roam through the glens of the Atlas no more !
Stay, stay, stay !
This way—this way—
There's a pit before, and a pit behind,
And the seeing man walks in the path of the blind !
[FIR3fILIA.N falls into the quarry. The IGNES
FATUI dance as the curtain descends.
Terminating after this fashion, most appropriately,
amidst fog, and mist, and the dancing of ignes fatui,
the spasmodic tragedy of Firmilian. It must not,
however, be conjectured for a moment by those
who have not yet read Firmilian that it has no real
beauties mingled with its burlesque—nothing ex-
quisite amidst the intended bombast and rhodomon
tads of its extravagance. Any one may see through
all the roystering humour of the satire, that the
writer of the book is one who can appreciate true
poetry, and recognise with his own eyes and love
with his whole heart—the Beautiful. The Poet
we may detect through the Satirist, for example,
in a passage like that in which Firmilian apostro-
phises himself (p. 64) as—

" . . . thou, whose mission 'tis
To send vibration down the chord of time,
Unto its junction with eternity."
May we not perceive some glimpses, too, of the fas-
tidious taste of a not unripened scholarship where
our author (under the name of T. P. Jones), talking
of the dirty paths to learning trodden even by our
children—says
if
• • • That hog of Epicurus' sty,

The sensuous Horace ushers them along
To rancid Ovid. He prepares the way
For. loose Catullus, whose voluptuous strain
Is soon dismissed for coarser Juvenal."
And so on through a catalogue of prurient classics,
down "to the rank filth of Aristophanes." The
satiric power shown by the author of Firmiliau
may, even now, after all we have here observed
upon. it, be rendered yet more obvious by three
remarkable quotations. Quotations, through which
will be recognised clearly enough three of the
writer's immediate contemporaries. Foremost
among them comes one already mentioned—the
Critic Apollodorus. Is it not just possible that
under this fantastic semblance may be discerned ?

MR. GILFILLAN.
I've dashed into the sea of metaphor
With as strong paddles as the sturdiest ship
That churns Medusx into liquid light,
And hashed at every object in my way.
My ends are public. I have talked of men
As my familiars, whom I never saw.
Nay—more to raise my credit—l have penned
Epistles to the great ones of the land,
When some attack might make them slightly sore,
Assuring them, in faith, it was not I.
What was their answer? Marry, shortly this :
" Who, in the name of Zernebock, are you?"
I have reviewed myself inces3antly—
Yea, made a contract with a kindred soul
For mutual interchange of puffery.
Gods—how we blew each other ! But, 'tis past—
Those halcyon days are gone ; and, I suspect,
That, iu some fit of loathing or disgust,
As Samuel turned from Eli's coarser son,
Mine ancient playmate hath deserted me.
IA
search
ryceht
ra
genius, A pol 1 ohdaovriunsgs
ti l !
myself,
With keen and earnest longings. I survive
To disentangle, from the imping wings
Of our young poets, their crustaceous slough.
I watch them, as the watcher on the brook
Sees the young salmon wrestling from its egg
And revels in its future bright career.
'
Sancho,
Ha! what seraphic melody is this ?
Whereupon, as we have before seen, enters --
a costermonger. The sequel will be remembered.
And with that sequel that snatch of the chorus of
the Ignes Fatui—

" Give him some respite—give him some praise—
One good deed he has done in his days ;
Chauut it, and sing it, and tell it in chorus—
He has flattened the cockscomb of Apollodorus."
Is it not just possible, again, we ask—is it not just
possible to recognise in the " Graduate" a limning
of the Oxford Graduate ? Listen, and then answer
whether these words of the Graduate are not the
words of—

RUSKIN. •
" Believe me, father, they're all accurs'd
These marble garments of the ancient Gods,
Which the blaspheming hand of Babylon
Hath gathered out of ruins, and hath raised
In this her dark extremity of sin •
N tin the hour when she was sending forth
Her champions to the highway and the field,
To pine in deserts and to writhe in flame—
But in the scarlet frontage of her guilt,
When, not with purple only, but with blood,
Were the priests vested, and their festive cups
Foamed with the hemlock rather than the wine .
Call them not Churches, father—call them prisons ;
And yet not such as bind the body in,
But gravestones of the soul ! For, look you, sir,
Beneath that weight of sqt
uare-cut weary stone
A thousand workmen's souls are pent alive .
And therefore I declare them all accure'd.

rgigsr.
Peace, 1101: Thou rawest

English ..
Irish
Foreign ..

GRADIIATD.
Do I rave indeed! '
So raved the Prophets when they told the truth'
To Israel's stubborn councillors and kings
So raved Cassandra, when in Ilector't ear
She shrieked the presage of his coming fall
I am a prophet also —and I say •
That o'er those stones wherein you ida,oiryou
Annihilation waves her dusky wing; -•••--
Yea, do not marvel if the earth itself, =. '"
Like a huge giant, weary of the load,
Should heave them from its shoulders. I turn, snit it.
It is my purpose, and they all shall doirii - I
Lastly, there is another personage hereraepietal—
Teufelsdr6ckh. Hear how he is described by
.
one-of.. the dramatts personot,_iti this " spasni6die
tragedy" of Firrailian, and say*hether the descrip-
tion is not the description (to a T) of—

~~,

CAELYLX.
SECOND GENTLEMAN.
There was a fallow, too, an Anabaptist,
Or something of the sort from the. Low
IR edjoo inc iontgkinno
wt h
He stood condemned ; but it was nonidd abroso%
feonrarawheeotfpTaerutifceolsdarriSpkhi!l
That, in all ways, he was a heretic. fjf i r
Six times the Inquisition held debate ,r
WUphoenrehoifs vouchsafed
hteenlaertgs,e7ddida
eaai n
from
o speech,
himself.
mv
But they could coin no g fm hiswOrda,
Further than this, that he most earnestly
Denounced all systems, human and divine.
And so, because the weaker sortof men
Are oft misled by babbling, as the bees •
Hive at the clash of cymbals, it was deemed
A duty to remove him. He, too, spoke. .1„
But never in your life, sir, did you hear
Such hideous jargon l The distracting screech
Of waggon-wheels ungreased was musio to it ;
And as for meaning—wiser heads than mine
Could find no trace of it. 'Twas a tirade
About fire-horses, jiituns, windbags, owls
Choctaws and horse-hair, shams and finniceyism,
unwisdorns, Tithes, and Unveracities.
Faith, when I heard him railing in crank terms,
And dislocating language in his howl
At Phantasm Captains, Hair-and-leather Popes,
Terrestrial Law-words, Lords and Law-bringers,—
I almost wished the Graduate back again :
His style of cursing bad some flavour in't ;
The other's was most tedious.
With these three brilliant portraits—front the life
and to the life—close we our notice of FIRMILIIN
grateful to the humorous author of the volume, for
having (as we are sanguine that Time may prove
him to have done) through this one laughter-
moving tragedy, given a death-blow with his dagger
of satire to the whole school of the Spasmodics.

CRIMINAL COURT.-(THIS DAY).

OLD COURT.
(Before Mr. Justice Erle.)

George Mayhew, 18, was indicted for embezzling three
several sums of one penny each, the property of the Post-
master-General.

The prisoner pleaded guilty.
Mr. Clarkson stated that the prisoner had been in the
service of the Post-office, as a mail cart driver, and it
appeared that he was permitted to receive letters upon
his journey and to take a perquisite of a penny, in ad .
dition to the amount of the postage ; but it was his
duty to post the letters immediately upon his arrival at
the head office. Instead of doing so, however, it ap•
peared that in three instances he had not only kept the
pence given to him as perquisites, but also those that
were given him for the postage. The learned counsel
added that the prisoner was not in strictness in the
service of the Post-office, but that he had been several
years in the Post-office, and bore a good cha-
racter, and therefore there was no desire to press for
severe punishment.

Mr. Robinson, who appeared for the prisoner, said he
was instructed that upon his journey to town, the pri-
soner could not resist the temptation offered by a pie-
man, and spent all the money in pies. (A laugh.)
The prisoner was sentenced to three months' impri-
sonment and hard labour.

William, Coyle, 45, a respectable-looking man, de-
scribed as a chemist, was indicted for uttering a forged
cheque for 10/. 10s., with intend to defraud.
Mr. Bodkiii and Mr. Sleigh prosecuted. The pri-
soner was defended by Mr. Parry.
The offence with which the prisoner was accused ap-
pears to have been committed in a very ingenious man-
ner. It seemed that he had met several boys is the
street, and that he gave them a note to carry to different
tradesmen, and the answer was to be brought to him.
Every one of these notes contained a cheque drawn
upon Meisrs. Coutts and Co. for different amounts, and
they purported to be sent by customers of the different
tradesmen, requesting that the cheques might be cashed.
These facts were proved in three separate instances,
and in the last it happened, singularly enough, that when
the boy went into the tradesman's shop the customer
who was supposed to be making the request happened
accidentally to be in the shop at this time, and the at-
tempted fraud was, of course, discovered. The prisoner
was taken into custody shortly afterwards at a public-
! house in Lisle-street, and he was sworn to by the three
boys as being the man who gave them the letters. The
prisoner, it appeared, did not obtain any money in either
of the cases.

Mr. Parry addressed the jury at considerable lengtlA
for the prisoner, and contended that the evidence as to
his identity was not sufficiently conclusive, and upon this
ground he asked for his acquittal.

The jury, after a short deliberation, found the prisoner
guilty, and he was sentenced to be transported for
fifteen years.

MARKET NEW,S-(THIS DAY.)

CORN EXCHANGE.
A very limited supply of English wheat was on sale in
to-day's market. The demand for all kinds ruled very
inactive, at barely Monday's decline in the quotations.
The show of foreign wheat was moderately extensive.
Even the finest qualities ruled dull, but we have no actual
change to notice in prices. In floating cargoes next to
nothing was doing.
The barley trade was in a depressed state, on format'
terms.

In malt next to nothing passing.
We had a slow inquiry for oats, yet prices ►ore sup-
ported.
Beans, peas, and flour were unaltered in value.
ARRIVALS{ TLIIB WRIK.

Wheat.
610

Barley.

Malt. Oata. Flour.
2,220 750 280
':1,560
3,531 aka
3,1110brl

s .....
4,00 i 2,010

7,

BOROUGH HOP.
The business doing is limited, yet prices are well sup-
ported.

WHITECHAPEL.

Each kind of meat sold heavily to-day, as follows :
Beef from 3s 4d to 4s 6d ; mutton, 3s 6d to 4s 10l ;
Od to 5s 2d ; veal, 2s 10.1 to 4s Ckl ; pork, Sa 4d t 44
4s &l per 81bs by the carcase.