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

SANCIIO.

Then go to the devil and iaake yourself !
[Exit.
APOLLODORUS.
The foul fiend seize thee and thy cauliflowers !
I was indeed a most egregious ass
To take this lubber clodpole for a bard,
Aud worship that dull fool. Pythias Apollo
Hear me-0 hear ! Towards the ffnnament
I gaze with longing eyes ; and, in th® name
Of millions th irsting for poetic draughts,
I do !mooch thee, 'mad a poet dm

Let him descend, E'en as a meteor falls,
Rushing at noonday—
Vie is crushed by the fall of the
body of HAVEBILLO.
Is not this, wo 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 bathe
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
warps 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 will 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
pausing for a moment in the foggy wilderness—
Where am I ? If my mind deceives me not,
Upon that common where, two years ago,
Au 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 bkvom !
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,
And durst not lower my celestial flight
To care for such an insect-worm as he !
How cold it is ! The mist comes thicker on.
Ha !—What is that ? I see around me lights
Dancing and flatting, yet they do not seem
Like torches either - and there's music too !
I'll pause and listen.
Chorus of IGNUS Flan.
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, hark ! 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 JONES FATUI.
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 farther 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 Appolo weeps fur him who sleeps,
Alas ! on a hard and a stony pillow—
Haverillo ! Haverillo I
_ FIEMILIAN.

I shall go mad !
Chorus of IGNES PAWL
Give him some respite—give him some praise—
One good deed he has done in his days ;
Chaunt it, ant sing it, and tell it in chorus—
He has flattened the cockscomb of Apollorous !
FIRMILIAN.
Shall 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 wuy yet further.
Chorus of IGNES
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 1
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 !
[FIRMILIAN fags into the quarry. The IGNES
FAvur 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
tade 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 'tie
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 oven by our
childreu—says

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 Firmihan
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
I With as strong paddles as the sturdiest ship
That churns Meduso3 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 laud,
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, aro you ?"
I have reviewed myself incessantly—
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, in some fit of loathing or disgust,
As Samuel turned from Eli's coarser son,
Mine ancient playmate bath deserted me.
And yet I am Apollodorus still !
I search for genius, having it 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.
Ha! what seraphic melody is this ?
Whereupon, as we have before seen, enters Sancho,
a costernionger. The sequel will be remembered:
And with that sequel that snatch of the chorus of
irleeshpiatsevni:oinhihmis some praise—
Ono se
goodFh iamt
deedusio—m e
tell it in chois—
Chauut it, and sing it, am
He has flattened the cockscomb of Apollodorus."
I days
Is it not just possible, again, we I:
" Graduate"aslat Ini'motnjiunsgt
possible to recognise in the
ten,and then answer
_..—is it
of the Oxford Graduatoe
whether these words f?theLis Graduate are not the
words of—

Mit. 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 bath 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 square-cut weary stone
A thousand workmen's souls are pent alive !
And therefore I declare them all accurs'd.

PRIEST.
Pomo, lon I Thou ray*

Knglish
frish
Foreign

GRADUATE.
Do I rave inciAin-
So raved the Prophets when they told the truth
To Israel's stubborn councillors and kings—
So
raved Cassandra, when in Hector's ear
She ahrieked the presage of his comi4igiall:?,f t••*94"
I am a prophet also —and I say
That o'er those stones wherein you place your pride
Annihilation waves her dusky wing,
Yea, do not marvel if the earth itself, y 'EP-14;
Like a huge giant, weary of the load, 41. -
Should heave them from its shoulders. I havial'esiti ft .1 "::!,
It is my purpose, and they all shall down !" eb
Lastly, there is another personage here depicted—.
one Tenfelsdrockh. Hear how he is described b
one of the dramatis personce, in this ".spasmodic .
,t
tragedy" of Firmilian, and say whether thedescrip. :f
not the description (to a T) of—
tionis

``

Mit. CARLYLE.
SECOND GENTLEMAN.
There was a fellow, too, an Anabaptist,
Or something of the sort from the Low Countries,
ejoinCiont namekginnotycheforwhat
of
particularTeifelsdriiscinkh
I do
He stood condemned ; but it was noised abroad
That, in all his ways, he was a heretic. • .
Six times the Inquisition held. debate
Upon his
is
hteenlaertgs,ealynddivdouacvhail vouchsafed him speech,
But they
thycaonultdhscio,i
'E
thatno nhieeamnoinstgefarronmesthliys words,
Further
Denounced all systems, human and divine.
And so, because the weaker sort of men
Aro oft misled by babbling, as the bees
Hive at the clash of cymbals, it was deemed
A duty to remove him. He, too, spoke.
that never in your life, sir, did you hear
Such hideous jargon ! The distressing screech
Of wagon-wheels ungreased was music 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 flunkeyism,
Unwisdoms, 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 had some flavour in't ;
The other's was most tedious.
With these three brilliant portraits—from. the life
and to the life—close we our notice of Funtrriim-
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 langhteri
moving tragedy, given a death-blow with his dagger
of satire to the whole school of the Spasmodic& -

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 add
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 hint 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, whoappeared 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 101. 10s., with intend to defraud.

Mr. Bodkin 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 be had met several boys in 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 Messrs. 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
Fr 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 length
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 IVE WS--(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 former
terms.

In malt next to nothing passing.
We had a slow inquiry for oats, yet prices were rip.
ported.
Beans, peas, and flour were unaltered in value.
Aaniv&Ls THIS wraa.
'Cheat. I Barley. I Malt. ( Oats.
610 ) 2,220 J 750
1,550
4,490 I 2.010 --- 3,531

Floor,
2SO

ske
3,180brl

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