SQUARE BELOW THE PILLAR.
Enter Apollodorus, a Critic.
Why do men call me a presumptuous cur,
A vapouring blockhead, and a turgid fool,
A common nuisance, and a charlatan?
I’ve dashed into the sea of metaphor
With as strong paddles as the sturdiest ship
That churns Medusæ 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—I 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 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,
Mine ancient playmate hath 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?
Enter Sancho, a Costermonger, singing.
Down in 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 litter, and three for the teat—
Hark to their music, Juanna my sweet!
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 onions? 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? There’s nothing like your radish for cooling the blood and purging distempered humours.
Apollodorus.
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 your head. Once for all, will you buy my radishes?
Apollodorus.
No!
Sancho.
Then go to the devil and shake 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,
And worship that dull fool. Pythian Apollo!
Hear me—O hear! Towards the firmament
I gaze with longing eyes; and, in the name
Of millions thirsting for poetic draughts,
I do beseech thee, send a poet down!
Let him descend, e’en as a meteor falls,
Rushing at noonday——
[He is crushed by the fall of the body of Haverillo.
We then find Firmilian wandering among the mountains, and lavishing a superfluity of apostrophe upon the rocks, forests, and cataracts around him. Whatever may be his moral deficiencies, we are constrained to admit that he must have studied the phenomena of nature to considerable purpose at the University of Badajoz, since he explains, in no fewer than twelve pages of blank verse, the glacier theory, entreating his own attention—for no one is with him—to the striated surface of rocks and the forcible displacement of boulders. He then, by way of amusement, works out a question in conic sections. But, notwithstanding these exercitations, he is obviously not happy. He is still as far as ever from his grand object, the thorough appreciation of remorse—for he can assign a distinct moral motive for each atrocity which he has committed. He at last reluctantly arrives at the conclusion that he is not the party destined—
To shrine that page of history in song,
And utter such tremendous cadences,
That the mere babe who hears them at the breast,
Sans comprehension, or the power of thought,
Shall be an idiot to its dying hour!
I deemed my verse would make pale Hecate’s orb
Grow wan and dark; and into ashes change
The radiant star-dust of the milky-way.
I deemed that pestilence, disease, and death
Would follow every strophe—for the power
Of a true poet, prophet as he is,
Should rack creation!
If this view of the powers of poets and poetry be correct, commend us to the continuance of a lengthened period of prose!
Firmilian then begins to look about him for a new subject, and a new course of initiative discipline. Magic first occurs to him—but he very speedily abandons that idea, from a natural terror of facing the fiend, and a wholesome dread of the Inquisition. He admits having made already one or two experiments in that line, and narrates, with evident horror, how he drew a chalk circle in his apartments, kindled a brazier, and began an incantation, when suddenly a lurid light appeared in the sockets of a skull upon the shelf, and so nearly threw him into convulsions that he could barely mutter the exorcism. (It appears, from another part of the poem, that this exploit had been detected by his servant, a spy of the Inquisition, in consequence of his having neglected to erase the cabalistic markings in chalk, and was of course immediately reported.) At last he determines to fall back upon sensuality, and to devote his unexampled talents to a grand poem upon the amours of the Heathen deities. He states, with much show of truth, that the tone of morals which an exclusively classical education is apt to give, cannot but be favourable to an extensive and sublime erotic undertaking—and that the youthful appetite, early stimulated by the perusal of the Pantheon, and the works of Ovid, Juvenal, and Catullus, will eagerly turn to anything in the vernacular which promises still stronger excitement. We shall not venture, at the present, to apply ourselves seriously to that question.
That Firmilian—for we shall not say Mr Percy Jones—was well qualified for such an undertaking as he finally resolved to prosecute, must be evident to every one who has perused the earliest extract we have given; and we shall certainly hold ourselves excused from quoting the terms of the course of study which he now proposes to himself. Seriously, it is full time that the prurient and indecent tone which has liberally manifested itself in the writings of the young spasmodic poets should be checked. It is so far from occasional, that it has become a main feature of their school; and in one production of the kind, most shamefully bepuffed, the hero was represented as carrying on an intrigue with the kept-mistress of Lucifer! If we do not comment upon more recent instances of marked impurity, it is because we hope the offence will not be repeated. Meantime, let us back to Firmilian.
As he approaches the catastrophe, we remark, with infinite gratification, that Mr Percy Jones takes pains to show that he is not personally identified with the opinions of his hero. Up to the point which we have now reached, there has been nothing to convince us that Jones did not intend Firmilian to be admired—but we are thankful to say that before the conclusion we are undeceived. Jones, though quite as spasmodic as the best of them, has a sense of morals; and we do not know that we ever read anything better, in its way, than the following scene:—