Mercy!—Ah!—
[Firmilian hurls him from the column.
There is a grand recklessness and savage energy displayed in this scene, which greatly increases our admiration of the author’s abilities. He seems, indeed, in the fair way of making the spasmodic school famous in modern literature. With the death of Haverillo an ordinary writer would have paused—not so Percy Jones, who, with a fine aptitude for destruction, makes his hero, Firmilian, kill two birds with one stone. The manner in which he accomplishes this feat is most ingenious. He maintains the unity of the design by a very slight alteration of the locality. Whilst the two poets are ominously conversing on the summit of the pillar, a critic, affected by an intolerable itch for notoriety, is prowling in the square beneath—
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