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,