Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/122

106 Behold, I come, sent from the Stygian sound, As a dire vapour that had cleft the ground, To ingender with the night, and blast the day ; Or like a pestilence that should display Infection through the world : which thus I do " [The curiam drmvs, and Catiline is discovered in his siudj:] If this trumpet-blast be uttered in "jagged, mis-shapen distiches," I make over my ears to the man who does the doleful elegies for Punch, that he may have a suitable second pair ready in case he should lose his own, which are generally recognised as the worst in the three kingdoms. This work, which is said to have been the author's favourite, was published in quarto in the same year, with a dedication, " To the Great Example of Honour and Virtue, the Most Noble William, Earl of Pem- broke," the son of Sir Philip Sidney's sister, to whom he also dedicated the Epigrams, and addressed No. 1 02. There were also prefixed characteristic ad- dresses to the Reader in Ordinary and to the Reader Extraordinary. To the first he says : " The muses forbid that I should restrain your meddling, whom I see already busy with the title and tricking over the leaves : it is your own. I departed with my right when I let it first abroad ; and now, so secure an interpreter I am of my chance, that neither praise nor dispraise from you can affect me. Though you commend the two first acts, with the people, because they are the worst ; and dislike the oration of Cicero [Act iv., Sc. 2], in regard you read some pieces of it at school and understand them not yet : I shall find the way to forgive you. Be anything you will at your own charge. . . . But I leave you to your exercise.