Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 102.djvu/155

Rh now sonorously musical, as well as flights of rhodomontade the most ludicrous, and ravings in King Cambyses' vein the most bombastic, and farcical associations duly accommodated to the theme. Such a synthesis of antitheses, such a composition of opposing forces, is, indeed, characteristic of the writer, who loves to dally between jest and earnest, and to show that he can be a poet while he chooses to be a parodist. Placed between the serious and the comic Muses, he pays court to both, not in succession but at once; and instead of singing, "How happy could I be with either, were t'other dear charmer away," he makes himself happy in the dual number, and will on no account let go his hold of either.

Amusing and effective as "Firmilian" is, it is not, however, so effective or amusing as its clever writer might have made it. He has made too much of it in one way, and not enough in another. Too long and too complicated for a mere jeu d'esprit, it is too brief and fragmentary to answer its own purpose. It drags at times. The wit is often in high condition, and sparkles with effervescent "up-pishness;" but not unfrequently it has the look and taste of heel-tap, without body, soul, or spirit. Or it may be, after all, our inability to descry the dramatist's scope; and our own eye, instead of his wit, that is dull as ditch-water: certainly we do not pretend to be sure of all his side-blows and allusions, many of which may, to the fully initiated, be very telling, though they do not tell upon us. One or two of the most decided personalities and most palpable hits we will quote, in such piecemeal shape as our limits allow. About these there can be no mistake; and we prefer giving a taste of the quality of "Firmilian" in this fashion, to sketching an outline of the action, which is designedly preposterous, though such an outline would by no means be more difficult in the case of the parody, despite its extravagant and erring spirit, than in those of the furibund life-and-death-and-judgment dramas which it "takes its change out of."

Those who remember the sort of reception Blackwood vouchsafed to the Latter-day Pamphlets, will be prepared for the following masque of the pamphleteer:

There was a fellow, too, an Anabaptist,

Or something of the sort, from the Low Countries,

Rejoicing in the name of Teufelsdröckh.

I do not know for what particular sin

He stood condemned; but it was noised abroad

That, in all ways, he was a heretic.

Six times the Inquisition held debate

Upon his tenets, and vouchsafed him speech,

Whereof he largely did avail himself.

But they could coin no meaning from his words,

Further than this, that he most earnestly

Denounced all systems,human and divine.

…. He,too,spoke.

But never in your life, sir, did you hear

Such hideous jargon. The distracting screech Of waggon-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, jötuns, windbags, owls,

Choctaws and horsehair, shams and flunkeyism.

Unwisdoms, Tithes, and Unveracities.