Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 102.djvu/159

Rh 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.

This too literal fulfilment of the suppliant's petition, is occasioned by Firmilian's hurling the said Haverillo, a well-to-do bardling, from the top of the pillar of St. Simeon Stylites, upon which Firmilian has taken an unfurnished lodging, and beneath which the ill-starred Apollodorus is standing when Haverillo comes down with a vengeance. In the dreadful finale, when Firmilian is hunted to despair and destruction by a set of ignes fatui, amid the damning charges they heap up against him they yet glance with indulgent tenderness on this one good deed, of which indirectly he was the doer, the consigning Apollodorus to "immortal smash." For they say—That the veritable Apollodorus will consider himself utterly smashed by the doughty Firmilian, is more than the most sanguine can expect. Doubtless he will be found alive and kicking in many a paulo-post-futurum "article," which, however and alas, the admirers of Bon Gaultier and readers of "Firmilian" are but too likely never to see or even hear of.

The extraordinary hero of Sydney. Yendys' unfinished magnum opus, is answerable for the vagaries and wickedness of Firmilian himself. The murderous empiricism of Balder is illustrated in the soliloquy on the summit of the Stylites' pillar, and that among the lonely mountains where the Student of Badajoz tries to feel the luxury of remorse, and doesn't, can't; no, not for the life of him. He has been as sinful as ever he could; has done to death a batch of his bosom cronies, and a nameless crowd besides; and yet he is unable to enjoy the excitement of a fevered conscience. He has been a wholesale and retail dealer in crime, but cannot make a comfortable return, cannot "realise" a new sensation, such as his soul lusteth after. "Three days have I," he plaintively murmurs,But he gets into trouble at last, with the Ignes Fatui, who lure him on to confusion and a quarry, on a certain barren moor, where, says he,