Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 102.djvu/187

Rh Really quite Homeric—with a difference. This sort of thing would tell amazingly with the "three jolly butcher-boys all in a row." But again—Where, indeeed ! The Spasmodic School, this, with a vengeance. But again, list, list, oh list!—That cleaver's clanking will be the death of us, as it was of so many thousands in the era of the tragedy, with its running accompaniment of swoop, cut, crash, clink, chasm, flush, flash, gnash, spasm, and gurgle. But once more hark ye, my masters—Robespierre the younger is thus pictured, en route to the guillotine—While Robespierre's own appearance on the same platform is thus pictured—But all this scenery from the shambles is parenthetical: we close the parenthesis, and proceed with our elegant extracts from the Q. C .'s teeming stores of imagery.)

St. Just thus deals with a similitude borrowed from the drought parched steppes of Asia:Tallien, feeling himself talkatively-disposed, and altogether wolfish, exclaims—Who shall say Mr. Bliss is not original in his ideas and expressions?