University of Virginia Library

SCENE X.

Square below the Pillar.
Enter Apollodorus, a Critic.
Why do men call me a presumptuous cur,
A vapouring blockhead, and a turgid fool,
A common nuisance, and a charlatan?
I've dashed into the sea of metaphor
With as strong paddles as the sturdiest ship
That churns Medusæ into liquid light,
And hashed at every object in my way.
My ends are public. I have talked of men
As my familiars, whom I never saw.
Nay—more to raise my credit—I have penned
Epistles to the great ones of the land,
When some attack might make them slightly sore,
Assuring them, in faith, it was not I.
What was their answer? Marry, shortly this:
“Who, in the name of Zernebock, are you?”
I have reviewed myself incessantly—
Yea, made a contract with a kindred soul
For mutual interchange of puffery.
Gods—how we blew each other! But, 'tis past—
Those halcyon days are gone; and, I suspect,
That, in some fit of loathing or disgust,
As Samuel turned from Eli's coarser son,
Mine ancient playmate hath deserted me.
And yet I am Apollodorus still!
I search for genius, having it myself,
With keen and earnest longings. I survive
To disentangle, from the imping wings
Of our young poets, their crustaceous slough.
I watch them, as the watcher on the brook
Sees the young salmon wrestling from its egg,
And revels in its future bright career.
Ha! what seraphic melody is this?

Enter Sancho, a Costermonger, singing.
Down in the garden behind the wall,
Merrily grows the bright-green leek;
The old sow grunts as the acorns fall,
The winds blow heavy, the little pigs squeak.
One for the litter, and three for the teat—
Hark to their music, Juanna my sweet!

APOLLODORUS.
Now, heaven be thanked! here is a genuine bard,
A creature of high impulse, one unsoiled
By coarse conventionalities of rule.
He labours not to sing, for his bright thoughts
Resolve themselves at once into a strain
Without the aid of balanced artifice.
All hail, great poet!

SANCHO.

Save you, my merry master! Need you any

leeks or onions? Here's the primest cauliflower,
though I say it, in all Badajoz. Set it up at a
distance of some ten yards, and I'll forfeit my ass
if it does not look bigger than the Alcayde's wig.
Or would these radishes suit your turn? There's
nothing like your radish for cooling the blood
and purging distempered humours.

APOLLODORUS.
I do admire thy vegetables much,
But will not buy them. Pray you, pardon me
For one short word of friendly obloquy.
Is't possible a being so endowed
With music, song, and sun-aspiring thoughts,
Can stoop to chaffer idly in the streets,
And, for a huckster's miserable gain,
Renounce the urgings of his destiny?
Why, man, thine ass should be a Pegasus,
A sun-reared charger snorting at the stars,
And scattering all the Pleiads at his heels—
Thy cart should be an orient-tinted car,
Such as Aurora drives into the day,
What time the rosy-fingered Hours awake—
Thy reins—

SANCHO.

Lookye, master, I've dusted a better jacket than
yours before now, so you had best keep a civil
tongue in your head. Once for all, will you
buy my radishes?

APOLLODORUS.
No!

SANCHO.
Then go to the devil and shake yourself!

[Exit.
APOLLODORUS.
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 Haverillo.