Madman—stand off! FIRMILIAN. There’s but four feet of space To spare between us. I’m not hasty, I! Swans sing before their death, and it may be That dying poets feel that impulse too: Then, prythee, be canorous. You may sing One of those ditties which have won you gold, And my meek audience of the vapid strain Shall count with Phœbus as a full discharge For all your ducats. Will you not begin? HAVERILLO. Leave off this horrid jest, Firmilian! FIRMILIAN. Jest! ’Tis no jest! This pillar’s very high— Shout, and no one can hear you from the square— Wilt sing, I say? HAVERILLO. Listen, Firmilian! I have a third edition in the press, Whereof the proceeds shall be wholly thine— Spare me! FIRMILIAN. A third edition! Atropos— Forgive me that I tarried! HAVERILLO. Mercy!—Ah!— [FIRMILIAN _hurls him from the column_. There is a grand recklessness and savage energy displayed in this scene, which greatly increases our admiration of the author’s abilities. He seems, indeed, in the fair way of making the spasmodic school famous in modern literature. With the death of Haverillo an ordinary writer would have paused—not so Percy Jones, who, with a fine aptitude for destruction, makes his hero, Firmilian, kill two birds with one stone. The manner in which he accomplishes this feat is most ingenious. He maintains the unity of the design by a very slight alteration of the locality. Whilst the two poets are ominously conversing on the summit of the pillar, a critic, affected by an intolerable itch for notoriety, is prowling in the square beneath— SQUARE BELOW THE PILLAR. _Enter_ APOLLODORUS, _a Critic_.