FIRMILIAN. THIS "Tragedy," pronounced to be one of the cleverest satires of the age, ranking with CANNING'S ANTI-JACOBIN papers, and the amusing reproductions of different authors in the REJECTED ADDRESSES, is from the pen of W. E. AYTOUN, the son-in-law of Christopher North, (the late poet Wilson,) the present editor of Blackwood's Magazine, and one of the joint writers of the “ Bon Gaultier" Ballads, and author, himself, of the Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers, acknowledged to be the best poems of the kind since SIR WALTER SCOTT'S "Lay" and "Marmion." FIRMILIAN is a hit at many vulnerable authors of the day, as CARLYLE, GILFILLAN, TENNYSON, and particularly ALEXANDER Smith, whose "Life Tragedy" probably suggested the work. The various extravagances of these authors are hit off in the poem of FIRMILIAN. As a key to the personages, T. Percy Jones is doubtless Smith; Apollodorus is Gilfillan, as a representative of the poetical puffing school; Mariana is in compliment to Tennyson; the Uncle Tom School is in for a pretty hard hit; while much of the machinery is a travesty of Festus and Faust. The versification is as good as the wit, and both are exquisite. The work originated in a quizzing article by its author, which attracted great attention, a few months since, in Blackwood. Now Published, by the same Author: THE BOOK OF BALLADS: EDITED BY BON Gaultier. LAYS OF THE SCOTTISH CAVALIERS. In Preparation: THE DUNSHUNNER PAPERS: By W. E. AYTOUN. 12mo. ALSO: SATIRE AND SATIRISTS: BY JAMES HANNAY; a companion volume to Hazlitt's Comic Writers, and Thackeray's English Humorists. |