'Faith, when I heard him railing in crank terms,
And dislocating language in his howl
At Phantasm Captains, Hair-and-leather Popes,
Terrestrial Law-words, Lords, and Law-bringers,—
I almost wished the Graduate back again:
His style of cursing had some flavour in't;
The other's was most tedious.
Now for that Graduate. Again we may assume, that whoso remembers how Blackwood dealt with Ruskin's Lectures, will be prepared for the scene between }}A Priest and a Graduate:"
Graduate. Believe me, father, they are all accurs'd!
These marble garments of the ancient gods,
Which the blaspheming hand of Babylon
Hath gathered out of ruins, and hath raised
In this her dark extremity of sin. …
Call them not Churches, father, call them prisons;
And yet not such as bind the body in,
But gravestones of the soul! For, look you, sir,
Beneath that weight of square-cut weary stone
A thousand workmen's souls are pent alive!
And therefore I declare them all accurs'd.
Priest. Peace, son! thou ravest.
Graduate.Do I rave indeed?
So raved the Prophets, when they told the truth
To Israel's stubborn councillors and kings—
So raved Cassandra, when in Hector's ear
She shrieked the presage of his coming fall.
I am a prophet also,—and I say
That o'er those stones, wherein you place your pride,
Annihilation waves her dusky wing;
Yea, do not marvel if the earth itself,
Like a huge giant, weary of the load,
Should heave them from its shoulders. I have said it.
It is my purpose, and they all shall down!
Later in the piece, the Graduate is walked off by the Inquisition satellites to an auto-da-fé, for his "monstrous deed in blowing up the church." At the pile, having craved and obtained the Inquisitor's permission to say a word or two,—
His speech was worse than any commination.
He curs'd the city, and he curs'd the church;
He curs'd the houses, and he curs'd their stones.
He curs'd, in short, in such miraculous wise,
That nothing was exempted from his ban;
and albeit the indignant populace hailed him with a whole storm of cats and baser missiles,
Yet he curs'd on, till the familiars gagg'd him—
Bound him unto the stake, and so he died.
Excellent fooling, possibly, of its kind. But if the Graduate never meets with more damaging onslaught than this, he can afford to be tolerably quiet from fear of evil. Far more pungent is the ensuing account of the North country gentleman who signs himself Apollodorus and "does"
