The abbreviating process is also tried on single words, as well as sentences and lines; as where Robespierre cries, "Why did I leave my native vill?" or where Tallien exclaims, "Come, penetrate that den of hyens." Old words, moreover, are used in a somewhat new fashion—as the word nape; e. g. in Tallien's vigorous outburst on Robespierre as one guilty
Of kindling Terror's trump to voice thy breath,
Debauching truth, demoralising death,
And brandishing an axe at every nape.
And again, D'Anglas, apparently recognising some significant distinction between the two nouns, inquires
Whose neck seemed safer than Desmoulin's nape?
Mark the phraseology as well as the modesty of Barrère in the lines—
Pause not to choose a chairman more condign.
Since honour's post is danger's, make it mine.
While Robespierre complains—
Me all insidiate, all calumniate still;
a façon de parler which reminds us of a speech of the first Lord Baltimore, as recorded by Madame d'Arblay: "I have been," said he, "upon a little excoriation to see a ship lanced, and you've no idiom how well it sailed." Plentiful illustrations might be adduced, too, of Mr. Bliss's fancy for antithesis, and a certain (or uncertain) epigrammatic construction,—as in Robespierre's warning,
Respect this edict! woe the wights that scorn!
'Twill bite and spit them in the ditch asunder,
Loathed for the crime, and laughed at for the blunder.
Or in Tallien's denunciation of him as
A traitor, tyrant, murderer, monster, fiend—
And, by those lips convulsed their smile beneath,
Coward in heart, and liar in thy teeth.
But the reader is probably, as the reviewer is certainly, weary; as weary as a grammar schoolmaster of inspecting the nonsense verses of his class. For this tragedy à posteriori sadly emphasises Mr. Moile's sly à priori remark, on receiving, in some consternation, his friend's five acts and forty-one scenes,—"your letter …. has given me some anxiety, as well on your account as my own. On yours, for there had existed till now, I thought, no indication that you were, for your sins, visited with poetic aspirations." If this sort of tragedy-writing argues foregone sin (or if not, but simply on its own account), the sooner Mr. Bliss cries Peccavi! the better.
