. The choice works of Thomas Hood, in prose and verse. miitedvicre new and strange to the place. The first and second tiers, With dreadful faces throngd, and fiery arms, showed like those purgatorial circles sung of by the ancient Florentine^-Satan was in the stage-box. The pit, dismally associated with its bot-tomless namesake, was peopled with fiends. Mehu scowled from thecritics seat. I^elial, flushed with wine, led on with shout and catcallthe uproar of the one-^hilling infernals. My hair stood upright withdread and horror; I had an appalling sense that more than my drama-tic welfare was a
. The choice works of Thomas Hood, in prose and verse. miitedvicre new and strange to the place. The first and second tiers, With dreadful faces throngd, and fiery arms, showed like those purgatorial circles sung of by the ancient Florentine^-Satan was in the stage-box. The pit, dismally associated with its bot-tomless namesake, was peopled with fiends. Mehu scowled from thecritics seat. I^elial, flushed with wine, led on with shout and catcallthe uproar of the one-^hilling infernals. My hair stood upright withdread and horror; I had an appalling sense that more than my drama-tic welfare was at stake :—tiiat it was to be not a purely literary alarming figure, sometimes a newspaper reporter, sometimes adevil, so prevaricating are the communications of sleep, was sitting,with his note-book, at my side. My play began. As it proceeded,sounds indescribable arose from the infernal auditory, increasing tillthe end ot the first act. The familiar cry, of Choose any oranges ! was then intermmgled with the murmurings of demons The tumult. Oh, breathe not liis name ? grew With the progress of the play. The last act passed in dumb show,the horned monsters bellowing, throughout, like the wild bulls ofBashan. Prongs and flesh-hooks showered upon the stage. MrsSiddons—the human nature thus jumbling with the diabolical—wasstruck by a brimstone bail. Her lofty brother, robed in imperial purple,came forward towards the orchestra, to remonstrate, and was receivedlike the Arch-devil in the Poem : He hearsOn all sides, from inniimernble tongues,A dismal universal hiss, the soundOf public scorn. ts8 A DREAM. He bowed to the sense of the house, and withdrew. My doom wassealed; the recording devil noted down my sentence. A suffocatingvapour, now smelling of sulphur, and now of gas, issued from tiieunquenchable sta;^e-lamps. The flames of the Catalonian ,burning m the back scene, in compliance with the cntastrophe of thepiece, blazed up with horrible import. My flesh cr
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, bookidchoiceworkso, bookyear1881
