k we it!--SAV. and LUC. die just as POPE appears over ridge,
followed by retinue in full cry.--POPE'S annoyance at being foiled
is quickly swept away on the great wave of Shakespearean chivalry and
charity that again rises in him. He gives SAV. a funeral oration similar
to the one meant for him in Act IV, but even more laudatory and more
stricken. Of LUC., too, he enumerates the virtues, and hints that the
whole terrestrial globe shall be hollowed to receive her bones. Ends
by saying: In deference to this our double sorrow | Sun shall not shine
to-day nor shine to-morrow.--Sun drops quickly back behind eastern
horizon, leaving a great darkness on which the Curtain slowly falls.

All this might be worse, yes. The skeleton passes muster. But in the
attempt to incarnate and ensanguine it I failed wretchedly. I saw that
Brown was, in comparison with me, a master. Thinking I might possibly
fare better in his method of work than in my own, I threw the skeleton
into a cupboard, sat down, and waited to see what Savonarola and those
others would do.

They did absolutely nothing. I sat watching them, pen in hand, ready to
record their slightest movement. Not a little finger did they raise.
Yet I knew they must be alive. Brown had always told me they were quite
independent of him. Absurd to suppose that by the accident of his
own death they had ceased to breathe.... Now and then, overcome with
weariness, I dozed at my desk, and whenever I woke I felt that these
rigid creatures had been doing all sorts of wonderful things while my
eyes were shut. I felt that they disliked me. I came to dislike them in
return, and forbade them my room.

Some of you, my readers, might have better luck with them than I. Invite
them, propitiate them, watch them! The writer of the best Fifth Act sent
to me shall have his work tacked on to Brown's; and I suppose I could
get him a free pass for the second night.

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