foregoer

Although each is complete in itself, this work and its foregoer, The Science of English Verse, were intended to be parts of a comprehensive philosophy of formal and substantial beauty in literature, which, unhappily, the author did not live to develop.

Number 69, a formidable foregoer, Mr. Everard Rosa von Meyern, had taken his aim--eager to cull this forbidden fruit--a Ribstone pippin and football fit for a very prince, such as this imperial apple, was a thing of too great price to be grasped for the sake of what was to be gained along with it--'twas honour alone that fired his heart--he pulled his trigger, and he might just as well have aimed in the opposite direction.

Confusion piled on confusion to your utmost horizon's edge; obscure in lurid twilight as of the shadow of death; trackless, without index, without finger-post, or mark of any human foregoer; where your human footstep, if you are still human, echoes bodeful through the gaunt solitude, peopled only by somnambulant pedants, dilettants, and doleful creatures, by phantasms, errors, inconceivabilities, by nightmares, pasteboard norroys, griffins, wiverns, and chimeras dire!

And now see: the second man travels naturally in the footsteps of his foregoer, it is the easiest method.

With a final rush the gaunt, travel-worn dogs galloped through the driving snow, and, eager for the shelter of the trading room, bolted pell-mell through the gathering at the doorway, upsetting several spectators before the driver could halt the runaways by falling headlong upon the foregoer's back and flattening him to the floor.