William Edmondstoune Aytoun is remembered today for his brilliant parody Firmilian; or, The Student of Badajoz. A Spasmodic Tragedy (1854), rather than for his more serious writings. Begun as an attempt to define and demolish the contemporary "Spasmodic School of Poetry," Firmilian developed into an imaginative satire against all forms of romantic extravagance. Enormously successful, Firmilian helped to chasten mid-Victorian critical standards; it still constitutes Aytoun's chief claim to a place in literature.

Aytoun was the only son of a prosperous Edinburgh family. The fierce Jacobitism and love of ballads of his mother, Joan Keir Aytoun, had a lasting influence upon Aytoun's own political and literary preferences. His father, Roger Aytoun, was a leading writer to the Signet; this was a superior order of solicitors peculiar to Scotland, among whose privileges was that of appearing before the Court of Sessions, the supreme civil court of the kingdom. Roger Aytoun...