Read it through once

Having inveigled Sir William into a discussion of Scott versus Miss Holford, the attack was renewed in a subsequent letter wherein the “extraordinary circumstance” is noted that “the _dénouement_ of _Marmion_ and that of _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_ both turn on the same discovery, a repetition which is wonderful in a man of so much genius, and the more so as the incident is, in itself, so stale, so like the foolish trick of a pantomime, that to have used it once was too often.”