He knows himself, and all that’s in him, who knows adversity.  To scale great heights, we must come out of lowermost depths.  The way to heaven is through hell.  We need fiery baptisms in the fiercest flames of our own bosoms.  We must feel our hearts hot—­hissing in us.  And ere their fire is revealed, it must burn its way out of us; though it consume us and itself.  Oh, sleek-cheeked Plenty! smiling at thine own dimples;—­vain for thee to reach out after greatness.  Turn! turn! from all your tiers of cushions of eider-down—­turn! and be broken on the wheels of many woes.  At white-heat, brand thyself; and count the scars, like old war-worn veterans, over camp-fires.  Soft poet! brushing tears from lilies—­this way! and howl in sackcloth and in ashes!  Know, thou, that the lines that live are turned out of a furrowed brow.  Oh! there is a fierce, a cannibal delight, in the grief that shrieks to multiply itself.  That grief is miserly of its own; it pities all the happy.  Some damned spirits would not be otherwise, could they.

ABRAZZA (to Media)—­Pray, my lord, is this good gentleman a devil?

MEDIA.—­No, my lord; but he’s possessed by one.  His name is Azzageddi.  You may hear more of him.  But come, Babbalanja, hast forgotten all about Lombardo?  How set he about that great undertaking, his Kortanza?

ABRAZZA (to Media)—­Oh, for all the ravings of your Babbalanja, Lombardo took no special pains; hence, deserves small commendation.  For, genius must be somewhat like us kings,—­calm, content, in consciousness of power.  And to Lombardo, the scheme of his Kortanza must have come full-fledged, like an eagle from the sun.

BABBALANJA—­No, your Highness; but like eagles, his thoughts were first callow; yet, born plumeless, they came to soar.

ABRAZZA—­Very fine.  I presume, Babbalanja, the first thing he did, was to fast, and invoke the muses.

BABBALANJA—­Pardon, my lord; on the contrary he first procured a ream of vellum, and some sturdy quills:  indispensable preliminaries, my worshipful lords, to the writing of the sublimest epics.

ABRAZZA—­Ah! then the muses were afterward invoked.

BABBALANJA—­Pardon again.  Lombardo next sat down to a fine plantain pudding.

YOOMY—­When the song-spell steals over me, I live upon olives.

BABBALANJA—­Yoomy, Lombardo eschewed olives.  Said he, “What fasting soldier can fight? and the fight of all fights is to write.”  In ten days Lombardo had written—­

ABRAZZA—­Dashed off, you mean.

BABBALANJA—­He never dashed off aught.

ABRAZZA—­As you will.

BABBALANJA—­In ten days, Lombardo had written full fifty folios; he loved huge acres of vellum whereon to expatiate.

MEDIA—­What then?

BABBALANJA—­He read them over attentively; made a neat package of the whole:  and put it into the fire.

ALL—­How?

MEDIA—­What! these great geniuses writing trash?