ABRAZZA—­And what then?

BABBALANJA—­Then, your Highness, he thought to try a conclave of professional critics; saying to himself, “Let them privately point out to me, now, all my blemishes; so that, what time they come to review me in public, all will be well.”  But curious to relate, those professional critics, for the most part, held their peace, concerning a work yet unpublished.  And, with some generous exceptions, in their vague, learned way, betrayed such base, beggarly notions of authorship, that Lombardo could have wept, had tears been his.  But in his very grief, he ground his teeth.  Muttered he, “They are fools.  In their eyes, bindings not brains make books.  They criticise my tattered cloak, not my soul, caparisoned like a charger.  He is the great author, think they, who drives the best bargain with his wares:  and no bargainer am I. Because he is old, they worship some mediocrity of an ancient, and mock at the living prophet with the live coal on his lips.  They are men who would not be men, had they no books.  Their sires begat them not; but the authors they have read.  Feelings they have none:  and their very opinions they borrow.  They can not say yea, nor nay, without first consulting all Mardi as an Encyclopedia.  And all the learning in them, is as a dead corpse in a coffin.  Were they worthy the dignity of being damned, I would damn them; but they are not.  Critics?—­Asses! rather mules!—­so emasculated, from vanity, they can not father a true thought.  Like mules, too, from dunghills, they trample down gardens of roses:  and deem that crushed fragrance their own.—­Oh! that all round the domains of genius should lie thus unhedged, for such cattle to uproot!  Oh! that an eagle should be stabbed by a goose-quill!  But at best, the greatest reviewers but prey on my leavings.  For I am critic and creator; and as critic, in cruelty surpass all critics merely, as a tiger, jackals.  For ere Mardi sees aught of mine, I scrutinize it myself, remorseless as a surgeon.  I cut right and left; I probe, tear, and wrench; kill, burn, and destroy; and what’s left after that, the jackals are welcome to.  It is I that stab false thoughts, ere hatched; I that pull down wall and tower, rejecting materials which would make palaces for others.  Oh! could Mardi but see how we work, it would marvel more at our primal chaos, than at the round world thence emerging.  It would marvel at our scaffoldings, scaling heaven; marvel at the hills of earth, banked all round our fabrics ere completed.—­How plain the pyramid!  In this grand silence, so intense, pierced by that pointed mass,—­could ten thousand slaves have ever toiled? ten thousand hammers rung?—­There it stands, —­part of Mardi:  claiming kin with mountains;—­was this thing piecemeal built?—­It was.  Piecemeal?—­atom by atom it was laid.  The world is made of mites.”

YOOMY (musing.)—­It is even so.

ABRAZZA—­Lombardo was severe upon the critics; and they as much so upon him;—­of that, be sure.