“I thank thee for thy praise, good Theos!—­thou art indeed the friendliest of critics!  Hadst thou thyself been the author of ‘Nourhalma’ thou couldst not have spoken with more ardent feeling!  Were Zabastes like thee, discerningly just and reasonable, he would be all unfit for his vocation,—­for ’tis an odd circumstance that praise in the public news-sheet does a writer more harm than good, while ill-conditioned and malicious abuse doth very materially increase and strengthen his reputation.  Yet, after all, there is a certain sense in the argument,—­for if much eulogy be penned by the cheap scribes, the reading populace at once imagine these fellows have been bribed to give their over-zealous approval, or that they are close friends and banquet-comrades of the author whom they arduously uphold, . . whereas, on the contrary, if they indulge in bitter invective, flippant gibing, or clumsy satire, like my amiable Zabsastes here...” and he made an airy gesture toward the silent yet evidently chafing Critic, .."(and, mark you!-He is not bribed, but merely paid fair wages to fulfil his chosen and professed calling)—­why, thereupon the multitude exclaim—­’What! this poet hath such enemies?—­nay, then, how great a genius he must be!”—­and forthwith they clamor for his work, which, if it speak not for itself, is then and only then to be deemed faulty, and meriting oblivion.  ’Tis the People’s verdict which alone gives fame.”

“And yet the people are often ignorant of what is noblest and best in literature!” observed Theos musingly.

“Ignorant in some ways, yes!” agreed Sah-luma—­“But in many others, no!  They may be ignorant as to why they admire a certain thing, yet they admire it all the same, because their natural instinct leads them so to do.  And this is the special gift which endows the uncultured masses with an occasional sweeping advantage over the cultured few,—­the superiority of their instinct.  As in cases of political revolution for example,—­while the finely educated orator is endeavoring by all the force of artful rhetoric to prove that all is in order and as it should be, the mob, moved by one tremendous impulse, discover for themselves that everything is wrong, and moreover that nothing will come right, unless they rise up and take authority, . . accordingly, down go the thrones and the colleges, the palaces, the temples, and the law-assemblies, all like so many toys before the resistless instinct of the people, who revolt at injustice, and who feel and know when they are injured, though they are not clever enough to explain where their injury lies.  And so, as they cannot talk about it coherently, any more than a lion struck by an arrow can give a learned dissertation on his wound, they act, . . and the heat and fury of their action upheaves dynasties!  Again,—­reverting to the question of taste and literature,—­the mob, untaught and untrained in the subtilties of art, will applaud to the echo