"Now may the god shield us from a plague of fools! What means this throaty clamor? Ye praise what ye do not understand, like all the rest of the discerning public! Many is the time, as the weariness of my spirit witnesseth, that I have heard Sah-luma rehearse,--but never in all my experience of his prolix multiloquence, hath he given utterance to such a senseless jingle-jangle of verse-jargon as to-night! Strange it is that the so-called 'poetical' trick of confusedly heaping words together regardless of meaning, should so bewilder men and deprive them of all wise and sober judgment! By my faith! ... I would as soon listen to the gabble of geese in a farmyard as to the silly glibness of such inflated twaddle, such mawkish sentiment, such turgid garrulity, such ranting verbosity..." A burst of laughter interrupted and drowned his harsh voice,--laughter in which no one joined more heartily than Sah-luma himself. He had resumed his seat in his ivory chair, and leaning back lazily, he surveyed his Critic with tolerant good-humor and complete amusement, while the King's stentorian "Ha, ha, ha!" resounded in ringing peals through the great audience-chamber. "Thou droll knave!" cried Zephoranim at last, dashing away the drops his merriment had brought into his eyes--"Wilt kill me with thy bitter-mouthed jests? ... of a truth my sides ache at thee! What ails thee now? ... Come,--we will have patience, if so be our mirth can be restrained,--speak!--what flaw canst thou find in our Sah-luma's pearl of poesy?--what spots on the sun of his divine inspiration? As the Serpent lives, thou art an excellent mountebank and well deservest thy master's pay!" He laughed again,--but Zabastes seemed in nowise disconcerted. His withered countenance appeared to harden itself into lines of impenetrable obstinacy,--tucking his long staff under his arm he put his fingers together in the manner of one who inwardly counts up certain numbers, and with a preparatory smack of his lips he began: "Free speech being permitted to me, O most mighty Zephoranim, I would in the first place say that the poem so greatly admired by your Majesty, is totally devoid of common sense. It is purely a caprice of the imagination,--and what is imagination? A mere aberration of the cerebral nerves,--a morbidity of brain in which the thoughts brood on the impossible,--on things that have never been, and never will be. Thus, Sah-luma's verse resembles the incoherent ravings of a moon-struck madman,--moreover, it hath a prevailing tone of FORCED SUBLIMITY..." here Theos gave an involuntary start,--then, recollecting where he was, resumed his passive attitude--"which is in every way distasteful to the ears that love plain language. For instance, what warrant is there for this most foolish line: "'The solemn chanting of the midnight stars.'