'Tis vile, 'tis vile! for who ever heard the midnight stars or any other stars chant? ... who can prove that the heavenly bodies are given to the study of music? Hath Sah-luma been present at their singing lesson?" Here the old critic chuckled, and warming with his subject, advanced a step nearer to the throne as he went on: "Hear yet another jarring simile: "'The wild winds moan for pity of the world.' Was ever a more indiscreet lie? A brazen lie!--for the tales of shipwreck sufficiently prove the pitilessness of winds,--and however much a verse-weaver may pretend to be in the confidence of Nature, he is after all but the dupe of his own frenetic dreams. One couplet hath most discordantly annoyed my senses--'tis the veriest doggerel: "'The sun with amorous clutch Tears off the emerald girdle of the rose!' O monstrous piece of extravagance!--for how can the Sun (his Deity set apart) 'clutch' without hands?--and as for 'the emerald girdle of the rose'--I know not what it means, unless Sah-luma considers the green calyx of the flower a 'girdle,' in which case his wits must be far gone, for no shape of girdle can any sane man descry in the common natural protection of a bud before it blooms! There was a phrase too concerning nightingales,--and the gods know we have heard enough and too much of those over-praised birds! ..." Here he was interrupted by one of his frequent attacks of coughing, and again the laughter of the whole court broke forth in joyous echoes. "Laugh--laugh!" said Zabastes, recovering himself and eying the throng with a derisive smile--"Laugh, ye witless bantlings born of folly!--and cling as you will to the unsubstantial dreams your Laureate blows for you in the air like a child playing with soap-bubbles! Empty and perishable are they all,--they shine for a moment, then break and vanish,--and the colors wherewith they sparkled, colors deemed immortal in their beauty, shall pass away like a breath and be renewed no more!"