Ricaric turn'd it over, and light on this passage. "The ancestors of our august emperor have rendered themselves illustrious without doubt. But Mangogul, greater than they, has prepared quite different subjects of admiration for future ages. What do I say of admiration? Let us speak more accurately; of incredulity. If our ancestors had cause to assert, that posterity would esteem as fables the wonders of Kanaglou's reign; how much more reason have we to think, that our descendants will refuse credit to the prodigies of wisdom and valor, of which we are witnesses?" "My poor Mr. Lambadago," says the Sultan, "you are but retailer of phrases. What I have reason to believe, is that your successors will one day eclipse my glory by that of my son, as you make my father's vanish before mine; and so on, as long as there will be one academician left. What think you, Mr. Ricaric?" "Prince, all that I can say," answered Ricaric, "is, that the passage which I have read to your highness, was extremely relished by the public." "So much the worse," replied Mangogul. "Then the true taste of eloquence is lost in Congo? It was not thus that the sublime Homilogo praised the great Aben." "Prince," said Ricaric, "true eloquence is nothing but the art of speaking in a noble, and at the same time agreeable and perswasive manner." "Add, and sensible," continued the Sultan, "and upon this principle judge your friend Lambadago. With all the respect that I have for modern eloquence, he is but a false declaimer." "But, prince," answered Ricaric, "without passing the bounds of that, which I owe your highness, will you permit me----" "What I give you full permission to do," replied Mangogul smartly, "is to respect good sense beyond my highness, and to tell me sincerely, if an eloquent man can ever dispense himself from shewing some signs of it." "No, prince," answered Ricaric, and he was going to string up a long bead-roll of authorities, and cite all the rhetoricians of Afric, the two Arabia's, and China, in order to prove the most incontestable thing in the world, when he was interrupted by Selim. "All your authors," said the courtier, "will never prove that Lambadago is not a very awkward and indecent haranguer. Pray, Mr. Ricaric, excuse these expressions. I honour you in a singular manner; but indeed, laying aside the prejudice of confraternity, can you avoid allowing with us, that, as the Sultan now reigning is just, amiable, beneficent, and a great warrior, he does not stand in need of the embroidery of your rhetoricians, to be as great as his ancestors; and that a son, who is exalted by depressing his father and grandfather, would be very ridiculously vain, if he were not sensible, that in embellishing him with one hand, he is disfigured by the other. In order to prove that Mangogul is as well-made a man as any of his predecessors, do you think it necessary to knock off the heads of the statues of Erguebzed and Kanaglou?"