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. BABBALANGA—Your Highness, Lombardo never presumed to criticise true critics; who are more rare than true poets. A great critic is a sultan among satraps; but pretenders are thick as ants, striving to scale a palm, after its aerial sweetness. And they fight among themselves. Essaying to pluck eagles, they themselves are geese, stuck full of quills, of which they rob each other. ABRAZZA (_to Media._)—Oro help the victim that falls in Babbalanja’s hands! MEDIA.—Ay, my lord; at times, his every finger is a dagger: every thought a falling tower that whelms! But resume, philosopher—what of Lombardo now? BABBALANJA—“For this thing,” said he, “I have agonized over it enough.—I can wait no more. It has faults—all mine;—its merits all its own;—but I can toil no longer. The beings knit to me implore; my heart is full; my brain is sick. Let it go—let it go—and Oro with it. Somewhere Mardi has a mighty heart—-_that_ struck, all the isles shall resound!” ABRAZZA—Poor devil! he took the world too hard. MEDIA.-As most of these mortals do, my lord. That’s the load, self- imposed, under which Babbalanja reels. But now, philosopher, ere Mardi saw it, what thought Lombardo of his work, looking at it objectively, as a thing out of him, I mean. ABRAZZA—No doubt, he hugged it. BABBALANJA—Hard to answer. Sometimes, when by himself, he thought hugely of it, as my lord Abrazza says; but when abroad, among men, he almost despised it; but when he bethought him of those parts, written with full eyes, half blinded; temples throbbing; and pain at the heart— ABRAZZA—Pooh! pooh!