BABBALANJA—He would say to himself, “Sure, it can not be in vain!” Yet again, when he bethought him of the hurry and bustle of Mardi, dejection stole over him. “Who will heed it,” thought he; “what care these fops and brawlers for me? But am I not myself an egregious coxcomb? Who will read me? Say one thousand pages—twenty-five lines each—every line ten words—every word ten letters. That’s two million five hundred thousand _a_’s, and _i_’s, and _o_’s to read! How many are superfluous? Am I not mad to saddle Mardi with such a task? Of all men, am I the wisest, to stand upon a pedestal, and teach the mob? Ah, my own Kortanza! child of many prayers!—in whose earnest eyes, so fathomless, I see my own; and recall all past delights and silent agonies-thou may’st prove, as the child of some fond dotard:— beauteous to me; hideous to Mardi! And methinks, that while so much slaving merits that thou should’st not die; it has not been intense, prolonged enough, for the high meed of immortality. Yet, things immortal have been written; and by men as me;—men, who slept and waked; and ate; and talked with tongues like mine. Ah, Oro! how may we know or not, we are what we would be? Hath genius any stamp and imprint, obvious to possessors? Has it eyes to see itself; or is it blind? Or do we delude ourselves with being gods, and end in grubs? Genius, genius?—a thousand years hence, to be a household-word?—I?— Lombardo? but yesterday cut in the market-place by a spangled fool!— Lombardo immortal?—Ha, ha, Lombardo! but thou art an ass, with vast ears brushing the tops of palms! Ha, ha, ha! Methinks I see thee immortal! ‘Thus great Lombardo saith; and thus; and thus; and thus:— thus saith he—illustrious Lombardo!—Lombardo, our great countryman! Lombardo, prince of poets—Lombardo! great Lombardo!’—Ha, ha, ha!— go, go! dig thy grave, and bury thyself!” ABRAZZA—He was very funny, then, at times. BABBALANJA—Very funny, your Highness:—amazing jolly! And from my nethermost soul, would to Oro, thou could’st but feel one touch of that jolly woe! It would appall thee, my Right Worshipful lord Abrazza! ABRAZZA (_to Media_)—My dear lord, his teeth are marvelously white and sharp: some she-shark must have been his dam:—does he often grin thus? It was infernal! MEDIA—Ah! that’s Azzageddi. But, prithee, Babbalanja, proceed. BABBALANJA—Your Highness, even in his calmer critic moods, Lombardo was far from fancying his work. He confesses, that it ever seemed to him but a poor scrawled copy of something within, which, do what he would, he could not completely transfer. “My canvas was small,” said he; “crowded out were hosts of things that came last. But Fate is in it.” And Fate it was, too, your Highness, which forced Lombardo, ere his work was well done, to take it off his easel, and send it to be multiplied. “Oh, that I was not thus spurred!” cried he; “but like many another, in its very childhood, this poor child of mine must go out into Mardi, and get bread for its sire.”