the happy. Some damned spirits would not be otherwise,
could they.

ABRAZZA (_to Media_)--Pray, my lord, is this good gentleman a devil?

MEDIA.--No, my lord; but he's possessed by one. His name is Azzageddi.
You may hear more of him. But come, Babbalanja, hast forgotten all
about Lombardo? How set he about that great undertaking, his Kortanza?

ABRAZZA (_to Media_)--Oh, for all the ravings of your Babbalanja,
Lombardo took no special pains; hence, deserves small commendation.
For, genius must be somewhat like us kings,--calm, content, in
consciousness of power. And to Lombardo, the scheme of his Kortanza
must have come full-fledged, like an eagle from the sun.

BABBALANJA--No, your Highness; but like eagles, his thoughts were
first callow; yet, born plumeless, they came to soar.

ABRAZZA--Very fine. I presume, Babbalanja, the first thing he did,
was to fast, and invoke the muses.

BABBALANJA--Pardon, my lord; on the contrary he first procured a ream
of vellum, and some sturdy quills: indispensable preliminaries, my
worshipful lords, to the writing of the sublimest epics.

ABRAZZA--Ah! then the muses were afterward invoked.

BABBALANJA--Pardon again. Lombardo next sat down to a fine plantain
pudding.

YOOMY--When the song-spell steals over me, I live upon olives.

BABBALANJA--Yoomy, Lombardo eschewed olives. Said he, "What fasting
soldier can fight? and the fight of all fights is to write." In ten
days Lombardo had written--

ABRAZZA--Dashed off, you mean.

BABBALANJA--He never dashed off aught.

ABRAZZA--As you will.

BABBALANJA--In ten days, Lombardo had written full fifty folios; he
loved huge acres of vellum whereon to expatiate.

MEDIA--What then?

BABBALANJA--He read them over attentively; made a neat package of the
whole: and put it into the fire.

ALL--How?

MEDIA--What! these great geniuses writing trash?

ABRAZZA--I thought as much.

BABBALANJA--My lords, they abound in it! more than any other men in
Mardi. Genius is full of trash. But genius essays its best to keep it
to itself; and giving away its ore, retains the earth; whence, the too
frequent wisdom of its works, and folly of its life.

ABRAZZA--Then genius is not inspired, after all. How they must slave
in their mines! I weep to think of it.

BABBALANJA--My lord, all men are inspired; fools are inspired; your
highness is inspired; for the essence of all ideas is infused. Of
ourselves, and in ourselves, we originate nothing.