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, looki