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- princes, lord it over these beggarly authors!’ Well read in the history
of their woes, Pollo pitied them all, particularly the famous; and
wrote little essays of his own, which he read to himself.”
MEDIA—Well: and what said Lombardo to those good friends of his,—
Zenzori, Hanto, and Roddi?
BABBALANJA—Nothing. Taking home his manuscript, he glanced it over;
making three corrections.
ABRAZZA—And what then?
BABBALANJA—Then, your Highness, he thought to try a conclave of
professional critics; saying to himself, “Let them privately point out
to me, now, all my blemishes; so that, what time they come to review me
in public, all will be well.” But curious to relate, those professional
critics, for the most part, held their peace, concerning a work yet
unpublished. And, with some generous exceptions, in their vague,
learned way, betrayed such base, beggarly notions of authorship, that
Lombardo could have wept, had tears been his. But in his very grief, he
ground his teeth. Muttered he, “They are fools. In their eyes, bindings
not brains make books. They criticise my tattered cloak, not my soul,
caparisoned like a charger. He is the great author, think they, who
drives the best bargain with his wares: and no bargainer am I. Because
he is old, they worship some mediocrity of an ancient, and mock at the
living prophet with the live coal on his lips. They are men who would
not be men, had they no books. Their sires begat them not; but the
authors they have read. Feelings they have none: and their very
opinions they borrow. They can not say yea, nor nay, without first
consulting all Mardi as an Encyclopedia. And all the learning in them,
is as a dead corpse in a coffin. Were they worthy the dignity of being
damned, I would damn them; but they are not. Critics?—Asses! rather
mules!—so emasculated, from vanity, they can not father a true thought.
Like mules, too, from dunghills, they trample down gardens of roses:
and deem that crushed fragrance their own.—Oh! that all round the
domains of genius should lie thus unhedged, for such cattle to uproot!
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!
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