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Updated: June 9, 2025
For it was very fine, there could be no doubt of that, whatever Zabastes might say to the contrary, and it was not only fine, but intensely, humanly pathetic, seeming to strike a chord of passion such as had never before been sounded, a chord to which the world would be COMPELLED to listen, yes, COMPELLED! thought Theos exultingly, as Sah-luma drew nearer and nearer the close of his dictation ... The deep quiet all around was so heavy as to be almost uncomfortable in its oppressiveness, it exercised a sort of strain upon the nerves ...
Nay, even my fool Zabastes hath found place in these narrow columns, to write his carping diatribes against me, me, the King's Laureate! ... As I live, his cumbersome diction hath caused me infinite mirth, and I have laughed at his crabbed and feeble wit till my sides have ached most potently!
Presently Sah-luma paused, and Zabastes, heaving a sigh of relief, looked up from his writing, and laid down his pen. 'The work is finished, most illustrious?" he demanded, a curious smile playing on his thin, satirical lips. "Finished?" echoed Sah-luma disdainfully "Nay, 'tis but the end of the First Canto" The scribe gave vent to a dismal groan.
"Yes! though we must laugh at Zabastes we should also pity him," he resumed in gayer accents "His fate is not enviable. He is nothing but a Critic he could not well be a lesser man, one who, unable himself to do any great work, takes refuge in finding fault with the works of others. And those who abhor true Poesy are in time themselves abhorred, the balance of Justice never errs in these things.
Zabastes meanwhile settled himself more comfortably in his chair, and taking up one of the long quills with which he was provided, dipped it in a reddish-purple liquid which at once stained its point to a deep roseate hue, so that when the light flickered upon it from time to time, it appeared as though it were tipped with fire.
He sprang down the steps of the loggia, accompanied by Theos, who was equally excited, when all at once Zabastes, thrusting out his head through a screen of vine-leaves, cried after them: "Sah-luma! Most illustrious! What of the poem? It is not finished!" "No matter!" returned Sah-luma "'Twill be finished hereafter!"
'Thus wilt thou swallow up my poem in thy glib clumsiness, Zabastes!" he said lightly "And thus wilt them hold up the most tasteless portions of the whole for the judgment of the public!
"There is the glorious Orazel!" he said "The father, as we all must own, of the Art of Poesy, and indeed of all true literature! Yet there be some who swear he never lived at all aye! though his poems have come down to us, and many are the arguments I have had with so-called wise men like Zabastes, concerning his style and method of versification.
"Theos, my friend," he said, still laughing "Thou must know the admirable Zabastes, a man of vast importance in his own opinion! Have done with thy wheezing," he continued, vehemently thumping the struggling old gentleman on the back "Here is another one of the minstrel craft thou hatest, hast aught of bitterness in thy barbed tongue wherewith to welcome him as guest to mine abode?"
As the Serpent lives, thou art an excellent mountebank and well deservest thy master's pay!" He laughed again, but Zabastes seemed in nowise disconcerted.
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