grandsire to grandson could possibly improve it! ... it would
rather be deteriorated, if not altogether changed into the merest
doggerel! Nay, nay!--the 'Ruva-Kalama,' is the achievement of one
great mind,--not twenty Oruzels were born in succession to write
it,--there was, there could be only one, and he, by right supreme,
is chief of the Bards Immortal! As well might fools hereafter
wrangle together and say there were many Sah-lumas! ... only I
have taken good heed posterity shall know there was only ONE,--
unmatched for love-impassioned singing throughout the length and
breadth of the world!"

He sprang up from his recumbent posture and attracted Theos's
attention to another bust even finer than the last,--it was placed
on a pedestal wreathed at the summit and at the base with laurel.

"The divine Hyspiros!" he exclaimed pointing to it in a sort of
ecstasy--"The Master from whom it may be I have caught the perfect
entrancement of my own verse-melody! His fame, as thou knowest, is
unrivalled and universal--yet--canst thou believe it! ... there
has been of late an ass found in Al-Kyris who hath chosen him as a
subject for his braying--and other asses join in the uneuphonius
chorus. The marvellous Plays of Hyspiros! ... the grandest
tragedies, the airiest comedies, the tenderest fantasies, ever
created by human brain, have been called in question by these
thistle-eating animals!--and one most untractable mule-head hath
made pretence to discover therein a passage of secret writing
which shall, so the fool thinks, prove that Hyspiros was not the
author of his own works, but only a literary cheat, and forger of
another and lesser man's inspiration! By the gods!--one's sides
would split with laughter at the silly brute, were he not