Your opinion of
the poem we have just heard, will I have no doubt be abundantly edifying
without any further waste of your valuable erudition."--"If that be all,"
replied the critic,--evidently mortified at not being allowed to show how
much he knew about everything but the subject immediately before him--"if
that be all that is required the matter is easily despatched." He then
proceeded to analyze the poem, in that strain (so well known to the
unfortunate bards of Delhi), whose censures were an infliction from which
few recovered and whose very praises were like the honey extracted from
the bitter flowers of the aloe. The chief personages of the story were, if
he rightly understood them, an ill-favored gentleman with a veil over his
face;--a young lady whose reason went and came according as it suited the
poet's convenience to be sensible or otherwise;--and a youth in one of
those hideous Bokharian bonnets, who took the aforesaid gentleman in a
veil for a Divinity. "From such materials," said he, "what can be
expected?--after rivalling each other in long speeches and absurdities
through some thousands of lines as indigestible as the filberts of Berdaa,
our friend in the veil jumps into a tub of aquafortis; the young lady dies
in a set speech whose only recommendation is that it is her last; and the
lover lives on to a good old age for the laudable purpose of seeing her
ghost which he at last happily accomplishes, and expires.
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