"But, in short," said he, "it is a waste of time and
patience to dwell longer upon a thing so incurably frivolous,--puny even
among its own puny race, and such as only the Banyan Hospital[181] for
Sick Insects should undertake."
In vain did LALLA ROOKH try to soften this inexorable critic; in vain did
she resort to her most eloquent commonplaces, reminding him that poets
were a timid and sensitive race whose sweetness was not to be drawn forth
like that of the fragrant grass near the Ganges by crushing and trampling
upon them,[182] that severity often extinguished every chance of the
perfection which it demanded, and that after all perfection was like the
Mountain of the Talisman,--no one had ever yet reached its summit.[183]
Neither these gentle axioms nor the still gentler looks with which they
were inculcated could lower for one instant the elevation of FADLADEEN'S
eyebrows or charm him into anything like encouragement or even toleration
of her poet. Toleration, indeed, was not among the weaknesses of
FADLADEEN:--he carried the same spirit into matters of poetry and of
religion, and though little versed in the beauties or sublimities of
either was a perfect master of the art of persecution in both. His zeal
was the same too in either pursuit, whether the game before him was pagans
or poetasters, worshippers of cows, or writers of epics.
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