Well, well! ... after all, Nourhalma WAS a posthumous work,--it had been written before, ages since, when he, as Sah-luma, had perished ere he had had time to give it to the world! He had merely REMEMBERED it.. drawn it forth again, as it were, from the dim, deep vistas of past deeds;--so those who had reviewed it as the production of one dead in youth, were right in their judgment, though they did not know it! ... It was old,--nothing but repetition,--but now he had something new and true and passionate to say, . . something that, if God pleased, it should be his to utter with the clearness and forcibleness common to the Greek thunderers of yore, who spoke out what was in them, grandly, simply, and with the fearless majesty of thought that reeked nothing of opinions. Oh, he would rouse the hearts of men from paltry greed and covetousness, . . from lust, and hatred, and all things evil,--no matter if he lost his own life in the effort, he would still do his utmost best to lift, if only in a small degree, the deepening weight of self-wrought agony from self-blinded mankind! Yes! ... he must work to fulfil the commands and deserve the blessings of Edris!
Edris! ... ah, the memory of her pure angel-loveliness rushed upon him like a flood of invigorating warmth and light, and when he looked up from his brief reverie, his countenance, beautiful, and kindling with inward ardor, affected Villiers strangely,--almost as a very grand and perfect strain of music might affect and unsteady one's nerves. The attraction he had always felt for his poet-friend deepened to quite a fervent intensity of admiration, but he was not the man to betray his feelings outwardly, and to shake off his emotion he rushed into speech again.
"By the by, Alwyn, your old acquaintance, Professor Moxall, is very much 'down' on your book. You know he doesn't write reviews, except on matters connected with evolutionary phenomena, but I met him the other day, and he was quite upset about you. 'Too transcendental'! he said, dismally shaking his bald pate to and fro--'The whole poem is a vaporous tissue of absurd impossibilities! Ah dear, dear me! what a terrible falling-off in a young man of such hopeful ability! I thought he had done with poetry forever!--I took the greatest pains to prove to him what a ridiculous pastime it was, and how unworthy to be considered for a moment seriously as an ART,--and he seemed to understand my reasoning thoroughly. Indeed he promised to be one of our most powerful adherents, . . he had an excellent grasp of the material sciences, and a fine contempt for religion. Why, with such a quick, analytical brain as his, he might have carried on Darwin's researches to an extremer point of the origination of species than has yet been reached! All a ruin, sir! a positive ruin,--a man who will in cold blood write such lines as these ...