“That exceeds the last certainly,” said Oriel Porphyry, amused with the perfect gravity with which the poet read his verses.
“It appears to me quite a new style of poetry,” remarked Zabra, with as much seriousness as he could assume.
“Unquestionably! it is novel in the novelest degree,” replied Long Chi, smiling with all the graciousness of gratified vanity. “I may with the most complete justice lay claim to be the origin in which originated its originality. I have studied sublimity. By the great Fo, I may say that; and I have found the sublime in every individual natural thing that is in nature; but in cookery and confectionary it predominates, as must be evident to the inquisitive investigation of any man of taste. It is the opinion of the most discriminative judges, that no writer of serious poetry can compete with me.”
“In that opinion every one must coincide,” observed Zabra.
“There can be no question on the subject,” added Oriel.
“Who shall say you are barbarians, when you exhibit such a superabundant knowledge of the beautiful?” exclaimed the Chinese, with all the energy he could assume. “I am immeasurably enraptured to notice such an admirable judgment; and, as an additional proof of the satisfaction I receive from your friendly attention, I will still, to a much more infinite extent, delight your auditory nerves with one of the most serious of my efforts in serious poetry. Mark the true sublime; mark it well, and see how splendidly it agrees with the magnificent subject. It is an ode to a sugarplum.”
The poet unfolded another paper; and the young merchant shrugged up his shoulders, as he heard its contents read with the same tone and manner as its predecessors.
“How shall I grasp a subject so immense?
No power of human sense,
Not all the vast
Ideas within the Present and the Past—
Not algebra’s most unknown quantity could give the sum
Of greatness in a sugar plum!
“What with its sweetness can compete?
How much it beats the beet!
Shall manna dare,
Wanting in manners, with it to compare?
And honey’s linked sweetness, long drawn out, is all a hum,
’Tis nothing to a sugar plum!