Page:Beckford - Vathek (1816).djvu/271

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celebrated over all the East. Thus, Meshii, as translated by Sir W. Jones:

Come, charming maid, and hear thy poet sing,
Thyself the rose, and he the bird of Spring:
Love bids him sing, and Love will be obey'd,
Be gay: too soon the flowers of Spring will fade.


Page 111.oil spilt in breaking the lamps.

It appears from Thevenot, that illuminations were usual on the arrival of a stranger, and he mentions, on an occasion of this sort, two hundred lamps being lighted. The quantity of oil, therefore, spilt on the margin of the bath, may be easily accounted for, from this custom.


Page 114.calenders.

These were a sort of men amongst the Mahometans, who abandoned father and mother, wife and children, relations and possessions, to wander through the world, under a pretence of religion, entirely subsisting on the fortuitous bounty of those they had the address to dupe. D'Herbelot, Suppl. p. 204.