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My child she is but half divine,

Her father sleeps in the Caspian water;
Sea-weeds twine

His funeral shrine,

But he lives again in the Peri's daughter.
Fain would I fly from mortal sight

To my own sweet bowers of Peristan ;
But, there, the flowers are all too bright
For the eyes of a baby born of man.
On flowers of earth her feet must tread;

So hither my light-wing'd bark hath brought her;

Stranger, spread

Thy leafiest bed,

To rest the wandering Peri's daughter.

In another of these inchoate fragments, a proud female saint, named Banou, plays a principal part; and her progress through the streets of Cufa, on the night of a great illuminated festival, I find thus described :

:

It was a scene of mirth that drew
A smile from ev'n the Saint Banou,
As, through the hush'd, admiring throng,
She went with stately steps along,

And counted o'er, that all might see,

The rubies of her rosary.

But none might see the worldly smile

That lurk'd beneath her veil, the while :

Alla forbid for, who would wait

Her blessing at the temple's gate,—
What holy man would ever run
To kiss the ground she knelt upon,
If once, by luckless chance, he knew
She look'd and smil'd as others do?

Her hands were join'd, and from each wrist

By threads of pearl and golden twist

Hung relics of the saints of yore,

And scraps of talismanic lore,—

Charms for the old, the sick, the frail,
Some made for use, and all for sale.
On either side, the crowd withdrew,
To let the Saint pass proudly through;
While turban'd heads of every hue,
Green, white, and crimson, bow'd around,
And
gay tiaras touch'd the ground,-
As tulip-bells, when o'er their beds

The musk-wind passes, bend their heads.
Nay, some there were, among the crowd
Of Moslem heads that round her bow'd,
So fill'd with zeal, by many a draught
Of Shiraz wine profanely quaff'd,
That, sinking low in reverence then,
They never rose till morn again.

There are yet two more of these unfinished sketches, one of which extends to a much greater length than I was aware of; and, as far as I can judge from a hasty renewal of my acquaintance with it, is not incapable of being yet turned to

account.

In only one of these unfinished sketches, the tale of The Peri's Daughter, had I yet ventured to invoke that most home-felt of all my inspirations, which has lent to the story of The Fire-worshippers its main attraction and inThat it was my intention, in the concealed Prince of Ormuz, to shadow out some impersonation of this feeling, I take for granted from the prophetic words supposed to be addressed to him by his aged guardian :—

terest.

Bright child of destiny! even now
I read the promise on that brow,
That tyrants shall no more defile
The glories of the Green Sea Isle,
But Ormuz shall again be free,
And hail her native Lord in thee!

In none of the other fragments do I find any trace of this sort of feeling, either in the subject or the personages of the intended story; and this was the reason, doubtless, though hardly known, at the time, to myself, that, finding my subjects so slow in kindling my own sympathies, I began to despair of their ever touching the hearts of others; and felt often inclined to say,

"Oh no, I have no voice or hand

For such a song, in such a land."

*

Had this series of disheartening experiments been carried on much further, I must have thrown aside the work in despair. But, at last, fortunately, as it proved, the thought occurred to me of founding a story on the fierce struggle so long maintained between the Ghebers, or ancient Fireworshippers of Persia, and their haughty Moslem masters. From that moment, a new and deep interest in my whole task took possession of me. The cause of tolerance was again my inspiring theme; and the spirit that had spoken in the melodies of Ireland soon found itself at home in the East.

Having thus laid open the secrets of the workshop to account for the time expended in writing this work, I must also, in justice to my own industry, notice the pains I took in long and laboriously reading for it. To form a storehouse, as it were, of illustration purely Oriental, and so familiarize myself with its various treasures, that, as quick

Voltaire, in his tragedy of "Les Guèbres," written with a similar under-current of meaning, was accused of having transformed his Fireworshippers into Jansenists :- "Quelques figuristes," he says, "prétendent que les Guèbres sont les Jansenistes."

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as Fancy required the aid of fact, in her spiritings, the memory was ready, like another Ariel, at her "strong bidding," to furnish materials for the spell-work,-such was, for a long while, the sole object of my studies; and whatever time and trouble this preparatory process may have cost me, the effects resulting from it, as far as the humble merit of truthfulness is concerned, have been such as to repay me more than sufficiently for my pains. I have not forgotten how great was my pleasure, when told by the late Sir James Mackintosh, that he was once asked by Colonel W-s, the historian of British India, "whether it was true that Moore had never been in the East?" "Never," answered Mackintosh. "Well, that shows me," replied Colonel W——s, "that reading over D'Herbelot is as good as riding on the back of a camel."

I need hardly subjoin to this lively speech, that although D'Herbelot's valuable work was, of course, one of my manuals, I took the whole range of all such Oriental reading as was accessible to me; and became, for the time, indeed, far more conversant with all relating to that distant region, than I have ever been with the scenery, productions, or modes of life of any of those countries lying most within my reach. We know that D'Anville, though never in his life out of Paris, was able to correct a number of errors in a plan of the Troad taken by De Choiseul, on the spot; and for my own very different, as well as far inferior, purposes, the knowledge I had thus acquired of distant localities, seen only by me in my day-dreams, was no less ready and useful.

An ample reward for all this painstaking has been found in such welcome tributes as I have just now cited; nor can

I deny myself the gratification of citing a few more of the same description. From another distinguished authority on Eastern subjects, the late Sir John Malcolm, I had myself the pleasure of hearing a similar opinion publicly expressed; -that eminent person, in a speech spoken by him at a Literary Fund Dinner, having remarked, that together with those qualities of a poet which he much too partially assigned to me was combined also "the truth of the historian."

Sir William Ouseley, another high authority, in giving his testimony to the same effect, thus notices an exception. to the general accuracy for which he gives me credit :"Dazzled by the beauties of this composition,* few readers can perceive, and none surely can regret, that the poet, in his magnificent catastrophe, has forgotten, or boldly and most happily violated, the precept of Zoroaster, above noticed, which held it impious to consume any portion of a human body by fire, especially by that which glowed upon their altars." Having long lost, I fear, most of my Eastern learning, I can only cite, in defence of my catastrophe, an old Oriental tradition, which relates that Nimrod, when Abraham refused, at his command, to worship the fire, ordered him to be thrown into the midst of the flames.† A precedent so ancient for this sort of use of the worshipped element, would appear, for all purposes at least of poetry, fully sufficient.

In addition to these agreeable testimonies, I have also

*The Fire-worshippers.

"Tradunt autem Hebræi hanc fabulam, quod Abraham in ignem missus sit, quia ignem adorare noluit."-ST. HIERON. in Quæst. in Genesim.

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