ose of his own court; but to allude to these Roman fables,
when he talks to an emperor of Barbary, seems very extraordinary.
But observe how he defies him out of the classics in the following
lines:

Why didst not thou engage me man to man,
And try the virtue of that Gorgon face,
To stare me into statue?

"Almeyda, at the same time, is more book-learned than Don Sebastian.
She plays an Hydra upon the Emperor, that is full as good as the
Gorgon:

O that I had the fruitful heads of Hydra,
That one might bourgeon where another fell!
Still would I give thee work, still, still, thou tyrant,
And hiss thee with the last.

"She afterwards, in allusion to Hercules, bids him 'lay down the
lion's skin, and take the distaff;' and, in the following speech,
utters her passion still more learnedly:

No; were we joined, even though it were in death,
Our bodies burning in one funeral pile,
The prodigy of Thebes would be renewed,
And my divided flame should break from thine.

"The emperor of Barbary shews himself acquainted with the Roman
poets as well as either of his prisoners, and answers the foregoing
speech in the same classic strain:

Serpent, I will engender poison with thee:
Our offspring, like the seed of dragon's teeth,
Shall issue armed, and fight themselves to death.

"Ovid seems to have been Muley-Moloch's favourite author; witness
the lines that follow:

She, still inexorable, still imperious,
And loud, as if, like Bacchus, born in thunder.

"I shall conclude my remarks on his part with that poetical
complaint of his being in love; and leave my reader to consider, how
prettily it would sound in the mouth of an emperor of Morocco:

The god of love once more has shot his fires
Into my soul, and my whole heart receives him.

"Muley Zeydan is as ingenious a man as his brother Muley Moloch; as
where he hints at the story of Castor and Pollux:

May we ne'er meet;
For, like the twins of Leda, when I mount,
He gallops down the skies.

"As for the Mufti, we will suppose that he was bred up a scholar,
and not only versed in the law of Mahomet, but acquainted with all
kinds of polite learning. For this reason he is not at all surprised
when Dorax calls him a Phaeton in one place, and in another tells him
he is like Archimedes.

"The Mufti afterwards mentions Ximenes, Albornoz, an