personage in his vision, seems
to be borrowed from the story of one of the caliphs, who, before
his death, dreamed, that a sable hand and arm shook over his head a
handful of red earth, and denounced, that such was the colour of
the earth on which he should die. When taken ill on an expedition,
he desired to know the colour of the earth on which his tent was
pitched. A negro slave presented him with a specimen; and in the
black's outstretched arm, bared, from respect, to the elbow, as
well as in the colour of the earth, the caliph acknowledged the
apparition he had seen in his sleep, and prepared for immediate
death.

8. _Et quum fata volunt, bina venena juvant._--AUSONIUS.

9. Idiots were anciently wards of the crown; and the custody of their
person, and charge of their estate, was often granted to the suit
of some favourite, where the extent of the latter rendered it an
object of plunder. Hence the common phrase of being _begged for a
fool._

10. This incident seems to be taken from the following passage in the
_Continuation of the Adventures of Don Sebastian_.

"In Moran, an island some half league from Venice, there is an
abbot called Capelo, a gentleman of Venice, a grave personage, and
of great authority, hearing that the king laid wait for certain
jewels that he had lost, (hoping thereby to recover some of them,)
having a diamond in his keeping with the arms of Portugal, came to
the town to the conventicles of St Francis, called Frari, where the
king lay concealed, for that he was pursued by some that meant him
no good, who no sooner beheld the ring, but he said, 'Verily this
is mine, and I either lost the same in Flanders, or else it was
stolen from me.' And when the king had put it upon his finger, it
appeared otherwise engraven than before. The abbot enquiring of him
that brought him the ring, how he came by it? he answered, it is
true that the king hath said. Hence arose a strange rumour of a
ring, that, by turning the stone, you might discern three great
letters engraven, S.R.P. as much as to say, _Sebastianus Rex
Portugallix."--Harl. Mis._ vol. v. p. 462.

11. It is said, in the pamphlets alluded to, that Don Sebastian, out
of grief and shame for having fought against the advice of his
generals, and lost the flower of his army, took the resolution of
never returning to his country, but of burying him