[hf] She whom thy Sultan had been fain to wed.—[MS.]
[189] ["The body of a Moslemin is ordered to be carried to the grave in haste, with hurried steps."—Ibid., p. 233, note.]
[190] "I came to the place of my birth, and cried, 'The friends of my Youth, where are they?' and an Echo answered, 'Where are they?'"—From an Arabic MS. The above quotation (from which the idea in the text is taken) must be already familiar to every reader: it is given in the second annotation, p. 67, of The Pleasures of Memory [note to Part I. line 103]; a poem so well known as to render a reference almost superfluous: but to whose pages all will be delighted to recur [Poems, by Samuel Rogers, 1852, i. 48].
[hg] There the sad cypress ever glooms.—[MS.]
[hh] {209} But with the day blush of the sky.—[MS.]
[hi] And some there be who could believe.—[MS.]
"And airy tongues that syllable men's names."
Milton, Comus, line 208.
For a belief that the souls of the dead inhabit the form of birds, we need not travel to the East. Lord Lyttleton's ghost story, the belief of the Duchess of Kendal, that George I. flew into her window in the shape of a raven (see Orford's Reminiscences, Lord Orford's Works, 1798, iv. 283), and many other instances, bring this superstition nearer home. The most singular was the whim of a Worcester lady, who, believing her daughter to exist in the shape of a singing bird, literally furnished her pew in the cathedral with cages full of the kind; and as she was rich, and a benefactress in beautifying the church, no objection was made to her harmless folly. For this anecdote, see Orford's Letters.