[1] Instances are not wanted, both in the English and Greek versions, where the translators have modified the sense of the original by their own preconceived opinions. To this source may be ascribed the Bugge of our old Bible.
[ Page 225.] ... the locusts were heard from the thickets on the plain of Catoul
The insects here mentioned are of the same species with the τεττιξ of the Greeks, and the cicada of the Latins. The locusts are mentioned in Pliny, b. xi, 29. They were so called, from loco usto, because the havoc they made wherever they passed left behind the appearance of a place desolated by fire. How could then the commentators of Vathek say that they are called locusts, from their having been so denominated by the first English settlers in America?
[ Page 226.] Vathek ... with two little pages
“All the pages of the seraglio are sons of Christians made slaves in time of war, in their most tender age. The incursions of robbers in the confines of Circassia afford the means of supplying the seraglio, even in times of peace.”—Habesci’s State of the Ottoman Empire, p. 157. That the pages here mentioned were Circassians, appears from the description of their complexion—more fair than the enamel of Franguestan.
[ Page 226.] ... confectioners and cooks
What their precise number might have been in Vathek’s establishment it is not now easy to determine; but in the household of the present Grand Signior there are not fewer than a hundred and ninety.—Habesci’s State of the Ottoman Empire, p. 145.
[ Page 227.] ... hath seen some part of our bodies; and, what is worse, our very faces
“I was informed,” writes Dr. Cooke, “that the Persian women, in general, would sooner expose to public view any part of their bodies than their faces.”—Voyages and Travels, vol. ii, p. 443.