[FN#288] I have lately found these lovers at Schloss Sternstein
near Cilli in Styria, the property of my excellent colleague, Mr.
Consul Faber, dating from A. D. 1300 when Jobst of Reichenegg and
Agnes of Sternstein were aided and abetted by a Capuchin of
Seikkloster.
[FN#289] In page 226 Dr. Steingass sensibly proposes altering the last hemistich (lines 11-12) to
At one time showing the Moon and Sun.
[FN#290] Omitted by Lane for some reason unaccountable as usual.
A correspondent sends me his version of the lines which occur in
The Nights (vol. v. 106 and 107):—
Behold the Pyramids and hear them teach
What they can tell of Future and of Past:
They would declare, had they the gift of speech,
The deeds that Time hath wrought from first to last
* * * *
My friends, and is there aught beneath the sky
Can with th’ Egyptian Pyramids compare?
In fear of them strong Time hath passed by
And everything dreads Time in earth and air.
[FN#291] A rhyming Romance by Henry of Waldeck (flor. A. D. 1160) with a Latin poem on the same subject by Odo and a prose version still popular in Germany. (Lane’s Nights iii. 81; and Weber’s “Northern Romances.”)
[FN#292] e. g. ’Ajáib al-Hind (= Marvels of Ind) ninth century, translated by J. Marcel Devic, Paris, 1878; and about the same date the Two Mohammedan Travellers, translated by Renaudot. In the eleventh century we have the famous Sayyid al-ldrisi, in the thirteenth the ’Ajáib al-Makhlúkat of Al-Kazwini and in the fourteenth the Kharídat al-Ajáib of Ibn Al-Wardi. Lane (in loco) traces most of Sindbad to the two latter sources.
[FN#293] So Hector France proposed to name his admirably realistic volume “Sous le Burnous” (Paris, Charpentier, 1886).
[FN#294] I mean in European literature, not in Arabic where it is a lieu commun. See three several forms of it in one page (505) of Ibn Kallikan, vol. iii.
[FN#295] My attention has been called to the resemblance between the half-lie and Job (i. 13- 19).