Ariosto, who owes more to Arabian fable than his commentators have hitherto supposed, seems to have been no stranger to the halls of Argenk, when he described one of the fountains of Merlin:—

Era una delle fonti di Merlino

Delle quattro di Francia da lui fatte;

D’intorno cinta di bel marmo fino,

Lucido, e terso, e bianco piû che latte.

Quivi d’ intaglio con lavor divino

Avea Merlino immagini ritratte.

Direste che spiravano, e se prive

Non fossero ai voce, ch’ eran vive.

Quivi una Bestia uscir della foresta

Parea di crudel vista, odiosa, e brutta,

Che avea le orecchie d’asino, e la testa

Di lupo, e i denti, e per gran fame asciutta;

Branche avea di leon; l’altro, che resta,

Tutto era volpe.

117 holding his right hand motionless on his heart. Sandys observes, that the application of the right hand to the heart is the customary mode of eastern salutation; but the perseverance of the votaries of Eblis in this attitude, was intended to express their devotion to him both heart and hand.

118 In my life-time, I filled, &c. This recital agrees perfectly with those in the Koran, and other Arabian legends.

119 Carathis on the back of an afrit. The expedition of the afrit in fetching Carathis, is characteristic of this order of dives. We read in the Koran that another of the fraternity offered to bring the Queen of Saba’s throne to Solomon, before he could rise from his place, c. 27.

120 Glanced off in a whirl that rendered her invisible. It was extremely proper to punish Carathis by a rite, and one of the principal characteristics of that science in which she so much delighted, and which was the primary cause of Vathek’s perdition and of her own. The circle, the emblem of eternity, and the symbol of the sun, was held sacred in the most ancient ceremonies of incantations; and the whirling round deemed as a necessary operation in magical mysteries. Was not the name of the greatest enchantress in fabulous antiquity, Circe, derived from Κιρκος, a circle, on account of her magical revolutions and of the circular appearance and motion of the sun her father? The fairies and elves used to arrange themselves in a ring on the grass; and even the augur, in the liturgy of the Romans, whirled round, to encompass the four cardinal points of the world. It is remarkable, that a derivative of the Arabic word (which corresponds to the Hebrew סהר, and is interpreted scindere secare se in orbem, inde notio circinandi, mox gyrandi et hinc à motu versatili, fascinavit, incantavit) signifies, in the Koran, the glimmering of twilight; a sense deducible from the shapeless glimpses of objects, when hurried round with the velocity here described, and very applicable to the sudden disappearance of Carathis, who, like the stone in a sling, by the progressive and rapid increase of the circular motion, soon ceased to be perceptible. Nothing can impress a greater awe upon the mind than does this passage in the original.