Dr John Moore (1729-1802), author of Zeluco, was born at Stirling, son of a minister of the town, who died in 1737, leaving seven children to the care of his widow; and she thereupon removed to Glasgow, where her relations had property. After the usual education at the grammar-school and university, John began the study of medicine and surgery under Mr Gordon, the same surgeon to whom Smollett had been apprenticed. In his nineteenth year he accompanied the Duke of Argyll's regiment abroad, and served in the military hospitals at Maestricht. Thence he went to Flushing and Breda, and at the close of hostilities he accompanied General Braddock to England. Soon afterwards he became household surgeon to the Earl of Albemarle, British ambassador at the court of Versailles. In 1751 his old master invited him to become a partner in his business in Glasgow, and Moore, who had been two years in Paris, accepted the invitation. He practised in Glasgow with great success, married in 1757, and became the father of a daughter and five sons, the eldest the hero of Corunna. In 1772 he travelled with the young Duke of Hamilton on the Continent, spending five years in France, Switzerland, Germany, and Italy; on his return in 1778 he removed his family to London, and commenced physician there.

In 1779 he published A View of Society and Manners in France, Switzerland, and Germany, which was well received. In 1781 appeared his View of Society and Manners in Italy; in 1786, Medical Sketches; and, in the same year, Zeluco: Various Views of Human Nature, taken from Life and Manners, Foreign and Domestic, selected to prove that, in spite of the gayest and most prosperous appearances, inward misery always accompanies vice. The hero (possibly suggested by Smollett's Count Fathom) is the only son of a noble family in Sicily, spoiled by maternal indulgence, and at length rioting in every prodigality and vice. The scene of the novel is laid chiefly in Italy; and Moore's familiarity with foreign manners enabled him to give his narrative many novel and vivid side-lights. Zeluco serves in the Spanish army, and becomes a slave-owner in the West Indies, so that Moore has an opportunity of condemning slavery; he gives touching pictures of the sufferings of the negroes and of their attachment to their masters; and the death of Hanno, the generous slave, is one of Moore's most masterly delineations.

Moore visited Scotland in the summer of 1786, and next year took a warm interest in the genius and fortunes of Burns. It is to him that we owe the precious Autobiography of the poet; and in their correspondence the extraordinary gifts of the peasant-bard show to advantage. In 1792 Moore accompanied the Earl of Lauderdale to Paris, and witnessed some of the excesses of the French Revolution; of this tour the record was published as A Journal during a Residence in France (2 vols.

1793-94), and was followed in 1795 by A View of the Causes and Progress of the French Revolution, a valuable work which was utilised both by Scott and Carlyle. In 1796 Moore produced a second novel, Edward: Various Views of Human Nature, taken from Life and Manners, chiefly in England. As Zeluco was a model of villainy, Edward is a model of virtue, but is unhappily less interesting than his antitype. In 1797 Moore furnished a

life of his friend Smollett for a collective edition of his works. In 1800 appeared Mordaunt : Sketches of Life, Character, and Manners in Various Countries, including the Memoirs of a French Lady of Quality, an insipid novel without much plot or incident, told in letters partly dated from the Continent and partly from England.

In the following extract from Zeluco, two Scotch servants in Italy, dining (and drinking) in the absence of their masters, have a dispute, followed by a duel and a reconciliation. Duncan Targe was a hot Highlander, who had been out in the Forty-five; George Buchanan had been born and educated among the Whigs of the west of Scotland.

Scots Abroad.

Buchanan filled a bumper, and gave for the toast, 'The Land of Cakes!'

This immediately dispersed the cloud which began to gather on the other's brow.

Targe drank the toast with enthusiasm, saying: 'May the Almighty pour his blessings on every hill and valley in it! That is the worst wish, Mr Buchanan, that I shall ever wish to that land.'

'It would delight your heart to behold the flourishing condition it is now in,' replied Buchanan; it was fast improving when I left it, and I have been credibly informed since that it is now a perfect garden.'

'I am very happy to hear it,' said Targe. 'Indeed,' added Buchanan, 'it has been in a state of rapid improvement ever since the Union.'

'Confound the Union!' cried Targe; it would have improved much faster without it.'

'I am not quite clear on that point, Mr Targe,' said Buchanan.

'Depend upon it,' replied Targe, the Union was the worst treaty that Scotland ever made.'

'I shall admit,' said Buchanan, 'that she might have made a better; but, bad as it is, our country reaps some advantage from it.'

·

All the advantages are on the side of England.' 'What do you think, Mr Targe,' said Buchanan, ‘of the increase of trade since the Union, and the riches which have flowed into the Lowlands of Scotland from that quarter?'

'Think!' cried Targe; 'why, I think they have done a great deal of mischief to the Lowlands of Scotland.'

'How so, my good friend?' said Buchanan.

By spreading luxury among the inhabitants, the neverfailing forerunner of effeminacy of manners. Why, I was assured,' continued Targe, by Sergeant Lewis Macneil, a Highland gentleman in the Prussian service, that the Lowlanders, in some parts of Scotland, are now very little better than so many English.'

'O fie!' cried Buchanan; 'things are not come to that

pass as yet, Mr Targe: your friend the sergeant assuredly exaggerates.'

'I hope he does,' replied Targe. 'But you must acknowledge,' continued he, 'that, by the Union, Scotland has lost her existence as an independent state; her name is swallowed up in that of England. Only read the English newspapers; they mention England, as if it were the name of the whole island. They talk of the English army, the English fleet, the English everything. They never mention Scotland, except when one of our countrymen happens to get an office under government; we are then told, with some stale gibe, that the person is a Scotchman; or, which happens still more rarely, when any of them are condemned to die at Tyburn, particular care is taken to inform the public that the criminal is originally from Scotland! But if fifty Englishmen get places, or are hanged, in one year, no remarks are made.' 'No,' said Buchanan; 'in that case it is passed over as a thing of course.'

The conversation then taking another turn, Targe, who was a great genealogist, descanted on the antiquity of certain gentlemen's families in the Highlands; which, he asserted, were far more honourable than most of the noble families either in Scotland or England. 'Is it not shameful,' added he, 'that a parcel of mushroom lords, mere sprouts from the danghills of law or commerce, the grandsons of grocers and attorneys, should take the pass of gentlemen of the oldest families in Europe?'

'Why, as for that matter,' replied Buchanan, 'provided the grandsons of grocers or attorneys are deserving citizens, I do not perceive why they should be excluded from the king's favour more than other men.'

'But some of them never drew a sword in defence of either their king or country,' rejoined Targe.

6

'Assuredly,' said Buchanan, men may deserve honour and pre-eminence by other means than by drawing their swords.' [He then instances his celebrated namesake, George Buchanan, whom he praises warmly as having been the best Latin scholar in Europe; while Targe upbraids him for want of honesty.]

'In what did he ever shew any want of honesty?' said Buchanan.

'In calumniating and endeavouring to blacken the reputation of his rightful sovereign, Mary, Queen of Scots,' replied Targe, 'the most beautiful and accomplished princess that ever sat on a throne.'

'I have nothing to say either against her beauty or her accomplishments,' resumed Buchanan; but surely, Mr Targe, you must acknowledge that she was a

?'

'Have a care what you say, sir!' interrupted Targe; 'I'll permit no man that ever wore breeches to speak disrespectfully of that unfortunate queen!'

'No man that ever wore either breeches or a philabeg,' replied Buchanan, ‘shall prevent me from speaking the truth when I see occasion.'

'Speak as much truth as you please, sir,' rejoined Targe; but I declare that no man shall calumniate the memory of that beautiful and unfortunate princess in my presence while I can wield a claymore.'

'If you should wield fifty claymores, you cannot deny that she was a Papist!' said Buchanan.

'Well, sir,' cried Targe, 'what then? She was, like other people, of the religion in which she was bred.'

'I do not know where you may have been bred, Mr Targe,' said Buchanan; 'for aught I know, you may be an adherent to the worship of the Scarlet Lady yourself.

Unless that is the case, you ought not to interest yourself in the reputation of Mary, Queen of Scots.'

'I fear you are too nearly related to the false slanderer whose name you bear!' said Targe.

'I glory in the name, and should think myself greatly obliged to any man who could prove my relation to the great George Buchanan!' cried the other.

'He was nothing but a disloyal calumniator,' cried Targe, 'who attempted to support falsehoods by forgeries, which, I thank Heaven, are now fully detected!'

'You are thankful for a very small mercy,' resumed Buchanan; but since you provoke me to it, I will tell you, in plain English, that your bonny Queen Mary was the strumpet of Bothwell, and the murderer of her husband!'

No sooner had he uttered the last sentence than Targe flew at him like a tiger, and they were separated with difficulty by Mr N's groom, who was in the adjoining chamber, and had heard the altercation.

'I insist on your giving me satisfaction, or retracting what you have said against the beautiful Queen of Scotland!' cried Targe.

'As for retracting what I have said,' replied Buchanan, 'that is no habit of mine; but with regard to giving you satisfaction, I am ready for that to the best of my ability; for let me tell you, sir, though I am not a Highlandman, I am a Scotchman as well as yourself, and not entirely ignorant of the use of the claymore; so name your hour, and I will meet you to-morrow morning.'

'Why not directly?' cried Targe; 'there is nobody in the garden to interrupt us.'

'I should have chosen to have settled some things first; but since you are in such a hurry, I will not balk you. I will step home for my sword and be with you directly,' said Buchanan.

The groom interposed, and endeavoured to reconcile the two enraged Scots, but without success. Buchanan soon arrived with his sword, and they retired to a private spot in the garden. The groom next tried to persuade them to decide their difference by fair boxing. This was rejected by both the champions as a mode of fighting unbecoming gentlemen. The groom asserted that the best gentlemen in England sometimes fought in that manner, and gave as an instance a boxing-match, of which he himself had been a witness, between Lord G.'s gentleman and a gentleman-farmer at York races about the price of a mare.

'But our quarrel,' said Targe, 'is about the reputation of a queen.'

That, for certain,' replied the groom, makes a difference.'

Buchanan unsheathed his sword.

'Are you ready, sir?' cried Targe.

"That I am. Come on, sir,' said Buchanan; and the Lord be with the righteous.'

'Amen!' cried Targe; and the conflict began.

Both the combatants understood the weapon they fought with, and each parried his adversary's blows with such dexterity that no blood was shed for some time. At length Targe, making a feint at Buchanan's head, gave him suddenly a severe wound in the thigh.

'I hope you are now sensible of your error?' said Targe, dropping his point.

'I am of the same opinion I was!' cried Buchanan ; 'so keep your guard.' So saying, he advanced more briskly than ever upon Targe, who, after warding off

several strokes, wounded his antagonist a second time. Buchanan, however, shewed no disposition to relinquish the combat. But this second wound being in the forehead, and the blood flowing with profusion into his eyes, he could no longer see distinctly, but was obliged to flourish his sword at random, without being able to perceive the movements of his adversary, who, closing with him, became master of his sword, and with the same effort threw him to the ground; and, standing over him, he said: "This may convince you, Mr Buchanan, that yours is not the righteous cause! You are in my power; but I will act as the queen whose character I defend would order were she alive. I hope you will live to repent of the injustice you have done to that amiable and unfortunate princess.' He then assisted Buchanan to rise. Buchanan made no immediate answer: but when he saw Targe assisting the groom to stop the blood which flowed from his wounds, he said: 'I must acknowledge, Mr Targe, that you behave like a gentleman.'

After the bleeding was in some degree diminished by the dry lint which the groom, who was an excellent farrier, applied to the wounds, they assisted him to his chamber, and then the groom rode away to inform Mr N of what had happened. But the wound becoming more painful, Targe proposed sending for a surgeon. Buchanan then said that the surgeon's mate belonging to one of the ships of the British squadron then in the bay was, he believed, on shore, and as he was a Scotchman he would like to employ him rather than a foreigner. Having mentioned where he lodged, one of Mr N's footmen went immediately for him. He returned soon after, saying that the surgeon's mate was not at his lodging, nor expected for some hours. But I will go and bring the French surgeon,' continued the footman.

'I thank you, Mr Thomas,' said Buchanan; 'but I will have patience till my own countryman returns.'

'He may not return for a long time,' said Thomas. "You had best let me run for the French surgeon, who, they say, has a great deal of skill.’

'I am obliged to you, Mr Thomas,' added Buchanan; 'but neither Frenchman nor Spanishman shall dress my wounds when a Scottishman is to be found for love or money.'

'They are to be found, for the one or the other, as I am credibly informed, in most parts of the world,' said Thomas.

'As my countrymen,' replied Buchanan, are distinguished for letting slip no means of improvement, it would be very strange if many of them did not use that of travelling, Mr Thomas.'

'It would be very strange indeed, I own it,' said the footman.

'But are you certain of this young man's skill in his business when he does come?' said Targe.

'I confess I have had no opportunity to know any. thing of his skill,' answered Buchanan; but I know for certain that he is sprung from very respectable people. His father is a minister of the gospel, and it is not likely that his father's son will be deficient in the profession to which he was bred.'

'It would be still less likely had the son been bred to preaching!' said Targe.

'That is true,' replied Buchanan; 'but I have no doubt of the young man's skill: he seems to be a very douce [discreet] lad. It will be an encouragement to him

to see that I prefer him to another, and also a comfort to me to be attended by my countryman.'

'Countryman or not countryman,' said Thomas, 'he will expect to be paid for his trouble as well as another.' 'Assuredly,' said Buchanan; but it was always a maxim with me, and shall be to my dying day, that we should give our own fish-guts to our own sea-mews.'

'Since you are so fond of your own sea-mews,' said Thomas, 'I am surprised you were so eager to destroy Mr Targe there.'

"That proceeded from a difference in politics, Mr Thomas,' replied Buchanan, 'in which the best of friends are apt to have a misunderstanding; but though I am a Whig, and he is a Tory, I hope we are both honest men; and as he behaved generously when my life was in his power, I have no scruple in saying that I am sorry for having spoken disrespectfully of any person, dead or alive, for whom he has an esteem.'

'Mary, Queen of Scots, acquired the esteem of her very enemies,' resumed Targe. 'The elegance and engaging sweetness of her manners were irresistible to every heart that was not steeled by prejudice or jealousy.'

'She is now in the hands of a Judge,' said Buchanan, 'who can neither be seduced by fair appearances, nor imposed on by forgeries and fraud.'

'She is so, Mr Buchanan,' replied Targe; and her rival and accusers are in the hands of the same Judge.' 'We had best leave them all to His justice and mercy, then, and say no more on the subject,' added Buchanan ; 'for if Queen Mary's conduct on earth was what you believe it was, she will receive her reward in heaven, where her actions and sufferings are recorded.'

'One thing more I will say,' rejoined Targe, and that is only to ask of you whether it is probable that a woman whose conscience was loaded with crimes imputed to her could have closed the varied scene of her life, and have met death with such serene and dignified courage, as Mary did?'

'I always admired that last awful scene,' replied Buchanan, who was melted by the recollection of Mary's behaviour on the scaffold; and I will freely acknowledge that the most innocent person that ever lived, or the greatest hero recorded in history, could not face death with greater composure than the queen of Scotland she supported the dignity of a queen while she displayed the meekness of a Christian.'

'I am exceedingly sorry, my dear friend, for the misunderstanding that happened between us!' said Targe affectionately, and holding forth his hand in token of reconciliation and I am now willing to believe that your friend, Mr George Buchanan, was a very great poet, and understood Latin as well as any man alive!' Here the two friends shook hands with the utmost cordiality.

The edition of Moore's works (7 vols. 1820) contains a Memoir by Dr Robert Anderson. Zeluco is included in Mrs Barbauld's British Novelists.

William Beckford (1760–1844), the author of Vathek, was born at Fonthill in the south-west of Wiltshire. He had as great a passion for building towers as the caliph himself, and both his fortune and his genius have something of Oriental splendour about them. His father, Alderman Beckford (1709-70), M.P. from 1753 for the City of London, and twice Lord Mayor, was a doughty

Whig, a rival almost of Wilkes, a man who, according to a somewhat doubtful story, dared to speak face to face with a king. His only son, on coming of age, succeeded to a million of money and over £100,000 a year. His education had been desultory and irregular; but under tutors at Geneva a literary taste already manifested itself. In his seventeenth year he wrote Memoirs of Extraordinary Painters (published in 1780), a burlesque guidebook to the pictures at Fonthill, which by means of wholly fictitious biographies deftly satirised both Dutch and English artists under feigned names. His letters on his travels, 1780-82, in the Netherlands and Italy were printed in 1783, then suppressed, and reprinted in 1835, with omissions and additions, as Italy, with Sketches of Spain and Portugal; the restored text becoming available only in 1891. In 1782 he wrote Vathek. 'I wrote it,' he told Cyrus Redding, 'at one sitting, and in French. It cost me three days and two nights of hard labour. I never took my clothes off the whole ,,time.' As a matter of fact, he was working at it for most of a twelvemonth. In 1783 he married a daughter of the Earl of Aboyne; and they lived in Switzerland until her death at Vevay in 1786, after bearing a second daughter, who married the Duke of Hamilton. Late in that same year appeared in London an English version of The History of the Caliph Vathek, an Arabian tale from an unpublished manuscript, with notes critical and explanatory. Both translation and notes were made, with Beckford's co-operation, by the Rev. Samuel Henley, D.D., rector of Rendlesham in Suffolk, and first Principal of Haileybury; but the publication was quite unauthorised, anticipating as it did two editions of the French original (Paris and Lausanne, 1787). Yet Henley's version it is that still holds the field, if altered somewhat in the third edition (1816). Beckford's travel-pictures, though unequal and often disappointing, can yet be read with keen interest and pleasure. The point of view is sometimes startling; thus a modern art-lover is surprised to find that one of the things that chiefly attracted this great cognoscente to Holland was the prospect of revelling in Polemburgs! And Beckford does in so many words rank Cornelis van Poelenburgh (1586-1667) among the greatest painters of the Low Countries, and far above Rubens. On the other hand, his raptures amid the sublime scenery of Alpine mountains and forests were compared with the finest things in Gray's letters.

Beckford was returned to Parliament for Wells and Hindon, but his love of magnificence and his voluptuary tastes were ill-suited to English society. In 1794 he set off for Portugal with a retinue of thirty servants, and was absent about two years. He was said to have built a palace at Cintra-that 'glorious Eden of the south;' and Byron referred to it in the first canto of Childe Harold:

There thou, too, Vathek! England's wealthiest son,
Once formed thy paradise.

Byron had been misinformed: Beckford built

no 'paradise' at Cintra. But he left a literary memorial of his residence in Portugal in his Recollections of an Excursion to the Monasteries of Alcobaça and Batalha (1835). In 1796 he returned to England, and took up his residence permanently on his Wiltshire estate. Two burlesque novels by him belong to this periodModern Novel-writing, or the Elegant Enthusiast (1796), and Azemia (1797); but they are tedious extravaganzas. At Fonthill Beckford lived in a style of Oriental luxury and seclusion. He built a wall of nine miles round his property to shut out visitors; but in 1800 his gates were thrown open to receive Lord Nelson and Sir William and Lady Hamilton, in honour of whom he gave a series of splendid fêtes.

WILLIAM BECKFORD.

From an Engraving after Reynolds.

Next year he sold the furniture and pictures of Fonthill, pulled down the old house with its great hall, and for years employed himself in rearing the magnificent but unsubstantial Gothic structure known as Fonthill Abbey, with a tower 278 feet high, which fell in ruins in 1825. In 1822 he sold the place for £330,000, retaining only family pictures and books, and went to live at Bath. There he erected another costly building, Lansdowne House, which had a tower a hundred feet high, crowned with a model of the temple of Lysicrates at Athens, made of cast-iron! and there he died. Beckford was one of the most magnificent of bibliophiles, some of his purchases being perfectly imperial. He bought Gibbon's library at Lausanne and handed it over to his physician. His own splendid collection, which passed to his descendants the Dukes of Hamilton, was sold in 1882 for £43,000.

Vathek was Byron's delight. For correctness of costume, beauty of description, and power of imagination, this most Eastern and sublime tale surpasses all imitations,' said the author of Childe Harold; as an Eastern tale even Rasselas must bow before it.' Voluptuousness and cynicism are strangely combined in the work. The hero is the grandson of Haroun al Raschid, whose dominions stretched from Africa to India; he is fearless, proud, inquisitive, gourmand, fond of theological controversy, cruel, and magnificent. There certainly is much both of weirdness and of grandeur in some of the inventions; the catastrophe has real epic sublimity, and the conception of the vast multitude incessantly pacing the halls from which all hope has fled is Dantesque. Numberless graces of description, piquant allusions, humour and satire, and a wild yet witty spirit of mockery and derision diversify and distinguish a romance which gives Beckford a place of his own among our imaginative writers, even apart from the surprise excited by the work of a youth of twenty-two, who had never been in the countries described so vividly. But the work is conspicuously unequal. Only sometimes is the romancer convincing; often he fails of his intended effect; there are many passages of mere incredible phantasmagoria, and some of sheer dullness.

The Caliph Vathek and his Palaces. Vathek, ninth caliph of the race of the Abbasides, was the son of Motassem, and the grandson of Haroun al Raschid. From an early accession to the throne, and the talents he possessed to adorn it, his subjects were induced to expect that his reign would be long and happy. His figure was pleasing and majestic; but when he was angry, one of his eyes became so terrible that no person could bear to behold it, and the wretch upon whom it was fixed instantly fell backward, and sometimes expired. For fear, however, of depopulating his dominions and making his palace desolate, he but rarely gave way to his anger.

Being much addicted to women and the pleasures of the table, he sought by his affability to procure agreeable companions; and he succeeded the better as his generosity was unbounded and his indulgences unrestrained; nor did he think, with the caliph Omar Ben Abdalaziz, that it was necessary to make a hell of this world to enjoy paradise in the next.

He surpassed in magnificence all his predecessors. The palace of Alkoremmi, which his father, Motassem, had erected on the hill of Pied Horses, and which commanded the whole city of Samarah, was in his idea far too scanty; he added, therefore, five wings, or rather other palaces, which he destined for the particular gratification of each of his senses. In the first of these were tables continually covered with the most exquisite dainties, which were supplied both by night and by day, according to their constant consumption, whilst the most delicious wines and the choicest cordials flowed forth from a hundred fountains that were never exhausted. This palace was called the Eternal, or Unsatiating Banquet. The second was styled the Temple of Melody, or the Nectar of the Soul. It was

inhabited by the most skilful musicians and admired poets of the time, who not only displayed their talents within, but dispersing in bands without, caused every surrounding scene to reverberate their songs, which were continually varied in the most delightful succession.

The palace named the Delight of the Eyes, or the Support of Memory, was one entire enchantment. Rarities collected from every corner of the earth were there found in such profusion as to dazzle and confound, but for the order in which they were arranged. One gallery exhibited the pictures of the celebrated Mani [the founder of the Manichæans, who was famed as a magician and painter], and statues that seemed to be alive. Here a well-managed perspective attracted the sight; there the magic of optics agreeably deceived it; whilst the naturalist, on his part, exhibited in their several classes the various gifts that Heaven had bestowed on our globe. In a word, Vathek omitted nothing in this palace that might gratify the curiosity of those who resorted to it, although he was not able to satisfy his own, for he was of all men the most curious.

The Palace of Perfumes, which was termed likewise the Incentive to Pleasure, consisted of various halls, where the different perfumes which the earth produces were kept perpetually burning in censers of gold. Flambeaux and aromatic lamps were here lighted in open day. But the too powerful effects of this agree able delirium might be alleviated by descending into an immense garden, where an assemblage of every fragrant flower diffused through the air the purest odours.

The fifth palace, denominated the Retreat of Mirth, or the Dangerous, was frequented by troops of young females, beautiful as the Houris and not less seducing, who never failed to receive with caresses all whom the caliph allowed to approach them and enjoy a few hours of their company. For he was by no means jealous, as his own women were secluded within the palace he inhabited himself.

Notwithstanding the sensuality in which Vathek indulged, he experienced no abatement in the love of his people, who thought that a sovereign immersed in pleasure was not less tolerable to his subjects than one that employed himself in creating them foes. But the unquiet and impetuous disposition of the caliph would not allow him to rest there. He had studied so much for his amusement in the lifetime of his father as to acquire a great deal of knowledge, though not a sufficiency to satisfy himself; for he wished to know everything, even sciences that did not exist. He was fond of engaging in disputes with the learned, but did not allow them to push their opposition with warmth. He stopped with presents the mouths of those whose mouths could be stopped; whilst others, whom his liberality was unable to subdue, he sent to prison to cool their blood; a remedy that often succeeded.

Vathek discovered also a predilection for theological controversy; but it was not with the orthodox that he usually held. By this means he induced the zealots to oppose him, and then persecuted them in return; for he resolved at anyrate to have reason on his side.

The great prophet Mahomet, whose vicars the caliphs are, beheld with indignation from his abode in the seventh heaven the irreligious conduct of such a vicegerent. 'Let us leave him to himself,' said he to the genii, who are always ready to receive his com