CHAPTER VIII.
Southey’s Thalaba—The Suggestions of the Evil One—Cotonolapes, the Magician—The Garden of Aloaddin—The Old Man of the Mountain—The Assassins—Their Rise and Fall—Gay’s Conjurer—Sir Guido, the Crusader—Guy, Earl of Warwick.
“Are you going to give us a specimen of the late Laureate’s conversions,” said Thompson, “that you borrowed my Southey?”
“Even so—to claim for the magic garden of Aloaddin, the gem of the sixth book of Thalaba, at least a Latin form, if it must not be regarded as a striking instance of my Eastern theory.”
“Southey did not come to your book for this idea; he was content with the apparently historical account of Purchas in his Pilgrims, or the more elaborate description of the notorious Mandeville,” rejoined Thompson.
“I am very much at a loss to appreciate your account,” said Herbert, “as Southey, Purchas, and Mandeville are nearly all equally unknown to me.”
“The best means of showing the progress of the story and its conversion by the poet,” said Lathom, “will be to commence with the old monk’s very short version; let that be followed by Mandeville, and that veritable author by Southey’s description. The monk’s tale is,
“THE SUGGESTIONS OF THE EVIL ONE.”
There was a celebrated magician who had a vast castle surrounded by a very beautiful garden, in which grew flowers of the most fragrant smell, and fruits not only fair to look upon but most delicious to the taste. In short, it was a garden of Paradise; no one was allowed to see its glories, or taste its pleasures, but fools or personal enemies of the magician. When the gate was opened to any one, great was his wonder and delight; and few who entered ever wished to return. Nay, the pleasures they there enjoyed so affected their minds, that they yielded forthwith to the will of the magician, and were ready to resign to him every thing that they had.
To the fools this garden appeared to be Paradise itself: its flowers and its fruits they looked upon as of immortal growth, and regarded themselves as chosen from among the inhabitants of the world as the happy possessors of the land. Beyond this they gave not one thought. Day and night they revelled in pleasure, and surrendered their minds and their bodies to lawless gratifications.
At last the day of reckoning came, and the magician prepared to reap the fruits of hisscheme. Their inheritances once placed in his power, he waited but for some moment when his victim was steeped in sensual intoxication, and then fell upon him and slew him. Thus, by his fictitious Paradise, he acquired great wealth and power.
“I admire the moderation of your old monk,” said Thompson, “in not assigning a particular locality to his magician’s paradise. Purchas and Mandeville are not so moderate; the former puts Aloaddin’s abode in the northeast parts of Persia, and Mandeville locates him in the island of Milsterak, a portion of the kingdom of Prester John.”
“No bad illustration,” said Herbert, “of the difference between a writer who tells a fiction as a fiction, and one who records it with the intention of making his readers believe it to be true.”
“Great particularity as to time, place, and persons is the sure mark of a mendacious traveller,” remarked Lathom; “both Purchas and Mandeville have altered the object of the magician’s plot; making it his means of destroying his enemies, by persuading his victims that death in his service was only a step to a more beautiful paradise. I will read Mandeville’s tale of