Page:A happy half-century and other essays.djvu/54

 better poet than Papa." It was reserved for Moore's followers to present their verses and stories in the chastened form acceptable to English drawing-rooms, and permitted to English youth. "La Belle Assemblée" published in 1819 an Eastern tale called "Jahia and Meimoune," in which the lovers converse like the virtuous characters in "Camilla." Jahia becomes the guest of an infamous sheik, who intoxicates him with a sherbet composed of "sugar, musk, and amber," and presents him with five thousand sequins and a beautiful Circassian slave. When he is left alone with this damsel, she addresses him thus: "I feel interested in you, and present circumstances will save me from the charge of immodesty, when I say that I also love you. This love inspires me with fresh horror at the crimes that are here committed."

Jahia protests that he respectfully returns her passion, and that his intentions are of an honourable character, whereupon the circumspect maiden rejoins: "Since such are your sentiments, I will perish with you if I fail in delivering you"; and conducts him, through a