Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 2.djvu/229

CANTO II.] confirmed. The relations of passing travellers are as little to be depended on as the invectives of angry factors; but till something more can be attained, we must be content with the little to be acquired from similar sources. A word, en passant, with Mr. Thornton and Dr. Pouqueville, who have been guilty between them of sadly clipping the Sultan's Turkish.

Dr. Pouqueville tells a long story of a Moslem who swallowed corrosive sublimate in such quantities that he acquired the name of "Suleyman Yeyen" i.e. quoth the Doctor, "Suleyman the eater of corrosive sublimate." "Aha," thinks Mr. Thornton (angry with the Doctor for the fiftieth time), "have I caught you?"—Then, in a note, twice the thickness of the Doctor's anecdote, he questions the Doctor's proficiency in the Turkish tongue, and his veracity in his own.—"For," observes Mr. Thornton (after inflicting on us the tough participle of a Turkish verb), "it means nothing more than &apos;Suleyman the eater,' and quite cashiers the supplementary &apos;sublimate.'" Now both are right, and both are wrong. If Mr. Thornton, when he next resides "fourteen years in the factory," will consult his Turkish dictionary, or ask any of his Stamboline acquaintance, he will discover that "Suleyma'n yeyen," put together discreetly, mean the "Swallower of sublimate," without any "Suleyman" in the case: "Suleyma" signifying "corrosive sublimate," and not being a proper name on this occasion, although it be an orthodox name enough with the addition of n. After Mr. Thornton's frequent hints of profound Orientalism, he might have found this out before he sang such pæans over Dr. Pouqueville.

After this, I think "Travellers versus Factors" shall be our motto, though the above Mr. Thornton has condemned "hoc genus omne," for mistake and misrepresentation. "Ne Sutor ultra crepidam," "No merchant beyond his bales." N.B. For the benefit of Mr. Thornton, "Sutor" is not a proper name. a. [For Pouqueville's story of the "thériakis" or opium-eaters, see Voyage en Morée, 1805, ii. 126.]

b. [Thornton's Present State of Turkey, ii. 173.]

However defective these may be, they are preferable to the parodoxes of men who have read superficially of the ancients, and seen nothing of the moderns, such as De Pauw; who, when he asserts that the British breed of horses is ruined by Newmarket, and that the Spartans were