paraphrastic than can be approved by those who are acquainted
with the singularly curious original. The translator seems to
have despaired of rendering into English verse the flights of
Oriental poetry; and, possibly, like many learned and ingenious
men, finding it impossible to discover the sense of the original,
he may have tacitly substituted his own.]

These verses may perhaps have been the not unnatural effusion of
some half-enlightened philosopher, who, in the fabled deity,
Arimanes, saw but the prevalence of moral and physical evil; but
in the ears of Sir Kenneth of the Leopard they had a different
effect, and, sung as they were by one who had just boasted
himself a descendant of demons, sounded very like an address of
worship to the arch-fiend himself. He weighed within himself
whether, on hearing such blasphemy in the very desert where Satan
had stood rebuked for demanding homage, taking an abrupt leave of
the Saracen was sufficient to testify his abhorrence; or whether
he was not rather constrained by his vow as a Crusader to defy
the infidel to combat on the spot, and leave him food for the
beasts of the wilderness, when his attention was suddenly caught
by an unexpected apparition.

The light was now verging low, yet served the knight still to
discern that they two were no longer alone in the desert, but
were closely watched by a figure of great height and very thin,
which skipped over rocks and bushes with so much agility as,
added to the wild and hirsute appearance of the individual,
reminded him of the fauns and silvans, whose images he had seen
in the ancient temples of Rome. As the single-hearted
Scottishman had never for a moment doubted these gods of the