Arab. “Zirtah” the coarsest of terms for what the French nuns prettily termed _un sonnet_: I find _ung sonnet_ also in Nov. ii. of the Cent nouvelles Nouvelles. Captain Lockett (p. 32) quotes Strepsiades in The Clouds βροντᾷ κομιδῆ παππάξ “because he cannot express the bathos of the original (in the Tale of Ja’afar and the old Badawi) without descending to the oracular language of Giacoma Rodogina, the engastrymythian prophetess.” But Sterne was by no means so squeamish. The literature of this subject is extensive, beginning with “Peteriana, ou l’art de peter,” which distinguishes 62 different tones. After dining with a late friend en garçon we went into his sitting-room and found on the table 13 books and booklets upon the Crepitus Ventris, and there was some astonishment as not a few of the party had never seen one. Footnote 125: This tale is a replica of the Cranes of Ibycus. This was a Rhegium man who when returning to Corinth, his home, was set upon by robbers and slain. He cast his dying eyes heavenwards and seeing a flight of cranes called upon them to avenge him and this they did by flying over the theatre of Corinth on a day when the murderers were present and one cried out, “Behold the avengers of Ibycus!” Whereupon they were taken and put to death. So says Paulus Hieronymus, and the affecting old tale has newly been sung in charming verse by Mr. Justin H. McCarthy (“Serapion.” London: Chatto and Windus.) Footnote 126: This scene is perfectly true to Badawi life; see my Pilgrimage iii. 68. Footnote 127: Arab. “Durráj”: so it is rendered in the French translation of Al-Masúdi, vii. 347. Footnote 128: A fair friend found the idea of Destiny in The Nights become almost a night-mare. Yet here we suddenly alight upon the true Johnsonian idea that conduct makes fate. Both extremes are as usual false. When one man fights a dozen battles unwounded and another falls at the first shot we cannot but acknowledge the presence of that mysterious “luck” whose laws, now utterly unknown to us, may become familiar with the ages. I may note that the idea of an appointed hour beyond which life may not be prolonged, is as old as Homer (Il. vi. 487).