THE DECLINE AND FALL

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chap, to the royal ear; but what use or merit couldlxviji. recommen d to the statesman or the scholar theuncouth dialect of his Hebrew slaves? The his-tory and geography of the world w ere familiar tohis memory: the lives of the heroes of the East,perhaps of the West/ excited his emulation: hisskill in astrology is excused by the folly of thetimes, and supposes some rudiments of mathema-tical science; and a profane taste for the arts isbetrayed in his liberal invitation and reward ofthe painters of Italy. ® But the influence of re-ligion and learning were employed without effecton his savage and licentious nature. I will nottranscribe, nor do I firmly believe, the stories ofhis fourteen pages, whose bellies were rippedopen in search of a stolen melon; or of the beau-teous slave, whose head he severed from herbody, to convince the janizaries that their mas-ter was not the votary of love. His sobriety is at-tested by the silence of the Turkish annals, whichaccuse three, and three only, of the Ottoman lineof the vice of drunkenness / 1 But it cannot be

de Re Militari, in which he first mentions the use of bombs. By hispatron Sigismond Malatesti, prince of Rimini, it had been addressedwith a Latin epistle to Mahomet II .

f According to Phranza, he assiduously studied the lives and actionsof Alexander, Augustus, Constantine, and Theodosius . I have readsomewhere, that Plutarch’s Lives were translated by his orders into theTurkish language. If the sultan himself understood Greek, it musthave teen for the benefit of his subjects. Yet these lives are a schoolof freedom as well as of valour.

* The famous gentile Bellino, whom he had invited from Venice, wasdismissed with a chain and collar of gold, and a purse of 3000 ducats.With Voltaire I laugh at the foolish story of a slave purposely behead-ed, to instruct the painter in the action of the muscles.

* These imperial drunkards were Soliman I , Selim II , and Amn-

rath