A Boswell of Baghdad With Diversions   By: Edward V. Lucas (1868-1938)

OTHER WORKS BY E. V. LUCAS

The Vermilion Box Landmarks Listener's Lure Mr. Ingleside Over Bemerton's London Lavender Cloud and Silver Loiterer's Harvest One Day and Another Fireside and Sunshine Character and Comedy Old Lamps for New The Hambledon Men The Open Road The Friendly Town Her Infinite Variety Good Company The Gentlest Art The Second Post A Little of Everything Harvest Home Variety Lane The Best of Lamb The Life of Charles Lamb A Swan and Her Friends London Revisited A Wanderer in Venice A Wanderer in Paris A Wanderer in London A Wanderer in Holland A Wanderer in Florence The British School Highways and Byways in Sussex Anne's Terrible Good Nature The Slowcoach Remember Louvain! Swollen Headed William

and

The Pocket Edition of the Works of Charles Lamb: I. Miscellaneous Prose; II. Elia; III. Children's Books; IV. Poems and Plays; V. and VI. Letters.

A BOSWELL OF BAGHDAD

WITH DIVERSIONS

BY

E. V. LUCAS

THIRD EDITION

METHUEN & CO. LTD. 36 ESSEX STREET W.C. LONDON

This Book was First Published September 20th 1917

Second Edition December 1917

Third Edition 1918

CONTENTS

PAGE

A BOSWELL OF BAGHDAD 1

DIVERSIONS

NURSES 93

NO. 344260 99

THE TWO PERKINSES 106

ARTS OF INVASION 118

THE MARBLE ARCH AND PETER MAGNUS 128

THE OLDEST JOKE 133

THE PUTTENHAMS 140

POETRY MADE EASY 148

A PIONEER 153

FULL CIRCLE 158

A FRIEND OF MAN 164

THE LISTENER 171

THE DARK SECRET 176

THE SCHOLAR AND THE PIRATE 180

A SET OF THREE 191

A LESSON 196

ON BELLONA'S HEM (SECOND SERIES)

A REVEL IN GAMBOGIA 201

THE MISFIRE 207

A LETTER 212

A MANOR IN THE AIR 219

RIVALRY 223

A FIRST COMMUNION IN THE WAR ZONE 229

THE ACE OF DIAMONDS 234

THE REWARD OF OUR BROTHER THE POILU 239

NOTE 245

=A BOSWELL OF BAGHDAD=

A BOSWELL OF BAGHDAD

I. INTRODUCTORY

A curious and very entertaining work lies before me, or, to be more accurate, ramparts me, for it is in four ponderous volumes, capable, each, even in less powerful hands than those of the Great Lexicographer, of felling a bookseller. At these volumes I have been sipping, beelike, at odd times for some years, and I now propose to yield some of the honey the season having become timely, since the great majority of the heroes of its thousands of pages hail from Baghdad; and Baghdad, after all its wonderful and intact Oriental past, is to day under Britain's thumb.

The title of the book is Ibn Khallikan's Biographical Dictionary , translated from the Arabic by Bn Mac Guckin de Slane, and printed in Paris for the Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland, 1842 71, some centuries after it was written, for its author was dead before Edward II ascended the English throne. Who would expect Sir Sidney Lee to have had so remote an exemplar?