Hassan's Serai, is this--'Unmeet for
Solitude to share.' Now, to share implies more than _one_, and Solitude
is a single gentlewoman: it must be thus--

'For many a gilded chamber's there,
Which Solitude might well forbear;'

and so on. Will you adopt this correction? and pray accept a cheese from
me for your trouble."--Letter to John Murray, Stilton, October 3, 1813,
_Letters_, 1898, ii. 274.]

[di] _To share the Master's "bread and salt."_--[MS.]

[76] [To partake of food--to break bread and taste salt with your host,
ensures the safety of the guest: even though an enemy, his person from
that moment becomes sacred.--(Note appended to Letter of October 3,
1813.)

"I leave this (_vide supra_, note 1) to your discretion; if anybody
thinks the old line a good one or the cheese a bad one, don't accept
either. But in that case the word _share_ is repeated soon after in the
line--

'To share the master's bread and salt;'

and must be altered to--

'To break the master's bread and salt.'

This is not so well, though--confound it!

If the old line ['Unmeet for Solitude to share'] stands, let the other
run thus--

'Nor there will weary traveller halt,
To bless the sacred bread and salt.'"

(P.S. to Murray, October 3, 1813.)

The emendation of line 335 made that of line 343 unnecessary, but both
emendations were accepted.

(Moore says (_Life_; p. 191, note) that the directions are written on a
separate slip of paper from the letter to Murray of October 3, 1813).]

[dj] {103}
_And cold Hospitality shrinks from the labour_,
_The slave fled his halter and the serf left his labour_.--[MS.]
or, _Ah! there Hospitality light is thy labour_,
or, _Ah! who for the traveller's solace will labour?_--[MS.]

[77] I need hardly observe, that Charity and Hospitality are the first
duties enjoined by Mahomet; and to say truth, very generally practised
by his disciples. The first praise that can be bestowed on a chief is a
panegyric on his bounty; the next, on his valour. ["Serve God ... and
show kindness unto parents, and relations, and orphans, and the poor,
and your neighbour who is of kin to you ... and the traveller, and the
captives," etc.--_Koran_, cap. iv. Lines 350, 351 were inserted in the
Fifth Edition.]

[78] The ataghan, a long dagger worn with pistols in the belt, in a
metal scabbard, generally of silver; and, among the w