The poetical works of Sir Walter Scott, with memoir of the author.

376 THE VISION OF
IV.
In the light language of an idle court,
They murmur'd at their master's long delay,
And held his lengthen'd orisons in sport:"What! will Don Roderick here till morning
stay,
To wear in shrift and prayer the night away?
And are his hours in such dull penance past,
For fair Florinda's plunder'd charms to pay?" 1
iii. says,-" To the specimens with which his former works
abound, of Mr. Scott's unrivalled excellence in the descriptions, both of natural scenery and romantic manners and
costume, these stanzas will be thought no mean addition."]
1 Almost all the Spanish historians, as well as the voice of
tradition, ascribe the invasion of the Moors to the forcible
violation committed by Roderick upon Florinda, called by
the Moors, Caba or Cava. She was the daughter of Count
Julian, one of the Gothic monarch's principal lieutenants,
who, when the crime was perpetrated, was engaged in the
defence of Ceuta against the Moors. In his indignation at
the ingratitude of his sovereign, and the dishonour of his
daughter, Count Julian forgot the duties of a Christian and
a patriot, and forming an alliance with Musa, then the caliph's
lieutenant in Africa, he countenanced the invasion of Spain
by a body of Saracens and Africans, commanded by the
celebrated Tarik; the issue of which was the defeat and
death of Roderick, and the occupation of almost the whole
peninsula by the Moors. Voltaire, in his General History,
expresses his doubts of this popular story, and Gibbon gives
him some countenance; but the universal tradition is quite
sufficient for the purposes of poetry. The Spaniards, in
detestation of Florinda's memory, are said, by Cervantes,
never to bestow that name upon anyhuman female, reserving
it for their dogs. Nor is the tradition less inveterate among
the Moors, since the same author mentions a promontory on