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Thomas Maurice
3. A Persian pavilion
Having just quoted Maurice on Hindustan, Coleridge makes another entry in
the Notebook, probably based on a very similar footnote in Maurice (105):
See Quinti Curtii, lib. 3, cap. 3; Ibid. lib. 3. cap.4 So Maurice may have sent Coleridge to Quintus Curtius, who described a circle of
crystal in front of a pavilion, diffusing splendor throughout the camp of
the Persians, somewhat like the pleasure-dome that Coleridge imagined, in
its own magic circle. Here is what Maurice said, paraphrasing Quintus Curtius.
Text He declares it to have been an immemorial custom among the Persians,
for the army never to march before the rising of the sun; that a trumpet,
sounding from the king's pavilion, proclaimed the first appearance of its
beam, and that a golden image of its orb, inclosed in a circle of crystal,
was then displayed in the front of that pavilion, which diffused so wide a splendour that it was
seen through the whole camp…
The grooms appointed to train and conduct these horses (one of which was
called the HORSE OF THE SUN)…bore in their hands golden rods, or wands,
pointed at the end in imitation of the solar ray. (Maurice's capitalization)
--Maurice, I, 105 |
 Other sources
William Bartram |