EPIGRAMS.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—I have just seen in the Spectator for March 31 some lines -attributed to the Khaliph Radhi Billah, who died A.D. 951. Will you allow me to inform the gentleman who has placed them in his collection of " Epigrams" that they were composed in a London drawing-room about sixty or seventy years ago ? The lady addressed was scarcely in her teens, and had an inconvenient habit of blushing on the slightest occasion. The writer was a gentleman who possessed a special aptitude for impromptu versi- fication. The late W. Mulready, R.A., then a frolicsome young man, challenged him to exercise his faculty. " On what subject?" said he. " On Matilda blushing " returned the painter. The poor -child soon became crimson, while the gentleman, taking pencil and paper, wrote the lines, only using her name,— " Matilda when I gaze on thee."
Some years after I met with them in a small collection of verses, and the name changed to Leila.
It seems amazing that such common-place vers de social could ever have been attribute to an Oriental poet. Matilda, who is now deceased, mentioned to me the circumstance of her painful embarrassment only a few years since.—I am, Sir, &c., E. G. A.
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