Yet the author who imitates his predecessors only by furnishing himself with thoughts and elegancies out of the same general magazine of literature, can with little more propriety be reproached as a plagiary, than the architect can be censured as a mean copier of Angelo or Wren, because he digs his marble from the same quarry, squares his stones by the same art, and unites them in the columns of the same orders.

[A] Former student of the Medersa of Algiers, bookbinder, lutemaker, and copier of manuscripts, Qaddour ben Omar ben Beuyna, best known among his coreligionists as Qaddour el Hadby (the hunchback), who died during the winter of 1897-1808, has sung for thirty years about all the notables of his city.