Eshref was a poet, a dreamer, and, I was told, the second man of letters in the empire.

He laughingly asked me if I had been at Podgoritza, and I as good-humoredly replied that I had not come to complain of my treatment there, but to pay my compliments to a fellow man of letters.

His broad, good-natured face lighted up with pleasure, and, dropping politics and fighting, we talked poetry and letters.

Secretaries and messengers were coming and going with papers to be signed, or orders to be given, and we could talk only by interludes.

I remarked that he must have little time for letters in all this complication of cares, and he replied that "poetry was his refuge in the night when he was unable to sleep; he had no other time." I tried to get a sample of his verse, and he recited me one, of which I could judge only by the sound, which was very musical; but to my urging for a copy for publication in England he objected that translators were not good for the reputation of a poet, which we all know.