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lessness without an object, which are characteristic of our reading age. Of these abortions of the press we may say, borrowing Dante's words

"Non ragioniam di lor, ma guarda e passa."

Among the historians our author men tions Zschokke, Schiesser, Raumer, and Rotteck. Of dramatists he notices Raupach, Immermann, Count Platen, Grabbe, and Brentano; of the lyric poets Koerner, Schwab, and Uhland; of the novelists A. Lafontaine, Hauff, Alexis, Spindler, Van der Velde, Steffens, Mesd. von Schopenhauer, and Caroline Pichler, Achim von Arnim, Novalis, and Chamisso, and he speaks very highly of the last three. Of Heine our author observes that

SINCE the study of eastern literature began to attract the attention of Europe, that of the Arabs has naturally taken the foremost place, if not in esteem, at least in consideration. We say naturally, inasmuch as, brought into early contact with our forefathers in the days of the crusades, geographically situated in the centre of states that, however equal or superior in antiquity, had yielded their records to the common doom of mortality, and left their language as a doubt, their existence as a dream of time's earliest morning;-the Arab, who derived his source from patriarchal times; whose language had imbibed and retained the profuse varieties of a hundred tongues; whose knowledge had been schooled in the learning of Egypt, the traditions of Syria, and Hebrew revelation; who had treasured "The Reisebilder contains the whole of from infancy the science of Chaldæa, prehis political, religious, and literary faith; served the recollections of Assyrian greatin politics a bitter hatred against despotism, and a warm sympathy for liberty ness, and, amidst the waves of Edom, and and progress; in religion a vague and the rocks of Petra, caught the living acconfused Deism; in literature a total in- cents of Nabathæan lore; to whom the undependence of rules and coteries; but known Ethiopian was a brother, the Armeabove all that old rancorous feeling of liberalism whose shafts are deadly, and which strikes its enemy to the heart. His satire is full of originality, but he seems to forget at times the rules of good taste and of literary convenance."

nian a subject, and the wild wanderer of Southern Persia a friend, and often a purchaser --who had spread commerce along the African shores, and brought the jewels and muslins of India, and the rich produce of Ceylon, to the homes and desires of the Börne, another champion of ultra-liber-western world; who, in a period of darkness, alism, has assumed as his peculiar mission to abuse all that is doing in Germany

"In his bitter invectives against his countrymen, he attacks both sovereigns and people, the learned and the journalists, by bitter and contemptuous sarcasms; he sneers at diplomatists, charges even violent demagogues with servility, and upon every occasion quotes France as the model country, as the sun-dial of Europe; he has entrenched himself within Paris as

in a citadel from which he keeps up a constant fire against the country of his birth."-p. 488.

We now take leave of M. Peschier's work, which we can conscientiously recommend to those who wish to form an idea of Germany, its people, and literature.

ART. VIII.-Lettres sur l'Histoire des Arabes avant l'Islamisme. Par Fulgence Fresnel. (Letters on the History of the Arabs before Islamism. By Fulgence Fresnel.) 1836. Paris.

had acknowledged and enshrined the intellectual wealth of Greece, and lent to eastern fable the splendours of his own imagination;

-the Arab, we may justly admit, was entitled to claim the first attention of Europe. The fame of his language, literature, and creed, no less than the remembrance of his valour and magnificence, inclined our minds to listen to his voice, and ask the details of those mighty deeds and days, the fragments of which had been so scantily preserved by the careless and ignorant inappreciation of the classical writers. Europe, indeed, not unreasonably expected that a nation so learned, so famed, and so situated, uniting so high a degree of intellectual civilization with so much of luxury, and so undisturbed a retention of patriarchal simplicity and freedom, must have necessarily become in the course of ages the very storehouse of antiquity at once the depot and the carrier, if we may so use the term, of archaiology as of merchandize.

It is incumbent on us now to confess that these great anticipations have not been altogether realized, and in truth that they have been disappointed to a considerable extent. On the causes we cannot and need not enter here; it will suffice to observe in passing,

Of the latter country it is remarkable, that in spite of our commercial interests and slowly increasing acquaintance with her language and literature, no work upon Chinese history, from authentic Chinese historians, has been attempted in England, to whom Europe looks for such a present. But this is beyond the limits of the view to which we have here endeavoured to turn attention, and we must return to the volume that forms the subject of our article.

that the historians of Arabia, though highly' useful to a certain degree, yet do not furnish us with sufficient information to render us fully cognizant of the real value of their works. They are generally curious rather than interesting, imaginative rather than skilled in antiquity, and deriving their knowledge of the past from traditions, and generally from sources unexplained to us at present; so that, though they assist our imagination certainly, and sometimes our reason, they nevertheless fail in satisfying The poem of Schanfara is chiefly, though our judgment. The excessive diffuseness imperfectly, known to Europe by the Chresand difficulty also of their wonderful lan- tomathie Arabe of the Baron Silvestre de guage, so utterly opposite in principle to Sacy. Many passages, however, were in European speech;-the elaborate diversity such a state that none more than that emiof their grammatical forms, and the infinite nent scholar could desire their farther exvariety of the dialects they control; with amination and illustration. M. Fresnel the boast that they may be acquired in six likewise felt this; and whilst prosecuting years, but mastered in not less than ten ;- his researches in Egypt, his friend, a Syrian all these offer so formidable an array of ob- gentleman, M. Faris Schidyaq, discovered stacles to our more intimate acquaintance in the divan of Ezbekawi, a modern poet, a with their lore, that we generally are tempted commentary on the Lamiyat-al-Arab, at to pause, even within the threshold of learn-tributed to Mouhammed, son of Yahiya, ing, to ask what is the value of that which surnamed Moubarrid. As M. Fresnel had must be purchased at such a price; and it his doubts regarding the sense of some veris often, we opine jus ly, relinquished with ses of the poem of Schanfara, he procured the doubt that untying, unravelling its Gor- a copy from M. Faris. dian intricacies will not obtain us the desired World, of antiquity.

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We must," he proceeds, "have meditated for years upon a point of physics or philology, to know how the heart beats at opening the volume, whether of nature or tradition, that contains a solution of our doubts. A real lover of truth would read with the same candor whether his views are confirmed or corrected." M. Fresnel has also consulted, and carefully we must say, the ancient glosses of the text; but he has not always followed their interpretations, since Arabian, like other, commentators, have their strong and weak points, and he has therefore trusted his own judgment in a great measure.

We must confess ourselves of the number of those who have taken this desponding view of Arabian literature, though the cause has only latterly become obvious to the mind; and it is, amongst others, the work before us, together with the later researches of some of the highest Arabic scholars, that has produced a conviction now so different from our earlier and fonder belief; nor need we hesitate to point amongst those to whom Arabia, equally with Europe, is deepest indebted for the profoundest researches into her records and language, to the living and venerated name of De Sacy, as one of the The chef d'œuvre of Schanfara affords a bases of our scepticism; and since even his specimen of ancient history; and, according investigations, and those of our own great- to M. Fresnel, of the prose of the heroic est scholars, have failed to induce the de- times, being the most ancient monument of gree of elucidation expected, we are irre- Arabian literature that exists. But the fact sistibly drawn towards the conclusion, that must not raise expectation of antiquity too these have failed to discover it only because high; for of the period cotemporary with it had no existence. The West, in truth, the heroic ages of Israel, the history aphas for some time felt, if not acknowledged, pears lost for ever, with the exception of a this conviction, and inquiry has turned from few traditions, scattered over an immense Arabia to explore the treasures that may be space. The really existing Arabian monuhidden by the Guebre veil of the Persian, ments date only from the century before Maor stored in the sanctuaries of Sanscrit an- homet: but as the simplicity of ancient mantiquity; or haply scattered in dust through ners remains long amongst nomade tribes, the various nations that tread the Tatar de- the term heroic may be applied to those of serts or people Hither and Farther India, the Arabs even at the period when they first from the inhospitable Euxine and the mould- attract our notice in a regular form. The ering relics of Bactria, to the vaunted and sus-piose referred to is of that period, accompa picious reservations and reluctance of China. Inied with fragments of poems. Djellal

The events are called in Arabic Ayam, Addeen Assoutiyy informs us that before Ma- | homet, the Arabs (of the tribe of Maad) had which may be freely rendered in English, no other annals than their short poems. "At Exploits. The Bedouins, in Mahomet's that time," he observes, "when a Bedouin re- time, so called not only their battles and lated an historical fact that was new to his combats, but even their skirmishes and maauditory, they never failed to say to him, rauding expeditions. Nor only this: a Recite us some verses to support thy narra- birâz, or single combat; an assassination tive." From which it is evident that, con- (the act simply, without the attendant hortrary to our own practice in modern times, ror) sufficed to constitute an Ayam, which poetry was considered the legitimate vehicle took its name from the place where it ocof historical truth, and prose but as its fan- curred. Before Islamism, however, the ciful embellishment. Arabs rarely dealt with death on a large scale. Ælius Gallus, it will be remembered, in Strabo, lost but seven men by the hands of the Arabs in a six months' campaign, commenced in Arabia Petræa and concluded in Yemen. In one battle the Roman general affirms that he killed 10,000 Arabs, and lost but two men himself. Such, if we can believe it, were the ancestors of those who overran the Old World from the Ganges to the Loire: but the warriors who figure in the pages before us occupy an intermediate space, and nearer to the conquerors themselves than to their forefathers.

A curious speculation might be raised upon the comparative justice of the ancient or the modern notion: but we have no room for such, and must proceed with our immediate object; observing with the author, and in reference to this subject, that the Arabian poems are not epopea, like those of Homeric antiquity, but simply odes, or songs, alluding to events generally known in the poets' age and country, but generally unknown elsewhere. The historical personages who figure in this history are, M. Fresnel remarks, partly the same as those of the historical and chivalrous romance of Antar-"that Orlando of the Desert, who wanted but an Ariosto" The mode of preserving history in Ara(a common want, we think) "to become an bia is somewhat novel to Europeans, and is epic, and to fill up one of the two lacunes in fact conclusive as to the mooted preservawhich appear, to our surprise, in Arabian tion of long poems of celebrity. It is therehistory.' When the rhapsody aforesaid, | fore well worth consideration. which, it is said, is about to be printed at Boulaq, shall have been translated, it will be curious to compare the history with the romance: perhaps the child may assist to recover some traces of the parent.

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The Arabs, however, who possess this series of tales from tradition, regard with scorn the well known romance of Antar The causes which they assign we can easily feel and understand, since their traditions preserve a far more patriarchal impress than that celebrated fiction, and strip off far more effectually the fanciful traits which imagination so long had bestowed on the Arabs, their chivalry, generosity, high faith, and freedom from many of the vices of civilized life. Several of our recent travellers have found mournful evidence that such associations must henceforth be disconnected from the children of Ishmael; and it is in a great measure owing to the new view given by M. Fresnel's volume of the real state of the desert tribes, that we have devoted so much space to his work, and also from the fact of its not being generally accessible, but published privately by the author for the use of his friends alone. The high praise bestowed upon the work by one of the best English judges of the subject, and who resided long in Egypt, is the surest testimony in favour of M. Fresnel's labors.

"The narrator, on whose faith the ex

ploits are told, and whose own words are given by the compiler, is en gènèral, Abou Oubaydah Mamar, the son of Mouthanna, a contemporary of Haroun Alraschid. It is, however, necessary to observe here, that the prose of the narrator does not belong to him, any more than to the compiler. "Abou Oubaydah did not attempt to draw up the history of the Arabs. Far from this, all his merit, in the eyes of his contemporaries, and of the Caliph, his disciple, consisted in the talent of repeating, word for word, without the omission, addition, or transposition of a single letter, narrated by a schaik (or doctor of his own all that he himself had previously heard class); the latter being, in like manner, but the repeater of a more ancient schaik, and so on, successively, up to the author of the recital, whom we may place a century and a half, or two centuries, before Abou Oubaydah; so that the prose I now read with my own schaik is of the same age as the facts it relates, excepting only appertain to the narrator or the compiler, a very few observations, which evidently but generally to the former. Men like Abou Oubaydah were called rouwah During a long course of centuries, ncmade Arabia possessed no other historians; and we should have no reason to what earlier of committing to paper the complain of this, had they thought someprecious deposit intrusted to their memo

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too late, and when the recollections extant the verses of our Poets, and talk of what were nothing in comparison with what had passed in our times of ignorance. ries. Unfortunately, they recurred to this "Some one has said, I wish we possess been forgotten. Abou Oubaydah was ed in our Islamism the generosity of our one of the first who put down in writing forefathers in their Paganism. Antarah the historical traditions of the Desert." of the cavaliers was a Pagan, and AlhaWell! Antarah was retained within the bounds can the son of Hani, a Mussulman. of duty by his honor, and Alhaçan, son of Hani, was not restrained by his religion. Antarah has said in his verses,

In fact, the only difference between the language of these documents and that of the Moallakat is, that the latter is verse, and the former prose, mingled with verse however. The MS., it seems, contains eighty Exploits, written without any assignable order, and entitled "Exploits and Encounters of the Arabs." M. Fresnel has lately procured a perfect copy of this work, of which he possessed originally but a small portion. We must refer the reader to the work itself for some highly interesting particulars, and shall be happy again to meet our learned and ingenious author when he has completed his announced labors on the History of the Age which preceded and prepared for Mahomet. "What treasures," he exclaims in transport, "unknown from Fez and the Escurial to Bockhara, and from Oxford to the heart of Yemen!" Even if insufficient for a complete history of that poetic period which, in expiring, gave birth to Islamism, a collection of authentic traditions, mounting up to that epoch will al ways have its value, both as forming in itself a picture of manners, and as referring to the classical poems of Arabia.

"And I close my eyes when the wife of my neighbor is about to appear, until her tent veils from my glances my neigh

bor's wife.'

"But Hassan, son of Hani, has said, even in the bosom of Islamism,

666 'Youth sustained my effrontery. ** This led me to enter at night, when all the world was buried in sleep, the dwelling of whose husband was from home.""

a woman

We quote the above principally to refer to the very able notes of the editor on the foregoing; full of information on the sub ject of facts and manners, and which showthat in Arabia, as elsewhere, apparently slight niceties of distinction often involve material differences of fact. Taken into consideration, too, with the not critically explained biblical usage of the term "thy neighbor's wife," and the coeval antiquity of the Arabian nation, it may be thought to throw a light upon a passage of Scripture. Again,

"Mouhalhil was the first Arabian poet who composed more than two or three verses in a single vein, or on a single soutiyy); the first who lied, i. e. introduced Hyperbole into Poetry, according to the author of the Aghani."

A poem improvised by this novel Orpheus is undoubtedly a curiosity, as M. Fresnel conceives. He gives us two, one a funeral oration, the other a chant of menace.

The difficulties which M. Fresnel finds, however, with his materials for translation, are not, in our opinion, such as need deter any one from the task, and seem rather cal-theme (according to Djellal-Addeen Asculated to impress European than Asiatic readers. The classical Arabic is not an unknown tongue, nor insuperable, as he seems to call it. The confusion of letters and want of vowels or distinguishing points, though a serious obstacle, yet is daily lessened, by a more intimate acquaintance with the language, to a certain degree. The MSS. the translator has acquired, and will acquire hereafter by research, will assist to supply the sense in some places and the lacuna in others: and practice will render translation, even into his native tongue, however adverse its idiom, easy to his undoubted talents, ardor and learning. But we must turn to his work, and, in offering some portion of it, are sure we do but direct attention to a labor that will amply repay curiosity by novel information. The first extract refers to the well known Antar.

Preamble of the Arabian Compiler. "It was said to one of the companions of the prophet of God: On what subjects do your conversations turn in your private meetings? He replied: We recite

"Oh Koulayb! there is nothing good in the world, nor in its inhabitants, since thou hast abandoned it.

"Oh Koulayb! what man can ever rival thee in value or power? Who can compare with thee in holding the cup, under the roof of the drinkers, under the might of the cupbearer!

"When the Heralds of Death had made me hear the name of Koulayb, I said to them: And Earth is not shaken! and the mountains still stand!

"Did he not maintain all in its place? Was it not he whose might and resolution. . . . Oh! my brethren, I cannot number his virtues.

"Who like him could curb the horse, and make both horse and horsemen measure their pace amidst wildest alarms!

"Thus, as the maiden stains her fingers with the juice of henna, we have not a warrior whose spear-point is not stained with an enemy's blood.

"The lances borne by the children of Taghlib are of fine Indian shafts; the knots are ash grey; they are prepared at Khatt Hadjar, and surmounted with blue

iron.

"When they bring them to the waters, (or place for putting in water,) the iron is white; it is red when taken away.*

"Why has not Heaven fallen, to crush all it covers? Why has not Earth open(tribes) of Wail! He had imagined that ed, nor dissolved like a cloud?

"The curse of God fall on those who shall essay to restore peace between Bakr and Taghlib while the sun rolls his course."

Song of Menace.

"I had passed a long night at Anamayn, watching the course of the Stars, and urging by my impatience their slow descent. "For how could I take a night's repose while the blood of a son of Wail claims the blood of another son of Wail?

"Tihamah was long the common sojourn of the tribes sprung from Maad. They came there to winter in peace.

"But the Children of one Father have drenched each other with a bitter draught. The strong slays the feeble now in the plains of Tihâmah!

.. Day comes at length, and we early hail the Banou-Loudjaym, with blows that never fall on the head without leaving it indented at least.

"They durst not come down to the field, and mate themselves with us, body to body; but we went down. He is a warrior who dares come down to the field. "They made their bow-strings vibrate from afar: but we cast ourselves upon them, as vigorous stallions fall upon their rivals.

"When they had slain their master Koulayb in an access of frenzy, they said: All is done; we shall not know a master again.

"They have lied, by all that is Holy and Profane! They have lied! And we will prove it, by wresting from their most secret retreats their ornaments spotted with

henna:

"Among the Bakride Princes who had refused their aid to the Banou-Schayban, was Al Harith, the son of Oubad, one of the most illustrious chiefs of the tribe of Bakr. So far was he from making war against the Taghlibides, and so strongly was he impressed with the justice of their cause, that when Moulhalhil (in revenge for his brother Koulayb) had slain his son Boudjayr, on receiving the intelligence of his child's disaster, Al Harith exclaimed: 'Blest be the death which restores peace between the two daughters Moulhalhil, taking into consideration the nobility of his race, would regard Koulayb as sufficiently avenged by the death of Boudjayr, whose blood, in the opinion of the Bakride prince, was worth that of the most powerful king of all the Arabias. But when he learned that Moulhalhil had disdained this new victim, inasmuch as, on slaying the young prince he had said to him, Thy death may atone but for the sandal-ties of Koulayb-Koulayb is yet to be avenged:' when this was reported to Harith, he became furious. He mounted his mare Anaâmah (the ostrich,) placed himself at the head of all the forces of Bakr, and, falling on the Taghlibides, made such carnage, and threw them into such total disorder, that Moulhalhil himself sought to fly; but he was made prisoner by Harith, who knew him only by his reputation. The hero-poet's name was in reality Adiyy; Moulhalhil was only his sobriquet. Harith, in ignorance, said to his prisoner, 'Show me Adiyy, son of Rabiah, and I release thee.'—Adiyy answered, Thou engagest then to release me if I show thee Adiyy?'-'Yes' 'Well then, I am he;' and Harith released him accordingly, after subjecting him to the tonsure, to render it unquestionable that he had been his prisoner.

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We quote elsewhere the author's interesting note on the Arabs of Yeman or Joctanides, and the self confessed inferiority of the Desert tribes, to those Arabs par excel lence; and also the singular doubt he throws from their own traditions on the claim of the Moustaribe (Arabs) to their descent from Ishmael: a doubt that must make a considerable impression on the degree of confidence to be placed henceforth in the genealogies of the Children of the Desert. We must pass on to some extracts from the narratives themselves, and to the Ara-Lamiyat-al-arab, or poem of Schanfara, which has only been given in a mutilated and very incorrect state by the author to his friends hitherto : but which he has now taken the first opportunity of presenting in

"Shedding such fear on their souls, that the embryo shall die in the womb: steeping with their blood our spears and our

horses."

The following is characteristic of

bian desert manners:

* Les fers de lance sont bleuâtres à l'état loyal its proper form to the public. We take of

et marchand: émolumus, ils sont blancs: à la guerre ils deviennent rouges.

necessity one of the shortest of the Exploits, as best adapted to our pages; and this is

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