of the Arabian tribes: borrowing yet repu- meric poems might carefully preserve them; diating the Magian lore, and rivalling yet and this either in writing, or by the practice courting the Christian by a patchwork from we pointed out in a recent No. (XXXIX. p. his creed all this mass of vague and mon- 141.) as prevalent among the Arabs, and strous shaplessness the Mahommedan is which at once establishes the practicability, bound to admire and to imitate. It is the by the practice, of oral preservation. canon alike of his creed and his taste; and We affirm, in full confidence of every departure from either is a sin against both. proof and defiance of opposite and ungroundCrude and debased therefore in its theology, ed assertion, that there is not a Mythos but the Koran vitiates while the Old Testament involves history, not a cloud interposed by elevates; from that the followers of Mahom- poetic Beauty but shrouds and preserves med refer the highest emanations to mere some favoured child of the skies. If reality sense. It is strange to see a creed appa- were not the source of Mythos, what is either, rently resembling our own, (one Christian or both? what is the former? what was the. divine at least has considered it a kindred last? Invention is not creation of the unrevelation ;) yet debasing religion by sheer known, but combination of the results of facts absurdities, and, farther, turning it into a and actuality; occurring possibly at distance bauble plaything for illustrating the sports of of time or of place; extrinsic perhaps, but fancy and similitudes of beauty; shocking not the less Experiences-Truth, enlarged the best and holiest feelings, the noblest as by fancy, remoteness, and fear. well as the commonest taste, breaking up the sealed wells of devotional solitude, and leaving its waters as a muddy pool, trampled by every beast of the passing caravan. We appear to have digressed, but this is only in seeming; for our argument affects the very point, where prepossession becomes prejudice-an error entailing all the disad It is this style that in a great measure forms vantages of ignorance; beginning in this the difference between Hindustanee and Hin- alone, and fixing us hopelessly there. Are duee Poetry; the former bringing an ample we then on the faith of an unproved and unportion of Mahommedan vitiation into the provable assertion to determine that legends purity of the native taste, which more than are not records, and that the earliest vehicles any in Asia assimilates the Hinduee to the of History necessarily turn it into Fable. English, in simplicity though not in energy. The Englishman, whose connections, some The Hinduee infuses into the Sanscrit or sa- in every society, are in the East; who values cred tongue much of this same simplicity, or himself on his variety of encyclopediac native taste; but the great poems in the latter knowledge; who runs to even every new language develope the system of Brahmin- folly, and every passing quack that promises ism, a figuratively historical form; we recog-him an extension of science into impossibili. nize reality under the veil of fiction; a poet's ty; yet turns from the history of those coun. genius moulding the actually past into fable. tries that cradled his carly race, that involve The Hinduee and Sanscrit are also exclu- the interests of those he holds dear, and that ded beyond a few words for the sake of de. fill the teeming womb of immediate futurity finition from the present survey; but we take with changes, perhaps dangers, that he predi this occasion, nevertheless, to disclaim the cates as threatening his nation. silly sophism of a high but worthless authority, that the lays of nations are not their legends: that their mythos is not their history; and that therefore it is hopeless to examine for facts the only documents that are left us, the only ones also that our earliest ancestry could possess or could leave us. A little labour might unravel the clue; but who shall attempt while there are none to encourage? We seek to buy knowledge; we pant for novelty at any price; we look for it in the clouds of air, or of a prognosti cator's bemuddled brain, but we will not re. ceive it from that quarter of earth whence We know not why Herder also should alone it can come, even after vainly searchhave imagined that Homer cast away the ing everywhere else, and resigning from ancient mythology in order to write history. these all hope of the issues of History. Is So far from casting away, he preserved that this indifference a superiority of wisdom, or mythology; but the art of writing had en- of ignorance? Is it apathy, even to shame? tirely changed the system of history. If Where is the Shah-Nameh? It sleeps for Cadmus carried some letters into Greece, or us in its native tongue, though purified by even the alphabet, in the time of Moses; if the long labours of Macan, unnoticed even Palamedes added (evidently_Eastern) char- in his distant grave. There are numbers acters to this at the siege of Troy, the one or who could translate that early History of more narrators of that siege might have Persia, sole relic and record of the cradle of known them, or at any rate the immediate earliest man. Where are the Mahabharata followers, reciters, and admirers of the Ho. and Ramayuna, traditions of Ceylon and "his Hindostan, the fountain of science, the mira-[tration from our hands. We are bound cle of language? We know not even the however to give some account of his book, names of Ferdousi, Jyavansa, and Vyasa. and are satisfied that there is not a reader The labours of our own Asiatic Society are who will consider him obnoxious to any the known everywhere, but at home; their funds, slightest of the foregoing remarks. With to the national disgrace, always inadequate, that modesty which is the very mark of may be suffered to fail, unless they take to real but unconscious merit we find him meteorology and predict sunshine for Cal- dedicating his present labour to the two men cutta, or bring thence more sagaciously a best qualified to appreciate it, De Sacy, and novel store of moonshine for London itself. our countryman J. Shakspeare, the learned The Inscriptions of Persepolis are read and able compiler of the Hindustanee Dicand commentated by foreigners, while our tionary; the latter of whom, in graceful antiquarian enlightenment is still wondering acknowledgment, he addresses as whether those marks are accidental! Bur-master." nouf is unheard of; De Tassy unknown or The merits of the editing, fortunately, do unappreciated; and even Silvestre de Sacy, not come in the way of a popular journal; the revered of Europe, the learned, and the nor indeed is there anything to remark on loved, dies in the fulness of honours and this head beyond its accuracy and the felicity years, with scarcely the passing notice of an of research and illustration to be expected English newspaper obituary. We do not from this various, eminent, and accomplished ask with the Arab, "Is a light extinguished scholar. from the skies ?"-but we feel that the loss relieves our ignorance, which would otherwise have ostracised him in weariness of his praise, or black-balled him, as unknown in the clubs. From the causes already assigned, namely, the defects of Mosleman taste, we cannot offer much in the way of extract to the reader: and M. de Tassy's own sound and candid judgment has prevented him from It must be owned however on the other attempting to render those passages-unforhand that those who have endeavoured to tunately too numerous in this class of writers render Orientalism more popular in Britain, of petty conceits and play upon words; have too often demanded from a cultivated the easy substitute for thought and genius. taste and a manly vigour of judgment the The biography of Eastern pocts is generblind and indiscriminating admiration they ally scanty, and always dencient in material themselves paid to the idol they chose to dates and facts; for in countries destitute of worship. The more obscure a MS. the fixed institutions and patient training of the higher, they deemed, must necessarily be its general mind, indolence asks nothing beyond value; in the very ratio of its probable worth the power of imagination to bestow. The lessness. If a poem was translated, its de- little that can be given of his biography we fects were gratuitously enlarged, its combi- offer to the reader. nations dislocated, its epithets turned into Schah Wali Ullah, the father of Hinduswhole phrases. Instead of comparing the tanee poetry, was a native of Guzrat, and genius of the two languages, the most awk- probably of Surat, if we may judge from a ward form was selected of what was cour- poem he has left in its praise, exalting it teously termed literal version; the original above all the cities of the world, and remindprolixity became interminable; and the ing us, though unfavorably, of the beautiful translator received all praise for his resolu- ode to Shiraz by Hafiz, to whom M. de Tastion in finishing to write what no one else sy compares him. This we presume is not would even begin to read. Thus passages as a rival, which would certainly be above which, properly rendered, have been found his deserts, but as a mysticist, and also as absolute parallels to some in Shakspeare,* excelling, like the great Persian, all his counwere rendered utterly impracticable; thoughts trymen, who grant him the palm of supewhich he has used took the semblance of riority; and which with usual oriental exagmonstrosity; and language he would appear geration he frankly claims for himself, even (but for the impossibility) to have translated, over the nightingale, "the Prince of Harhave been marked with the scorn of no vul-mony." He wrote about the middle of the gar judges in English.† We have dwelt the more freely upon these preliminary considerations because the name of M. Garcin de Tassy is too honourably known among scholars to require any illus See Literary Gazette, September, 1833. ↑ Gibbon's Rome, vol. ix. 17th century, and in various parts of India, as Delhi, Bengal, and the Deccan, the peculiar dialect of which last kingdom occurs frequently in his Odes. He seems to have praised equally the Sunnites and the Shias, the two great sects of the Mahommedans; the former of whom, as the Turks, abominate Ali; and the latter, as the Persians, hold him in reverence as a prophet. This impartiali- | to offer our readers a fuller, and therefore ty was, we suspect, probably the result of more gratifying view of his labours, in the mysticism and its tolerant indifference rather enlarged work, we trust speedily to appear, than subserviency to circumstances; since M. de Tassy remarks that he never mentions or lauds any sovereign, in which respect he differs from his most celebrated successors, Meer, Hassan, and Sauda, who load with praise the princess under whom they wrote. The Odes (ghuzals) of Wali are not numerous his style is concise for an Oriental poet, and always easy and elegant. He may indeed be considered, says his able editor and translator, a model of eloquence to his countrymen, We have already stated that criticism on the execution of the work before us would be as superfluous as thankless; but admitting this merit of execution, we must not let the high and deserved celebrity of M. Gar. cin de Tassy mislead us as to the value of the class of writers he has chosen to intro duce to Europe. The extravagance and erring taste of more Western Asia, ingrafted on the simpler strains of Hindustan, have had, in our opinion, the simple effect of neu. tralizing both the beauties and defects of the two styles. The calm, pure, and intense simplicity of the earlier Indian poets, even where encumbered with the monstrous and on the Hindustanee poets. A work important to more than one professed teacher of the Hindustance language in England, who have not hesitated to affirm the non-existence of any original compositions in a language absolutely abounding in poets! Our extracts, from our limits, must necessarily be short: but it will be seen, unless spoiled by our labours, that, with all the drawbacks we have mentioned, the bard selected by M. de Tassy is far from destitute of grace. "What crowds, by love selected, stray Lost in thy tresses darkening path! That glance, where soft allurements play, Those eyes, oppress my heart with scathe. "The lover's hand may seal his doom; Yes-in thine eyes I read my fate: The beams of Heaven thy face illume; holds the reader of his sentence of death. Th' Eternal, lights thy Beauty's state!" We have here attempted to illustrate an opinion given in a preceding page, of the necessity for modifying Orientalisms utterly unsuited in their literal sense for European comprehension, by equivalents familiar to ourselves. The poet in the fourth line calls his charmer's eyes the defenders, or guarrevolting extravagances of Brahminism, dians, of the glance that has subjected his breathes that hushed and noveless stillness heart-thus making them accomplices; and which, like the glassy surface of a lake or it would be considered in the east. in a phrase far more extravagant to us than the deep repose of infancy, steals through In the the outward sense and pervades the heart, second instance the lover declares he sees with a quietude more perfect and dear than his doom in the Mufti of her eyes. The even when the spirit lies mute and involved, Mufti is the reader of the Mosque, and, acburthened with beatitude in the very depths ting in his well-known capacity, the lover beof feeling :—that state, which the sculpture In Europe the admirers of beauty are said of Greece so often sought to represent in its deities, is, as we have said, the peculiar attri-to read her eyes themselves: though what bute of original Hindustan. Turned to the is written there we do not pretend to deci purposes of factitious illustration, this pher. power, purely internal, sinks in the task; and the bolder metaphor of the west is thus robbed of the daring that constitutes its principal charm, and which was sustained by the nervous strength of the Arabic, by Turkish This is perhaps easier conceived than exstateliness, or the dreamy charm of the Per-plained, unless we take refuge in the docsian. The mysticism of the Arab is sensual. trine of a German philosopher, ly ardent, of the Turk elaborate, of the Persian imaginative, while that of the Hindu is essentially contemplative. The mixture of this with either of the former is therefore an antagonism; a vain attempt to amalgamate the positive with the negative, consequently injurious to both. There is something more than prettyism in the following sentence. "If I could enjoy the sight of thee I could compass eternity." "Infinite space requires infinite time to comprehend it." He that could receive in his sense all the Ineffable of beauty might have power to conceive also the Illimitable of endless du ration. This attempt however at the sublime very generally stops at the ridiculous. In the very small space we can bestow upon any thing in the shape of illustration at present, we shall devote the less to M. de Tassy because we trust shortly to be enabled | hair." "The infidels of Europe have been steeped in infidelity by the sight of the locks of thy We doubt whether the cause is quite suf-known that we can scarcely venture to deficient for this grievous catastrophe: but it termine upon a single point of its earlier his. is in these extravagances that the admirers tory; and the absence of all dates has been of Eastern poets, endowed with the faculty a source of incessant confusion and distrust. of the divining rod, discover a well of mys. Nevertheless we assume that statements tical feeling where there is not the smallest should not be neglected solely on account of appearance fairly above ground, to warrant the conclusion. The really mystic portions of the great Eastern poets display, we think, a purer and nobler simplicity than that, for instance, which the most renowned of this class of commentators, the Turkish Sudi, in general insists upon attributing to Hafiz. We would point, in addition, to the singularly beautiful poem entitled (le Réveil) the Waking, and which we shall not do our readers the injustice to offer in any but M. De Tassy's own words-and for all else refer them to his de lightful volumes. the difficulties they present; since a concur rence of facts in one place may often tally with a date or an ascertained point of histo ry in another, and the collation of the two thus afford many an opportunity for filling up the gaps of our present defective infor mation in all that regards the East. It is clear that the absence of dates denotes a rude age, and the mere infancy of history; but though thus vague and insuffi. cient, the very defects are the evidence of a peculiar value, namely, that of the earliest antiquity in writing. The traditions then of the first ages are rendered tangible, if we do not choose to reject them on the single ground of their failing to evince the exactness which is a want of later times only. For the cotemporaries of events in the earliest ages of the world could not be supposed to contemplate the curiosity of long subsequent posterity. "Ne perds pas ton temps dans l'insouciance; sois vigilant. Jusqu'à quand resteras-tu dans le sommeil ? réveille-toi, réveille-toi. Si tu as le dessein de voir la face de cette invisible et spirituelle beauté, laisse, avec dégoût, oui, lalsse avec dégoût les adorateurs de la beauté matérielle. Imprime d'abord sur ton front l'empreinte de la blessure de l'amour, et puis tu pourras te mettre à la tête, oui, à la tête We distinctly avow our opinion that in de ceux que l'amour a jetés dans le chagrin, Ceylon will be found the relics of much that Cet être resplendissant d'éclat paraît comme we desire to know of the past, not merely as l'aurore sur l'horizon du monde. O mes yeux, regards that island itself, but also various il n'est pas temps de dormir; réveillez-vous. countries of the East. We hail, therefore, Wali répète jour et nuit cet hémistiche: Ne the promise held out by the intended translaperdons pas inutilement le temps; veillons, tion of the Mahawanso, as one of the most veillons."-p. 37. important documents of the early human Having spoken of Hindu poetry, we can- race; and Mr. Turnour has judged wisely not do better than illustrate its simplicity by in obtaining the assistance of a native in the following beautiful extract from the late rendering from so difficult a tongue as the Colonel Broughton's specimens-premising Pali. that the lotus is the symbol of beauty, and that a mirror is a customary ornament of woman in many parts of Hindustan. De. scribing a lover holding a silent conference with his mistress, CRITICAL NOTICES. The attempt was made before, but most inefficiently, in England: yet under circumstances that might have procured more indulgence for Mr. Upham, who at least led the way, sensible as he was of its importance; but who, from his assumption of Eastern studies only late in life, was incapable of executing it with advantage. We regret that a tone of blame against this certainly superficial labourer pervades Mr. Turnour's otherwise judicious and unquestionably most able introduction. This volume is a mere Prospective Specimen of the work itself, shortly to be brought before the public; and we trust on its earlist appearance to bring it in some detail under the reader's eye. We sincerely hope that this forthcoming accession, not merely to our literature, but to our knowledge also, will meet with the support it so well deserves from the public. When we find the Ceylonese language approaching often to that of ScanTHE records of Ceylon are so imperfectly I dinavia, we confess to no ordinary portion of An Epitome of the History of Ceylon, compiled from Native Annals: and the First Twenty Chapters of the Mahawanso. Translated by the Hon. George Turnour, Esq. Ceylon Civil Service. Ceylon: 1836. (Not for Sale.) "Et serves animæ dimidium meæ." curiosity as regards the history of either. | the literal English, in the line addressed to The classical reader too will be surprised to the ship that bore Virgil, and entreating find parallels to his favorite pages in these records of an unnoticed land. One fact is worth more than all we can say on this head. How indifferently is this rendered by The details given by Homer of the landing of Ulysses on the island of Circe, the imprisonment of his men by, and his own rencontre with, that enchantress, are clearly identifiable with the adventures of a hero who reaches Lanca, or Ceylon, and in similar cir cumstances. Is it nature that all the coincidences of Greek and Indian history should be accidental? This would indeed be the credulity of scepticism. Quinti Horatii Flacci Opera Omnia recen- " And mayst thou preserve the half of my soul!" The volume before us has considerable merit, but might be much improved. A CLEAR and succinct Grammar, materially simplifying the learner's progress in the dif ficult tongue it undertakes to teach; and the value and antiquity of which has been always either over or under rated. The Armenian is neither the original and primitive language which its native asserters affirm of it; for older forms of its words and the fragments of a ruder grammar exist: nor is it the corruption that is pretended by others of various modern and neighbour. ing tongues, since it contains in its pure state THERE is no Latin poet, perhaps no poet of one of the words peculiar to these, and what antiquity, or even of modern times, so gen- it possesses in common with them is conerally quoted as Horace; and consequently stantly in a more primitive form. We exit can excite no surprise that his admirers of clude of course the term and corruptions inevery nation have been anxious to familiarize cidentally but necessarily introduced intheir countrymen with this poet of practical to it by commercial and political interlife. Horace is the very reverse of Words. worth; not a sentiment, not a line, not a We recommend the grammar of M. Pephrase, but is strictly applicable to the active terman with perfect confidence. impulses and real business of the world in its various phases, whether of judgment, emotions, affections; affording maxims and rules of conduct either by simple dictation of by implication. Horace, like Boileau and Pope, appears to have written expressly to be quoted: desiring less to live undivided in his works, than to exist in portions in the memories of mankind. Hence that terseness of style, that curious felicity of expression; originated by and at the same time necessitating, purity of thought, severity of arrangement, and clearness of original conception. Hence too it is a touchstone for translators. course. Versuch einer Geschichte der Armenischen Literatur, nach den Werkin der Mechitaristen frei bearbeitet. Von Carl Frederich Neumann. 8vo. Leipzig. 1836. (Essay towards a History of Armenian Literature, freely drawn up from the Works of the Monks of the Convent of Mechitar, at Venice.) By Chas. Fred. Neumann. Ir is now exactly one hundred years since the Messrs. Whiston published in London, an edition of the Armenian History of Moses The volume before us certainly rivals of Chorene; and considering how few aids some former translations of Horace into they had in their undertaking, it is astonishGerman, and is equal to those of Passow, ing, observes the author of the present work, Preiss, and Gunther. It does not however that they were able to give so correct a text, render happily the metre of the original, to and to accompany it with such an excellent say nothing of the sense or even the harmo- translation. Since that time we are not ny-the voice of the real poet. To English aware that any publication has appeared in readers our meaning will be obvious, if they England on the subject of Armenian literaonly compare the graceful cadence of the ture, although it might have been expected Latin with the dryness and imperfection of that even in a commercial point of view the |