36 



by a change in the language where they are introduced. This has ever 

 been the cafe with all nations, and the nature of things, will not fuffer 

 it to be otherwife. Neither, if we fuppofe thefe vagrant tribes to be 

 the defcendants of Iflimael. " In the foreft in Arabia fliall ye lodge, 

 O ye travelling companies of Dedanim." Ifaiah chap 21 -v. 13. Shall 

 we have much reafon to doubt what they tell us. Here, then, we fix 

 our foot, and I offer it as no unreafonable conjefture, that if the language 

 of thefe people (hall have fuffered as little alteration as their manners, 

 their poetry can have changed but little from its original call. And if 

 the whole of that poetry whereof any part hath reached us, (and fome 

 of it we know was compofed at thofe early periods called by the later 

 Arabians their times of ignorance) be regulated chiefly by the rhime, this 

 deduftion feems naturally to follow, that from the earlieft formation of 

 the Arabian verfe, the rhime has been one of its invariable features. In 

 faft, not having any intercourfe with the Greeks or Romans, whatever 

 might have been the fafliion of their poetry, the Arabians could not 

 have borrowed it of them ; fo far then its form was its own, and it owes 

 nothing to more polilhed nations. Separated, moreover, like the Hebrews, 

 from the reft of mankind, they could have had little opportunity of new- 

 modelling their verfe; and therefore it is rcafonable to conclude, that 

 from unrcgiftered times to the period of Mahomet, the charafter of the 

 Arabian poetry has continued the fame ; and that, from his time to the 

 prefent, " neither angel nor devil hath mended it."* Not to mention 

 the Archaic Chi-Kini of the Chinefe, I truft I have affertcd the claim of 

 rhime to Trichiliar antiquity. 



One inftitution, however, is highly honorable to thefe people, and 

 could not, I ^hink, have been borrowed of their neighbours. It gra- 

 dually 



* This remark is ftrengthened by the obfervation of Voltaire in his Univerfal Hiftory, 

 where he fays that the Arabian poetry had been afcertained before the time of Mahomet, 

 from which period it never altered. (Tom. i. C. 5.) Kafia, from whence the Arabians call 

 rhime Kafiaton, by his royal authority regulated the laws of the Arabian verfe : but Al Chili 

 afterwardj unfettled thefe laws of the Caliph, and introduced a better regulation. (5fr, 

 ium. Clarie'i Sc'ientia JHetric, jirab.) 



