917 



FIRDUSI, ABUL CASIM MANSUR. 



FIRENZUOLA, AGXOLO. 



918 



the kiugs.' The Sassauian race of princes succeeded these, and ruled 

 over the whole of Persia for 501 years. 



The poem of Firdusi is of little value as a history, though it 

 certainly contains some of the ancient Persian traditions. The whole 

 history of Kaikhosrau, as related by Firdusi, bears so great a simi- 

 larity to the account which Herodotus gives of the life of Cyrus, as to 

 put it beyond doubt that both authors present us with a faithful and 

 accurate representation of the same tradition. "It is utterly incredible," j 

 says Sir William Jones (' Works,' vol. iii., p. 166), "that two different 

 princes of Persia should each have been born in a foreign and hostile 

 territory ; should have been doomed to death in his infancy by his 

 maternal grandfather; should each have been saved by the remorse 

 of his destined murderer; should each, after a similar education 

 among herdsmen as the son of a herdsman, have found means to 

 revisit his paternal dominion, and, having delivered it after a long and 

 triumphant war from a tyrant who had invaded it, should have 

 restored it to the summit of power and magnificence." The leading 

 circumstances in the life of Alexander the Great are also preserved in 

 the ' Shah Xameh.' We read of his victory over Dara (Dareius), 

 of his marriage with Roahung (Rozana), of his expedition into 

 India nd defeat of Faur (Porus), and of his journey through the 

 desert to Mecca to consult two trees from which a voice proceeded, 

 which if evidently only another version of his visit to the temple of 

 Auimon in Libya. The Persian biographers all agree in asserting 

 that Mahmud placed in the hands of Firdusi the ancient chronicles 

 of the kings of Persia, from which it is supposed that he derived the 

 historical narrative extant in his great work. We have the testimony 

 of the book of Estl er (x. 2) to the existence of such records, as well 

 as a strong presumption derived from the fragments of Ctesiaa and 

 many parts of Herodotus. But it appears very unlikely that these 

 chronicles should have been preserved for so many ages, considering 

 the various revolutions which Persia experienced. There is a romantic 

 story told in the preface to the edition of the ' Shah Xameh,' pub- 

 lished by the command of Baysinghur Khan, which, though deserving 

 of little credit, must not be omitted on account of its general currency 

 in the East. It it related that Yesdijird, the hut monarch of the 

 Sassanian race, ordered all the chronicles of the kings of Persia to be 

 collected and arranged, and that this book was known by the name 

 of the ' Bastan Xameh.' Ou the conquest of Persia by the Arabs it 

 was found in the library of Yesdijird, and became in the division of 

 the plunder the property of the Ethiopians, by whom it was conveyed 

 to India; it was afterwards taken back again to Persia, where it 

 remained unknown till a fortunate circumstance brought it to light 

 in the reign of Mahmud. Little reliance can be placed on the exist- 

 ence of written documents in the time of Firdusi ; the only value of 

 the ' Shah Xameh,' in an historical point of view, consists in the 

 ancient Persian traditions it has preserved ; but it would require the 

 learning and acumen of a critic like Xiebuhr to arrive at the historical 

 truth conveyed in the tradition, and to strip the real legend of the 

 additions and embellishments of the poet. But it is not as a history 

 that the ' Shah Xameh ' derives its reputation. Its poetry is read 

 and admired by all well-educated Persians even in the present day ; 

 and its author may be considered as the greatest of oriental poets, 

 with the exception of Valmlki and Calidusa. It is written in purer 

 Persian than any other work in the language, and contains a very 

 small number of Arabic words ; it has thus become a model of Persian 

 composition, and is as much distinguished in the East as the Homeric 

 poems were in the West. 



The copies of the ' Shah Xameh ' now met with vary greatly iu the 

 number of verses. " It would be difficult to discover," says llr. Macan 

 in bis Preface to the Shah Xameh, "two copies which agree in the 

 order of the verses or in the phraseology for 20 couplets together. 

 Whole episodes are omitted, verses rejected from every page, and it is 

 not now uncommon to find manuscripts which contain only 40,000 

 couplets, though originally the poem is said to have consisted of 

 60,000." Mr. Macan adds, that he had never seen a manuscript with 

 more than 56,685 couplets : the edition published by himself contains 

 only 55,204. There have been three attempts made to collate manu- 

 scripts of the ' Shah Xameh,' with the view of obtaining an accurate 

 text. 



1. The first was made by order of Baysinghur Khau, the grandson 

 of Timur, A.H. 829 (A.D. 1426). The editor states in his preface that 

 Baysinghur took great delight in reading the Shah Xameh, but found 

 10 many mistakes in the copies he used, that he ordered a fresh colla- 

 tion to be made hi order to obtain an accurate copy for his own private 

 use. The editor does not mention the manuscripts he used ; and this 

 collation did not produce much benefit, as the copy was deposited in 

 the king's library, to which no one was allowed access. All trace of 

 it naff disappeared ; the preface alone is extant. 



2. The second collation was made under the superintendence of 

 Dr. Lumflden, professor of Arabic and Persian in the College of Fort 

 William. Twenty-seven valuable manuscripts were procured for this 

 purpose ; and the first volume, containing an eighth part of the work, 

 was published at Calcutta hi 1811. 



3. The third collation was made by Mr. Turner Macan from seven- 

 teen complete manuscripts and four fragments containing the greater 

 part of the work ; all of which were written in Persian. The whole 

 of the ' Shah Nameh ' was published by him at Calcutta, 1829, in 4 vols. ( 



8vo ; this edition was printed at the expense of Nuseer-oodeen-Hyder, 

 one of the native princes of Hindustan. 



An epitome of the 'Shah Xameh 'in Persian, made in 1657, by Shum- 

 shir Khan, is widely circulated in the East. There is also an abridg- 

 ment of it in Euglish, in prose and verse, by Mr. James Atkinson, 

 London, 8vo, 1833 ; the same author had previously published at 

 Calcutta in 1814, the episode of Sohrab in English verse, accompanied 

 with the Persian text. The entire poem was translated into Arabic 

 prose, A.H. 675 (A.D. 1277), by Caouam-dddyn-Abul-Feteh-Isa, a native 

 of Ispahan. A small portion of it was published by Wahl in the 

 original Persian, with a German translation and many valuable notes 

 in the fifth volume of the 'Fundgruben dea Orients,' Wien., 1816 

 (pp. 109-131, 233-264, 351-389) ; which was reprinted by Vullers in a 

 useful work for beginners, entitled ' Chrestomathia Schahnatiiiana,' 

 Bonnse, 1833. The first eight books were translated by Champion in 

 1 vol. 4to, 1784 ; and a few extracts were also translated iuto English 

 verse by Stephen Weston, B.D., Lond., 1815. Further particulars of 

 the life of Firdusi will be found in Silvestre de Sacy's translation of 

 his life by Daulet Shah; published in the fourth volume of 'Xotices et 

 Extr. des Manuscrits' (pp. 203-238), and in the prefaces to the various 

 works quoted above. 



FIREXZUO'LA, A'GXOLO, was born September 28, 1493, in the 

 city of Firenze (Florence). He was christened Michelagnolo Girolamo, 

 but his name was afterwards contracted to Agnolo. The family name 

 was taken from the small town of Fireuzuola, in Tuscany, between 

 Florence and Bologna, in a valley among the Apennines, near the 

 source of the Santerno. Xegri, Niccron, and others who have followed 

 them, appear to have been mistaken in stating that the family name 

 was Xannini. Agnolo's father, Bastiano Giovannini da Firenzuula, and 

 his grandfather Carlo da Firenzuola, were citizens of Firenze, and both 

 of them held offices of trust in the city under the patronage of Cosmo 

 de' Medici. 



Agnolo Firenzuola lived in his native city till the age of sixteen, 

 when he went to Siena, where he studied law with muuh labour but 

 little satisfaction to himself ; he also studied at Perugia, and practised 

 for a short time as an advocate at Rome. While yet a young man he 

 left the law for the church, assumed the habit of the monks of Val- 

 lombrosa, and in 1525 was elected abbot of the monastery of Santa 

 Maria Ermita, at Spoleto. He was afterwards appointed abbot of San 

 Salvatore, at Prato, where he chiefly resided during the rest of his 

 short life. The year of his death is not known, but it was probably 

 about 1542 or 1543, since he dates the dedication of his ' Discorsi degli 

 Auimali' on the 9th of December 1541, and Lorenzo Scala, who pub- 

 lished the work in 1548, speaks of his death as having occurred a 

 few years before 1548. Tiraboschi doubts if Fireuzuola ever was an 

 abbot, but gives no reason for disputing the authority of other writers 

 as well as of documents, than that his life was not sufficiently pure 

 for the sacred office : a very insufficient reason as applied to the digni- 

 taries of the Church of Home in those times. Scala calls him " II 

 Reverendo Abate Messer Agnolo Firenzuola : " and addressing himself 

 to Pandolfo Pucci, speaks of Agnolo as his "caro e virtuoso amico" 

 (his dear and virtuous friend). 



His works were published in 1548, as already stated, partly by 

 Lorenzo Scala and partly by Carlo Firenzuola, Agnolo's brother: 

 they consist of ' Discorsi degli Animali ; ' ' liagionamenti ; ' ' Xovelle ; ' 

 ' Epistola in Lode delle Donne ; ' ' Dialogo delle Bellezze delle Donne ; ' 

 ' Discacciamento delle Xuovo Lettere ; ' two comedies, ' I Lucidi ' and 

 ' La Trinuzia ; ' ' Asino d'Oro d'Apulejo rifatto in Lingua Fiorentina,' 

 and 'Rime.' 



Fireuzuola is entitled to a high place among the early Italian 

 writers. His works have been frequently reprinted, both separately 

 and collectively, and are still much read. His two comedies, regarded 

 merely as specimens of dramatic dialogue, are not surpassed by any- 

 thing in the language. He has less power and originality of imagina- 

 tion than Ariosto, Machiavelli, and Divizio (Cardinal Bibbiena), who 

 immediately preceded him, and Gelli, who was his contemporary; 

 but his dialogue is always natural, spirited, appropriate to the charac- 

 ters, and in purity of idiomatic Tuscan is unsurpassed by any other 

 Italian author. He is one of the " testi di lingua," or writers of the 

 highest authority in the language, and as such is frequently quoted 

 in the ' Vocabolario' of the Academy della Crusca. ' I Lucidi ' is au 

 adaptation of the 'Menaechmi' of Plautus, but the plot of 'La 

 Trinuzia' (Triple Marriage) appears to have been invented by himself, 

 except that the character of Rovino seems to have been modelled on 

 that of Calandro, iu the ' Calandria ' of Cardinal Bibbiena. Firen- 

 zuola's two plays are free from the indecencies which pollute his 

 1 Xovelle.' They arc printed in the second edition of Biagioli's col- 

 lection of Italian classic writers, 'Tesoretto della Liugua Toscana,' 

 Paris, 8vo, 1822, with copious notes in French explanatory of the 

 difficult idioms. 



The ' Xovelle,' of which there are ten, are short tales in the manner 

 of Boccaccio, inferior in invention and perhaps in descriptive power, 

 but of equal elegance of narrative and dialogue; some of them 

 however are little less licentious than many of those of Boccaccio 

 himself. 



Firenzuola's version of tho 'Golden Ass' of Apuleius is partly 

 adapted and partly translated. The time is changed from the 2nd 

 century to tho 15th ; the Greek towns are converted into Italian towns, 



