OF LITERATURE. 



XXXIX 



bestowed. An almost incalculable host of names 

 might be cited to attest the richness of the Ara- 

 bian literature, and above all of the Spanish 

 branch of it. As late as the fourteenth century 

 it had not totally died away, but in the eleventh, 

 the period most nearly connected with our pre- 

 sent inquiry, its beauty and vigour were at the 

 greatest height. 



Though erring on the side of extravagance 

 and subtlety, even the cultivated poetry of the 

 Arabians is of a highly original vein. While 

 they were taking lessons in science from the 

 Grecian philosophy, the Greek poets as well as 

 the Greek historians remained unknown or un- 

 prized by them. The praise of equal originality 

 is, perhaps, not due to another department of 

 their imaginative works ; those picturesque and 

 brilliant tales, allied to poetry in some of its 

 most winning attributes, one body of which, 

 although accessible to the majority of European 

 readers only in translation, still occupies a com- 

 manding place in literature. Yet, admitting that 

 orientalists may have rightly derived much of 

 this delightful collection from Persian or Indian 

 sources, there can be no doubt that the Arabs 

 were the great patrons and promoters of the 

 branch of fiction to which it belongs. As soon 

 as we hear at all of the natives of Arabia, we 

 hear of the enthusiasm with which they were wont 

 to practise or applaud the art of narration. From 

 them that spirit was caught by the Crusaders, 

 which infused itself, together with the spirit of 

 Arabian poetry, into the compositions of the 

 West, in the very dawn of modern letters, ages 

 before an exact version of the principal legends 

 had been published in Europe. 



The genius of PERSIA, likewise, was brought 

 by a direct, as well as by a circuitous channel, 

 into contact with the European mind. In that 

 country, during the times of the Magi, there had 

 flourished an ancient literature, some fragments 

 of which survived their fall. The Magi them- 

 selves, with their rites and laws, were swept 

 away by the Mahometan conquest,* when politi- 

 cal considerations led to the suppression of their 

 order : but, after a tedious interval, the creation 

 of a new Persian dialect brought with it the 

 reappearance of polite learning. In history, and 

 still more eminently in poetry, successful efforts 

 Avere made. So late as in the thirteenth century, 

 the Orchard and the Rose-garden of SADI com- 

 bined the mingled flowers of narrative, gnomic, 

 and ethical song ; so late as in the beginning of the 

 fifteenth, sublime mysteries were couched by the 

 lyric HAFIZ under the allegorical praises of love 



and wine. Here, however, as in the history of 

 Arabian letters, the epoch of perfection nearly 

 coincides with the dawn of the Provengal min- 

 strelsy. At that era FEBDUSI f poured forth a 

 hundred and twenty thousand verses to the fame 

 of his country's heroes, and deserved by their 

 excellence to be styled the Persian Homer. 



To look back on what we know or guess as 

 to the old literature of Persia would serve the 

 single purpose of demonstrating that its origin 

 and growth were similar to those of Grecian 

 poetry, as already described. But Ferdusi has 

 a thousand claims on our attention. His bold 

 epic diction ; the beautiful fancy with which he 

 idealized traditionary tales of kings and warriors ; 

 have been felt in their vivifying influence upon 

 many European productions : and, if some cor- 

 responding notions, and some kindred supersti- 

 tions already existed in the West, they took at 

 least a warmer colouring from the splendours of 

 his oriental imagery. 



Among the embellishments borrowed by PRO- 

 VENCAL poetry from the Arabs was rhyme, an 

 ornament as essential to Arabian verse as al- 

 literation was to that of the Northern tribes ; 

 and which its adopters strove to vary with the 

 most sportive prodigality. From the same 

 source, likewise, were derived many glowing 

 maxims of chivalry, that great virtue of the gal- 

 lant Moors ; and many aspirations of romantic 

 love. For in the troubadours, as in their 

 Eastern masters, the traits of the amorous and 

 of the martial character were blended. If strokes 

 of satire and political allusions were allowed to 

 mingle with some of their kinds of composition, 

 still in all those kinds, their single lays and their 

 amojbaean dialogues, their sirventes and their 

 tensons, or whatever else they might be called, 

 war and love were evermore the key-notes of 

 the strain. By the appellation of Courts of 

 Love were those assemblies known, in which the 

 ardour of contending poets was inflamed by the 

 presence of beauty and the hope of prizes from 

 a female hand. Even this incitement, however, 

 failed to call forth any production of surpassing 

 merit. None rises high above the level of the 

 multitudes around. It would be needless to 

 number the piles of manuscripts, in which these 

 are chiefly preserved ; or to recount a long list 

 of individual troubadours, though it would in- 

 clude a name so illustrious as that of the lion- 

 hearted Richard, the hero of his age, and the idol 

 of his poetical contemporaries. Suffice it to say 

 that the Provengal style endured, in different 

 quarters, from the time of William of Poitiers $ 



AD. 651. 



t Died, A. D. 1020. 



t A. D. 1OT1-112& 



