70 Oriental Literature. 



Great-Britain, laboured much, and with very ho- 

 nourable success, to illustrate the literature and 

 science of Arabia. They were followed by Al- 

 bert Schultens/ of Holland, and George Cos- 

 tard, 2 an English divine, who were certainly 

 among the most accomplished Arabic scholars of 

 the age, and whose various publications contri- 

 buted to extend this species of knowledge. The 

 latter, in particular, distinguished himself by his 

 illustrations of Arabian astronomy; and has been 

 pronounced, by a good judge, to be one of the 

 most profound oriental astronomers ever born out 

 of Asia. In Arabic literature, also, the labours 

 of the Michaelises, Reiske, Bode, and Storr, of 

 Germany; of Professor White and Sir William 

 Jones, of Great-Britain; and of M. Renaudot, 

 the Abbe Marigny, and M. DeSacy, of France, 

 deserve to be mentioned with high encomium. To 

 the above may be added the information commu- 

 nicated by several travellers, among whom Nie- 

 buhr, of Denmark, holds a distinguished place. 



As in the seventeenth century the learned men 

 of Holland were the great sources of information 

 in Arabic literature, and had done more than those 

 of any other country in Europe, to advance its cul- 

 tivation ; so in the eighteenth it is believed that 

 Great-Britain and Germany successfully vied with 

 that country in the production of eminent Arabic 

 scholars. Still, however, Holland held a high place 

 with respect to this branch of oriental literature. 

 The names of Reland and Schultens alone do 



^i Monumrnta Aniiquissim* Histories Arabum. ScHULTENS signalized him- 

 self by maintaining, in opposition to Gousset and Driessen, that, in order 

 to gain a perfect knowledge of the Hebrew, it was necessary to join with 

 it not only Chaldeac and Syriac, but also, and more particularly, the Arabic. 



z See his Letters on the Rise and Progress of Astronomy among the Ana I 

 Svo. 1746. And also his General History of Astronomy ^ induJirg that oftbt 

 Arabians. 4 to. 1 7 77. 



