THE KORAN. 277 



of forty years' labour, and contains, in two folio 

 volumes, a life of Mohammed, a refutation of his 

 religion, the Arabic text of the Koran, with his own 

 translation, and a vast collection of notes ;— a work 

 of such prodig-ious erudition as to merit a place in 

 the same niche with the toilsome researches of the 

 Benedictine monks. The zealous father, however, 

 was more skilled in oriental than in Christian litera- 

 ture ; more intent on exposing the frailties and blas- 

 phemies of his author, than in weighing his character 

 or his religion in the balance of impartial criticism. 

 His knowledge must obtain for him the respect of 

 his readers, but his mode of reasoning will frequently 

 excite their ridicule. He is one of that numerous- 

 class of writers to be found among the ponderous 

 shelves of Continental divinity, who make no distinc- 

 tion between form and substance ; and he pours as 

 great a torrent of learning and arenmient on the trivial 

 as on the important parts'of the Mohammedan code.* 

 George Sale has maintained in England the hon- 



* Parts of the Koran have been edited by Erpenius, Golius, 

 Zehendorfius, Clenardus, Ravius, Pfeifferus, and Danzius. The 

 first edition of the entire work in the Arabic was published at 

 Venice in 1530, by Paganini of Brescia; but the pope was so 

 alarmed that the book was immediately condemned to the 

 flanies ; copies of it are therefore extremely rare. Peter, abbot 

 of Chum, in the fourteenth century, ordered a Latin translation 

 to be prepared, which was published by Bibliander in 1550 A 

 complete edition of the Arabic Koran was published by Hinckle- 

 man, at Hamburgh, in 16S4. Reineccii, Hist. Alcoran, sect. 8, 9, 

 10. Pei^not, Diction, des Livres Condamnis au Feu, p. 227. Mill't 

 Hist, of Muham. p. 285. Purchas, in his Pilgrimes, nnd Heylin 

 in his Cosmography, have given the chief heads of the Koran in 

 Knghsh The French of Du Ryerwas translated by Alexander 

 Ross, who thought it necessary to premonish the reader of his 

 danger by "a needful caveat," of which the following is the 

 exordium:—" Good reader, the great Arabian impostor now at 

 last, after a thousand years, is, by the way of France, arrived in 

 England ; and his Alcoran, or gailemaufry of errors,— a brat as 

 deformed as the parent, and as full of heresies as a scald head is 

 /^°' ^'^rf,— has learned to speak Eng[\sh.''—Ricaut\^ Hist, of 

 Uttom Empire, vol. li. See also Retraspoct. Review, vol. lii 



Vol. I. —A a 



