LITERATURE OF THE ARABS. 83 



less than seven, nor more than thirteen couplets ; 

 while the length of the Cassida, employed in songs 

 of love or war, might extend from ten to a hundred 

 distichs. The most celebrated of these Divans were 

 those of Abu No was, and Ibn Mokannas whose epi- 

 grammatic wit procured him the title of the Arabian 

 Martial.* Of all the different kinds of poetical com- 

 position, the moral and didactic appear to have been 

 in the highest repute with the Saracens ; hence they 

 wrote in verse with as much facility as in prose, 

 treatises on grammar, rhetoric, theology, medicine, 

 and even on the abstruse sciences of mathematics 

 and astronomy. 



Amidst this luxuriant variety, it has been remark- 

 ed as a curious circumstance that the Arabs have 

 not a single poem which is strictly epic. The nearest 

 approach to dramatic writing are a few dialogues in 

 rhyme ; but these belong rather to satire than co- 

 medy. The classic models of the Greeks and Romans, 

 the works of Sophocles and Euripides, of Terence and 

 Seneca, were despised by the Arabs as timid, cold, 

 and constrained ; and amongst all the books which, 

 with an almost superstitious veneration, they bor- 



* The Arabs were extremely fond of reiterations and jingling 

 sounds in the poetry, 



" When shall it be, and when shall it be, and when shall it be, 



and when, 

 That I shall be, and love shall be, and music shall be, and wine ?" 



Of their epigrammatic wit, Professor Carlyle f Specim. of Arab. Poe- 

 try) has translated some examples. The following 1 stanzas are 

 by Ibn Alrumi, who lived and died at Emesa, in the reign of Mo- 

 taded, and who excelled in every species of versification : 



TO A VALETUDINARIAN. 



" So careful is Isa, and anxious to last, 



So afraid of himself he is grown, 



He swears through two nostrils the breath goes too fast, 



And he's trying to breathe through but one. 



