﻿lO THE FOURTH DISCOURSE! 



titled Almoallakaty which have appeared in our own 

 language, exhibit an exact picture of their virtues 

 and their vices, their wisdom and their folly; and 

 show what may be constantly expected from men of 

 open hearts and boiling passions, with no law to con- 

 trol, and little religion to restrain them. 



III. Few monuments of antiquity are preserved in 

 Arabia* and of those few the best accounts are very 

 uncertain ; but we are assured that inscriptions on 

 rocks and mountains are still seen in various parts of 

 the peninsula; which, if they are in any known lan- 

 guage, and if correct copies of them can be procured, 

 may be decyphered by easy and infallible rules. 



The first Albert Schultens has preserved in his An^ 

 cient Memorials of Arabia, the most pleasing of all 

 his works, two little poems in an elegiac strain, which 

 are said to have been found, about the middle of the 

 seventh century, on some fragments of ruined edifices 

 in Hadramut* near Aden* and are supposed to be of an 

 indefinite, but very remote age. It may naturally 

 be asked, — In what characters were they written? 

 Who decyphered them ? Why were not the original 

 letters preserved in the book where the verses are cited? 

 What became of the marbles which Abdurrahman* 

 then governor of Yemen* most probably sent to the 

 Khali/ah at Bagdad? If they be genuine, they prove 

 the people of Yemen to have been ' herdsmen and 

 warriors, inhabiting a fertile and well-watered country 

 * full of game, and near a fine sea abounding with fish, 

 6 under a monarchical government, and dressed in 

 c green silk, or vests of needlework/ either of their 

 own manufacture or imported from India. The mea- 

 sure of these verses is perfectly regular, and the dia- 

 lect undistinguishable, at least by me, from that of 

 Kuraish ; so that, if the Arabian writers were much 

 addicted to literary impostures, I should strongly sus- 



