84 



A brief notice of the Persian poets. 



[Jul* 



are necessarily clouded with the obscurity of ignorance, and peopled 

 with the creations of tradition and dark superstition ? 



Shall we reject and throw aside altogether the annals of Greece, 

 Rome and Phenicia, because they contain the fables of the Titans, the 

 centaurs, and the other mythological enormities, that figure in the 

 writings of men like Hesiod, Diodorus, Pausanias, Apollodorus 

 and Sanconiathon? Shall we eternally seal the books of Herodotus, for 

 his having interwoven the valuable facts, that fell under his personal 

 observation, with the artful fabrications communicated to him by the 

 priests of Vulcan at Memphis, and by the officials of Jupiter Belus at 

 Babylon ? Besides this, it is to be held in remembrance, that poets, from 

 the earliest times, have been a privileged race, and have continued to 

 exercise the license of introducing, ad libitum, the machinery of aerial and 

 other creations of the fancy into their compositions. Instance the gods 

 and goddesses of Homer, Hesiod and Virgil ; the Deotas and Rachdsas 

 of the Mahabhdrat and Ramaydna; the Mam bangs and Widaddrisoi 

 Malay and Javan poesy; the ghosts and spirits oiOssian, the Pantheon 

 of Scandinavian mythology as depicted in the Voluspa of the Edda ; 

 together with the magic and enchantments of the Runic, and oldBritish, 

 romances. Turn we to more modern days — the hosts of angels, demons, 

 fairies and sorcerers, that figure in Milton's Paradise lost ; the Inferno 

 Of Dante ; Spenser's Fairy Queen ; the Gierusalemme Liberata of 

 Tasso, and the Orlando Furioso of Ariosto, may not, perhaps, be unaptly 

 compared with the legions of Dives, Peris,Genii, and other supernatural 

 agents^ which the Persian poet has invoked to his aid, from the fairy 

 regions of fancy, or from the obscure and murky caverns of tradition. 

 Finally, to use the words of the talented author of the " Sketches in 

 Persia", " It is only justice to this great poet, to observe, that 

 the exuberance of his fertile imagination, though it led him to amplify 

 and adorn his subject, never made him false to the task he had under- 

 taken, that of embodying, in his great work, all that remained of the fa- 

 bulous and historical traditions and writings of his country. We cannot 

 have a stronger proof of his adherence to this principle, than his pass- 

 ing over, almost in silence, the four centuries which elapsed between 

 the death of Alexander the Great, and the rise of Ardesheer, or Ar* 

 taxerxes, the founder of the Sassanian dynasty." 



