What graceful forms those envious folds inclose!
What melting glances thro' those curtains play!
Sure Weira's antelopes, or Judah's roes,

Thro' yonder veils their sportive young survey.

The band mov'd on-to trace their steps I strove,
I saw them urge the camel's hastening flight,
Till the white * vapour, like a rising grove,
Snatch'd them for ever from my aching sight.

Nor since that morn have I NAWARA seen,

The bands are burst which held us once so fast,
Memory but tells me that such things have been,
And sad Reflection adds that they are past †.

The same chastity and simplicity of style, which distinguish the best ages of Arabian poetry, are, likewise, to be found in their prose writings, produced during the same period. The Arabian Tales, or the Thousand and One Nights, are said, by those who are judges of the original, to be frequently specimens of the most simple and elegant diction. They were written, it is probable, during the most flourishing era of the

* The vapour here alluded to, called by the Arabians Serab, is not unlike in appearance (and probably proceeding from a similar cause) to those white mists which we often see hovering over the surface of a river, in a summer's evening, after a hot day. They are very frequent in the sultry plains of Arabia, and, when seen at a distance, resemble an expanded lake; but upon a nearer approach, the thirsty traveller perceives his deception.

+ Carlyle's Specimens of Arabian Poetry, p. 5.

VOL. II.

Khaliphat, in the space included between the eighth and twelfth centuries, when the language of Arabia, to use the words of Mr. Richardson, was "sublime, comprehensive, copious, energetic, delicate, majestic; adapted equally for the softness of love, or the poignancy of satire; for the mournfulness of elegy, or the grandeur of heroics; for the simplest tale, or the boldest effort of rhetoric*." What strongly corroborates the supposition of their antiquity is their freedom from allusion to modern customs, manners, or events, to the use of gunpowder, or to the enterprising efforts of European travellers and navigators.

any

It may likewise be affirmed, that had they been recent productions, the offspring of the fifteenth, sixteenth, or seventeenth century, the language would have partaken of that inflation and turgidity, which almost invariably characterize the prose works of modern oriental writers. To be convinced of this, I have only to refer the reader to the Tales of Inatulla, as literally translated by Mr. Scott. These productions form a species of romance, under the title of BaharDanush, or Garden of Knowledge, written by, the Persian EINAINT OOLLAH, Anno Domini 1650, in the reign of the Emperor Shaw Jehaun. Than

*Preface to his Arabic Grammar.

the style of this work nothing can be more bombastic, puerile, and absurd; it is loaded with monstrous epithets, incongruous metaphors, and the most ridiculous conceits; while the incidents are, for the most part, licentious, trifling, and Jejune.

It is to be regretted that, either from ignorance or false taste, the imitators of oriental fable have, in general, rather chosen to copy the tumid style, which for some centuries has prevailed among the prose writers of Persia, than the pure and correct manner of what may be termed the classical authors of Arabia. Hence have we been deluged with such a quantity of bloated composition, under the title of Oriental Tales. A most striking exception, however, to this erroneous taste, we possess in the writings of Addison, whose eastern tales and apologues are written in language of the greatest simplicity and purity.

If we take the Arabian Tales *, therefore, as a model, we shall perceive they may be defined, as containing a series of wild and wonderful incidents, copiously mingled with the superstitions and preternatural machinery of the East, faith

* These have lately been very elegantly translated from the French version, by the Rev. Edward Forster; a very acceptable present to the public, as the old translation was not only incorrect, but coarse and vulgar in its diction.

fully illustrative of its manners and customs, and delivered in language of great perspicuity, simplicity, and elegance.

The usual objection to these narratives has been the lavish use which their authors have made of the marvellous and supernatural; but it should not be forgotten, as Mr. Hole has justly observed, that "the same kind of credibility is preserved in these tales, as the Greeks attached to the speciosa miracula of their poets; and ourselves to the vulgar superstitions of our own country. To such delusions as are derived from hoary antiquity, and are sanctioned by popular belief, the fancy easily assents, and we willingly suspend the operations of severer reason.

"Influenced by this principle, the Greeks listened with pleasure to the imaginary adventures of their Olympic deities: and, actuated by the same motive, we attend with equal delight to the incantations of the witches in Macbeth, and to Puck's whimsical frolics in the Midsummer Night's Dream.' Let us be cautious, therefore, of condemning the Arabs for a ridiculous attachment to the MARVELLOUS, since we ourselves are no less affected by it. They had a system of popular mythology, equally interesting to them as ours is to us; more so, probably, as being more generally credited. The characters also of their

ideal beings are as scrupulously preserved and discriminated, as of those who people the fairy regions of English poetry *."

The ardour and eager curiosity with which these romantic tales have ever been, and are still read by the natives of Arabia, and indeed throughout the East, have been more than once mentioned by observant travellers as truly astonishing. Colonel Capper, in his Observations on the Passage to India through Egypt, and across the Great Desert, has made some very pertinent remarks on this subject. "The Arabian Nights," he observes, "contain much curious and useful observation. They are by many people erroneously supposed to be a spurious production, and are therefore slighted in a manner they do not deserve. They were written by an Arabian †, and are universally read and admired, throughout Asia, by all ranks of men, both old and young: considered, therefore, as an original work, descriptive, as they are, of the manners and customs of the East in general, and also of the Arabians in particular, they surely must be thought to merit the attention of the curious; nor

* Hole's Remarks on the Arabian Nights, p. 11, 12. There is more reason to suppose they were written by various authors, and at different periods, of the best age of Arabian literature.