MOST of my readers will apprehend, that, in attempting to trace the progress of the Persian language, through a period of two thousand years, I am entering into a sub­ject, which will afford them neither amusement nor instruction, and can be agreeable only to those few men, who apply themselves to the obscurer branches of literature, and have very little intercourse with the rest of mankind. The title of my piece seems, indeed, to give a reasonable ground for their apprehensions; and the transi­tion appears rather abrupt, from the history of Monarchs to the history of mere words, and from the revolutions of the Persian Empire to the variations of the Persian idiom: but it shall be my endeavour to remove, as far as possible, the dry­ness of the subject, by interspersing the narrative with a variety of Eastern anecdotes; and, as to the second objection, it may be alledged, that a considerable change in the language of any nation is usually effected by a change in the government; so that literary and civil history are very nearly allied, and may often be used with advantage to prove and illustrate one another.

The History of the Persian tongue may be divided into four periods, like that of the Empire; not that the language was immediately altered upon every revolution of the state, but it is observable, that, under each Dynasty of which we have any monuments remaining, there was an apparent change in the dialect of the kingdom, especially under the two last, namely, the Sassa­nian and Mohammedan dynasties; and these, indeed, are the only periods, of which we can speak with any degree of certainty.

It is natural to suppose, that, in the infancy of the Persian Empire, under Caiúmaras and his descendants, no great pains were taken to culti­vate and polish the language, which in that rude age must needs be thought sufficiently elegant, if it were sufficiently clear and intelligible; and we are assured by Herodotus, that, even after the reign of CYRUS, the whole education of the Persian youth, from the age of five years to twenty, consisted in three points only, riding, throwing the javelin, and the practice of moral virtue; which account is also confirmed by Xenophon. The story mentioned by Diodorus of the old volumes of parchment, on which the Persians were obliged by a certain law to write the annals of their country, was probably invented by Ctesias, that he might give an air of authenticity to his impertinent fables; for such literary impos­tures were as frequent among the Greeks, as among us, who imitate the Ancients in nothing but their failings. We are far from contending, however, that the ancient Persians, especially those of the second period, were entire strangers to the art of composition either in verse or prose; for there never was a nation so rude and unpolished, who had not a custom of celebrating the noble acts of their ancestors, and inciting one another by songs and panegyricks to an imitation of their virtue; and Strabo, a very different author from Diodorus, asserts, that the Persians used frequently to sing the praises of their ancient Heroes and Demigods, sometimes with a musical instrument, and sometimes with the voice alone: but what their language really was, what were their rules of versification, or what was the course of their studies, no mortal can pretend to know with any shadow of exactness.

The Greek Historians can give us no light on this subject; for neither Themistocles, who spoke the dialect of Persia like a native, though he had spent only one year in learning it*, nor even Xenophon, whose intimacy with the younger Cyrus could not have been contracted without a knowledge of his language, seem to have read the works of the Persians, or even to have known their characters; but were perhaps contented to express their sentiments in Persian with ease and fluency. Nor are we much enlightened by the writers after Alexander; not even by those, who have described the life of that Hero: for Cur­tius, who compiled his rhetorical History from the Greek authors, seems to have known as little of Persian as of Scythian, though he dresses up a number of speeches for the chiefs of those nations, which certainly were never spoken by them. A few words, indeed, are here and there interspersed in these histories, which are still used in the modern idiom of Persia*; but we can no more form an idea of a whole language from a list of broken phrases or detached epi­thets, than we can judge of a poem or piece of oratory, from an unconnected line or a single member of a period.

Since the Greeks afford us so little information, nothing remains but to consult the Persians themselves; and the great Traveller Chardin, whom every Orientalist must always mention with reverence, seems to have enquired very diligently into the ancient language of the people, among whom he resided so long, and whose manners he describes with so much copiousness and learning: but he declares, after all his researches, “That the old Persian is a language entirely lost; in which no books are extant, and of which there are no rudiments remaining: that the Guebres, who are the remains of the Parsis, or Adorers of Fire, have an idiom peculiar to themselves; which is supposed, by the Persians in general, to be rather a jargon of their own, than a part of their ancient tongue: that, if you believe their own account, the Magi, who resided at Yezd in Carmania, have preserved this lan­guage from father to son, after the dissolution of their Monarchy; but that, for his part, he has found no reason to give any credit to their story: that they have, indeed, some books in strange characters, but he cannot persuade himself that they are old Persian letters; especially, since they bear no kind of resemblance to those on the famous monu­ments at Persepolis.” The authority of this excellent writer is decisive, and puts an end at once to the controversy lately started, concern­ing the authenticity of the books ascribed to Zoroaster, which a French adventurer, who trans­lated them from the translation of a certain Gipsy at Surat, has had the boldness to send abroad as genuine: but, to avoid any suspicion of misrepresenting the passage, it seems necessary to transcribe the very words of Sir John Chardin, which the reader may see at the bottom of the page*. From this we may reasonably conclude, that the gibberish of those swarthy vagabonds, whom we often see brooding over a miserable sire under the hedges, may as well be taken for old Egyptian, and the beggars themselves for the priests of Isis, as the jugglers on the coast of India for the disciples of Zoroaster, and their bar­barous dialect for the ancient language of Persia. But let the rosy-cheeked Frenchman, to give him his own Epithet, rest happy in the contempla­tion of his personal beauty, and the vast extent of his learning: it is sufficient for us to have exposed his follies, detected his imposture, and retorted his invectives, without insulting a fallen adversary, or attempting, like the Hero in Dry­den’s Ode, to slay the slain.

We have no genuine accounts then of the Persian language till the time of the SASSA­NIAN kings, who flourished from the opening of the third century to the middle of the seventh; in which period an Academy of Physick was founded at Gandisapor, a City of Khorasan, and, as it gradually declined from its original insti­tution, it became a school of poetry, rhetorick, dialectick, and the abstract sciences. In this excellent seminary the Persian tongue could not fail of being greatly refined, and the rusticity of the old idiom was succeeded by a pure and elegant dialect; which, being constantly spoken at the court of Beharám Gúr in the year 351, acquired the name of Deri, or, Courtly, to dis­tinguish it from the Pehlevi, or, Language of the Country.

It must not, however, be imagined, that the use of the ancient dialect was wholly superseded by this more polished idiom; for several com­positions in Pehlevi were extant even after Mahomed, which appear to have been written by order of the Sassanian Princes. Anushirvan, sur­named The Just, who reigned at the close of the sixth century, having heard from some travellers, that the Indian Monarchs had a collection of moral fables, which they preserved with great care among their archivcs, sent his chief Physician Barzuieh into India, with orders to make him­self master of the Sanscrit language, and not to return without a translation of those fables. These orders were punctually executed; Bar­zuieh learned the Indian tongue, and, having at a great expence procured a copy of the book, translated it into the Pehlevian dialect: about an hundred and forty years after, his work was turned from Pehlevi into Arabick, by order of Almansur, second Calif of the Abbasides; and this is the volume which we see in every lan­guage of Europe, under the name of Calîla wa Demna, or, The fables of Pilpay. There is a fine copy of the Arabick version in the publick library at Oxford; and if the work of Barzuieh could be found, we should be enabled to recover a considerable part of the old Persian language; the same, perhaps, which was spoken in the second period by Themistocles and Xenophon.

In the reign of Anushirván, who protected the arts and sciences in his own dominions, MAHO­MED was born; who, by the force of his Elo­quence, and the success of his Arms, established a mighty Empire, and spread his new religion from the wilds of Arabia, to the mountains of Tartary and the banks of the Ganges: but, what belongs more particularly to the subject of this discourse, he polished the language of his country, and brought it to a degree of purity and ele­gance, which no Arabian writer since his time has been able to surpass. The battle of Cadessia in the year 636 gave the last blow to the Persian Monarchy; and the whole Empire of Iran was soon reduced under the power of the first Mahomedan Dynasty, who fixed the seat of their government in Bagdad, where the Arabick lan­guage was spoken, for many ages, in its utmost perfection: but the ancient literature of Persia, which had been promoted by the family of Sassan, was expressly discouraged by the immediate suc­cessors of Mahomed, for a reason, which it is proper to explain.

At the time when the Alcoran was first pub­lished in Arabia, a merchant, who had lately returned from a long journey, brought with him some Persian romances, which he interpreted to his countrymen, who were extremely delighted with them, and used to say openly, that the stories of griffons and giants were more amusing to them than the moral lessons of Mahomed: part of a chapter in the Alcoran was immediately written, to stop the progress of these opinions; the mer­chant was severely reprimanded; his tales were treated as pernicious fables, hateful to God and his prophet; and Omar, from the same motive of policy, determined to destroy all the foreign books which should fall into his hands. Thus the idle loquacity of an Arabian traveller, by setting his legends in competition with the pre­cepts of a powerful Lawgiver, was the cause of that enthusiasm in the Mahomedans, which induced them to burn the famous library of Alex­andria, and the records of the Persian Empire.

One book, however, besides the fables of Pil­pay, escaped the fury of these unmerciful zealots: it was an History of Persia in the Pehlevian dialect, extracted from the Sassanian annals, and composed, it is believed, by the command of Anushirvan. Saad, one of Omar’s Generals, found this volume, after the victory at Cadessia, and preserved it for himself as a curiosity: it passed afterwards through several hands, and was at length translated into some other languages of Asia*.

It was a long time before the native Persians could recover from the shock of this violent revolution; and their language seems to have been very little cultivated under the Califs, who gave greater encouragement to the literature of the Arabians: but, when the power of the Abbasides began to decline, and a number of inde­pendent Princes arose in the different provinces of their empire, the arts of elegance, and chiefly Poetry, revived in Persia, and there was hardly a Prince, or Governor of a city, who had not several poets and men of letters in his train. The Persian tongue was consequently restored in the tenth century; but it was very different from the Deri or Pehlevi of the Ancients: it was mixed with the words of the Alcoran, and with expressions from the Arabian Poets, whom the Persians considered as their masters, and affected to imitate in their poetical measures, and the turn of their verses.

That the learned reader may have a just notion of this new idiom, it seems necessary, first to produce a specimen of pure Arabick, and, after­wards, of the purest Persian that can be found; by which means he will form a more accurate judgement of the modern Persick, in which both languages are perfectly incorporated.

The following Ode was written by a native of Damascus: it contains a lively description of an Eastern Banquet; and most of the couplets are highly elegant in the original.

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that is; “We have a banquet, into which sorrow cannot enter, and from which mirth can never depart. It comprises every species of Beauty; and he, who seeks the joys of life, cannot rise beyond it. A sprightly Song gives more pleasure to youth than Riches*: here the stream of life is unsullied, and all our cares are dispersed. Here the mildness of our gentle darling gives ease to our love; and here the timid dervise becomes an Apos­tate from his faith. We have a bower, on which the dew-drops sparkle; and in which the breeze becomes scented with the fragrance of musk. You see the various blossoms, which resemble stars blazing and glittering in the firmament. Here the wonderful beauties of the flowers, among which are the narcissus and the violet, bring the fair objects of my love to my remembrance. You would think you saw my beloved looking mildly on you with her soft, tender, languishing eye: a nymph, in whom every charm and every per­fection is collected; whose curled locks hang always dangling, black as the scorpion, or the mace of ebony (with which the Asiaticks strike an ivory ball in one of their favourite plays,) the pomegranate brings to my mind the blushes of my beloved, when her cheeks are coloured with a modest resentment. Our cups are such as our souls desire; they seem to be filled with the streams of friendship and cheerful­ness. The goblets and vases of China appear to my sight, like the stars of heaven shining in the Zodiack.”

I might here have selected a more ancient example of Arabick, either from the poets before Mahomed, or from the illustrious Abu Temám, who flourished in the ninth century*; but the language has remained unaltered from the earliest antiquity to the present time, and it would not have been easy, without a number of notes, to have made an ancient Ode intelligible in a literal translation.

The oldest Persian poems, which have come to my knowledge, are those of FERDUSI, of which it will not be improper to give a short account, as far as they relate to my present sub­ject.

At the close of the tenth, and beginning of the eleventh centuries, Mahmud reigned in the city of Gazna: he was supreme ruler of Zable­stan, and part of Khorasan, and had penetrated very far into India, where by this time the reli­gion and language of the Arabs and Persians had begun to prevail. Several poets were enter­tained in the palace of this Monarch, among whom was FERDUSI, a native of Tús or Meshed. This most learned man, happening to find a copy of the old Persian History above-mentioned, read it with eagerness, and found it involved in fables, but bearing the marks of high antiquity: the most ancient part of it, and principally the war of Afrasiab and Khosru, or Cyrus, seemed to afford an excellent subject for an Heroick Poem, which he accordingly began to compose. Some of his episodes and descriptions were shown to the Sul­tan, who commended them exceedingly, and ordered him to comprise the whole History of Persia in a series of Epick poems. The poet obeyed; and, after the happiest exertion of his fancy and art for near thirty years, he finished his work, which contained sixty thousand couplets in rhyme, all highly polished, with the spirit of our Dryden and the sweetness of Pope. He presented an elegant transcript of his book to Mahmud, who coldly applauded his diligence, and dismissed him. Many months elapsed, and Fer­dusi heard no more of his work: he then took occasion to remind the King of it by some little epigrams, which he contrived to let fall in the palace; but, where an Epick poem had failed, what effect could be expected from an Epigram? At length the reward came; which consisted only of as many small pieces of money, as there were couplets in the volume. The high-minded Poet could not brook this insult: he retired to his closet with bitterness in his heart; where he wrote a most noble and animated invective against the Sultan, which he sealed up, and delivered to a Courtier, who, as he had reason to suspect, was his greatest enemy, assuring him, that it was a diverting tale, and requesting him to give it to Mahmud, when any affair of state or bad success in war should make him more uneasy and splenetick than usual*. Having thus given vent to his just indignation, he left Gazna in the night, and took refuge in Bagdad, where the Calif protected him from the Sultan of Zablestan, who demanded him in a furious and menacing letter.

The work of Ferdusi remains entire, a glorious monument of Eastern genius and learning; which, if ever it should be generally understood in its original language, will contest the merit of invention with Homer himself, whatever be thought of its subject or the arrangement of its incidents. An extract from this poem will exhibit a specimen of the Persian tongue, very little adulterated by a mixture with the Arabick, and, in all probability, approaching nearly to the dialect used in Persia in the time of Maho­med, who admired it for its extreme softness, and was heard to say, that it would be spoken on that account in the gardens of Paradise.

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that is; “Seest thou yonder plain of various colours (Pers. red and grey); by which the heart of a valiant man may be filled with delight? It is entirely covered with groves and gardens and flowing rivulets; it is a place belonging to the abode of Heroes. The ground is perfect silk, and the air is scented with musk: you would say, Is it rose-water which glides between the banks? The stalk of the lily bends under the weight of the flower; and the whole grove is charmed with the fragrance of the rose-bush. The pheasant walks gracefully among the flowers; the dove and nightingale warble from the branches of the cypress. From the present time to the latest age, may the edge of those banks resemble the bowers of Paradise! There you will see, on the plains and hills, a company of damsels, beautiful as fairies, sitting cheerfully on every side. There Manizha, daughter of Afrasiab, makes the whole garden blaze like the Sun. Sitara, his second daughter, sits exalted like a Queen, encircled by her damsels, radiant in glory. The lovely maid is an ornament to the plains; her beauty sullies the rose and the jasmine. With them are many Turkish girls, all with their faces veiled; all with their bodies taper as a cypress, and locks black as musk; all with cheeks full of roses, with eyes full of sleep; all with lips sweet as wine, and fragrant as rose-water. If we go near to that bower, and turn aside for a single day, we may take several of those lovely nymphs, and bring them to the noble Cyrus.”

This is part of a speech by a young amorous Hero, the Paris of Ferdusi, who had reason to repent of his adventure with the daughter of Afrasiab, for he was made captive by the Turks, and confined in a dismal prison, till he was delivered by the valour of Rostam.

Of these two languages was formed the modern dialect of Persia, which, being spoken in its greatest purity by the natives of Pars or Farsistan, acquired the name of Parsi*; though it is even called Deri by Hafez in the following couplet;

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that is; “While the nightingale, O Hafez, makes a boast of his eloquence, do thou lessen the value of his lays by singing thy Persian (Deri) strains.”

Nearly in the same age with Ferdusi, the great Abul Ola, surnamed Alámi from his blind­ness, published his excellent Odes in Arabick, in which he professedly imitated the poets before Mahomed. This writer had so flourishing a reputation, that several Persians of uncommon genius were ambitious of learning the Art of Poetry from so able an instructor: his most illustrious scholars were Feleki and Khakani*, who were no less eminent for their Persian com­positions, than for their skill in every branch of pure and mixed Mathematicks, and particularly in Astronomy; a striking proof, that a sublime Poet may become a master of any kind of learn­ing which he chuses to profess; since a fine imagination, a lively wit, an easy and copious style, cannot possibly obstruct the acquisition of any science whatever, but must necessarily assist him in his studies, and shorten his labour. Both these poets were protected by Manucheher, Prince of Shirvan; but Khakáni was always averse to the pleasurable and dissipated life of a Court, so that the Prince was obliged to detain him by force in his palace, and actually confined him for some time in prison, lest he should find some opportunity of escaping.

The works of these authors are not very scarce; but it seems needless to give any extracts from them, which would swell this dis­course to an immoderate length: it will be suf­ficient to say, that, in this and the following cen­tury, the Persian language became altogether mixed with Arabick; not that the pure style of the ancients was wholly obsolete, but it was the fashion among the Persians to interweave Ara­bian phrases and verses into their poems, not by way of quotations, but as material parts of a sentence. Thus in the following distich,

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The phantom of her, whose beauty gives brightness to the shades, appeared to me at night: I wondered at the kindness of Fortune, and said, Whence came this prosperity?—the first line is pure Arabick in the style of the ancient poets.

This elegant tetrastich is of the same kind:

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In this mansion of darkness, how long must I sit expecting my beloved; one while with my finger on my teeth, one while with my head bent on my knee? Come, O fortunate cup-bearer, bring me the tidings of joy: who knows but my days may again be prosperous, as they were before? Where the last line is taken from an Ode in the Hamasa of Abu Temám, which begins,

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We pardoned the sons of Dhohal, and said, The tribe are our brothers.

At the opening of the twelfth century lived Anveri, a native of Abiurd in Khorasan, whose adventures deserve to be related, as they will show in what high esteem the polite arts were held in Asia, at the time when learning first began to dawn in Europe. Anveri, when he was very young, was sitting at the gate of his col­lege, when a man richly dressed rode by him on a fine Arabian horse, with a numerous train of attendants; upon his asking who it was, he was told, that it was a Poet belonging to the Court. When Anveri reflected on the honours conferred upon Poetry, for which art he had a very early bent, he applied himself to it more ardently than ever, and, having finished a poem, pre­sented it to the Sultan. This was a prince of the Seljukian dynasty, named Sanjar, a great admirer of the fine arts: he approved the work of Anveri, whom he invited to his palace, and raised him even to the first honours of the state. He found many other poets at court, among whom were Selman, Zehir, and Reshídi*, all men of wit and genius, but each eminent in a different way; the first for the delicacy of his Lyrick verses, the second, for the moral ten­dency of his poems, and the third, for the chastity of his compositions; a virtue, which his predecessors and contemporaries were too apt to neglect.

But of all the cities in the Persian Empire, none has given birth to more excellent poets than Shiraz; which my noble and learned friend Baron Revizki justly calls “the Athens of Persia*.” SADI, a native of this city, flourished in the thirteenth century, when the Atabegs of Parsistan encouraged men of learning in their principality: his life was almost wholly spent in travel; but no man, who enjoyed the greatest leisure, ever left behind him more valuable fruits of his genius and industry. A fine manuscript, about two hundred years old, was lately put into my hands, containing a complete collection of his works; among which are several pieces, both in verse and prose, which have never been mentioned by the Scholars of Europe. The following extract from his Gulistan, or Bed of Roses, will show how the Persian and Arabick languages were mixed together in his age:

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that is; “My companion oft reproaches me for my love of Leila. Will he never behold her charms, that my excuse may be accepted? Would to heaven, that they, who blame me for my passion, could see thy face, O thou ravisher of hearts! that, at the sight of thee, they might be confounded, and inadvertently cut their hands instead of the fruit, which they hold*. Thou hast no compassion for my disorder: my companion should be afflicted with the same malady, that I might sit all day repeating my tale to him; for two pieces of wood burn together with a brighter flame. The song of the turtle dove passes not unobserved by my ear; and if the dove could hear my strain, she would join her complaints with mine. O my friends, say to them, who are free from love, Ah, we wish you knew, what passes in the heart of a lover! The pain of illness affects not them, who are in health: I will not disclose my grief but to those, who have tasted the same affliction. It were fruitless to talk of an hornet to them, who never felt its sting. While thy mind is not affected like mine, the relation of my sorrow seems only an idle tale. Compare not my anguish to the cares of another man; he only holds the salt in his hand, but it is I, who bear the wound in my body.”

The same city had the honour of producing, in the fourteenth century, the most elegant Lyrick Poet of Asia, Shemseddín, surnamed HAFEZ; on whose life and productions it is the less necessary to expatiate, because the Baron before-mentioned has exhausted the subject in his specimen of Persian Poetry, and will, it is to be hoped, be persuaded to complete that most learned work, in the short intervals of leisure, which his important affairs will allow him. It will be fully sufficient, therefore, to transcribe two of his Gazals or Anacreontick Odes; the first of which was chosen, on account of the Arabick verses interwoven in it, and the second, for its exquisite beauty, which makes it a genuine example of the true Shirazian dialect.

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“THE dawn advances veiled with roses. Bring the morning draught, my friends, the morning draught! The dew-drops trickle over the cheek of the tulip. Bring the wine, my dear companions, bring the wine! A gale of paradise breathes from the garden: drink then incessantly the pure wine. The rose spreads her emerald throne in the bower. Reach the liquour, that sparkles like a flaming ruby. Are they still shut up in the banquet-house? Open, O thou keeper of the gate. It is strange, at such a season, that the door of the tavern should be locked. Oh, hasten! O thou, who art in love, drink wine with eagerness; and you, who are endued with wisdom, offer your vows to Heaven. Imitate Hafez, and drink kisses, sweet as wine, from the cheek of a damsel, fair as a nymph of paradise.”

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“RISE, boy; for the cup of the tulip is full of wine. When will this strictness end? how long will these scruples last? No more of this pride and disdain; for time has seen the crown of Cæsar humbled, and the diadem of Cyrus bent to the ground. Oh! be wise; for the bird of the morning is intoxicated with love. Oh, awake! for the sleep of eternity is just before you. How gracefully thou movest, O sweet branch of a vernal plant! May the cold wind of December never nip thy buds! There is no reliance on the favours of Fortune or her deceitful smiles. Oh! wo to him, who thinks himself secure from her treachery. To-morrow, perhaps, the stream of Cuther, and the girls of paradise will be prepared for us; but today also let us enjoy a damsel bright as the moon, and quaff the wine from the full cup. The Zephyr (Saba) reminds us of our youth (Sabi;) bring us the wine, boy, which may refresh our souls, and dispel our sorrow.

“Admire not the splendour and dignity of the rose; for the wind will soon scatter all her leaves, and spread them beneath our feet. Bring a larger cup to the memory of Hatem Tai*; that we may fold up (Tai) the gloomy volume of those, who want generosity. This wine, which gives a lively tint to the Argavan, (a purple flower) communicates its sweet nature from my beloved’s cheek to her heart. Attend; for the musicians of the bower have begun their concert, joining the notes of the lute and harp to the melody of the dul­cimer and flute. Bring thy Sofa into the garden, for, like active attendants, the cypress stands before us, and the green reed has tucked up his girdle. O Hafez, the fame of thy sweet alluring sorcery has reached from the extremity of Reï and Rûm, to the limits of China and Egypt.”

There is nothing, which affords a stronger proof of the excellence of the Persian tongue, than, that it remained uncorrupted after the irruption of the Tartars, who, at different times, and under various leaders, made themselves masters of Persia; for the Tartarian princes, and chiefly Tamerlane, who was a patron of Hafez, were so far from discouraging polite letters, like the Goths and Huns, that they adopted even the language and religion of the conquered country, and promoted the fine arts with a boundless munificence: and one of them, who founded the Mogul Empire in Hindostan, introduced the Persian literature into his dominions, where it flourishes to this day; and all the letters from the Indian governors are written in the lan­guage (I do not say, in the style) of Sadi. The Turks themselves improved their harsh dialect by mixing it with the Persian; and Mahomed II. who took Constantinople in the middle of the fifteenth Century, was a protector of the Persian poets: among these was Noureddîn JAMI, whose poem on the loves of Joseph and Zelikha is one of the finest compositions I ever read. The following description will serve as a specimen of his elegant style:

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“In the morning, when the raven of night had flown away, the bird of dawn began to sing: the nightingales warbled their enchant­ing notes, and rent the thin veils of the rose­bud and the rose: the jasmine stood bathed in dew, and the violet also sprinkled his fragrant locks. At this time Zelikha was sunk in pleasing slumber; her heart was turned towards the altar of her sacred vision*. It was not sleep; it was rather a confused idea: it was a kind of phrenzy caused by her nightly melancholy. Her damsels touched her feet with their faces; her maidens approached, and kissed her hand. Then she removed the veil from her cheek, like a tulip besprinkled with dew; she opened her eyes, yet dim with sleep. From the border of her mantle the sun and moon arose; she raised her head from the couch, and looked around on every side.”

This poem contains about four thousand cou­plets, and deserves to be translated into every European language: though I shall have neither time nor inclination to translate it myself, yet I may perhaps be induced, some years hence, to present the Original to the learned world, which any man, who has the advantage of greater leisure, may take the pains to inter­pret.

In the same Century with Jami, flourished a poet named CATEBI, who was highly honoured at the court of Mirza Ibrahim, one of Tamer­lane’s descendants. Mr. d’ Herbelot tells a very pleasing story of this writer, which deserves a place in this essay; though, in order to understand it, we must remember, that the Persians frequently end their couplets with the same word, which is often continued through a long poem; but in that case, the rhyme falls upon the pre­ceding syllable. “Catebi, says he, having com­posed an Elegy, each verse of which ended with the word, Gul, a rose, or any flower, repeated it to the prince Ibrahim, his Patron; who, being extremely delighted with it, could not forbear interrupting him, by saying, From what bower did this tuneful nightingale (meaning the poet) take its flight? that is, without a metaphor, In what city were you born? to which Catebi, without hesitation, replied in a couplet of the same measure with the poem, and with the same rhyme, as if he had only continued to read his Elegy:

“that is, Like Attár*, I came from the rose-garden of Nishapor; but I am only the thorn of that garden, and Attár was its most beautiful flower.”

This distich, though delivered extempore, is at least equal to any of the rest in spirit and ele­gance. The poem consists of about thirty-five couplets, the first of which is the following:

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that is; Again the rose advances towards the bower with an hundred leaves; like the narcissus, it is a charming object to every discerning eye.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth Centuries, under the family of Sefi, the Persian language began to lose its ancient purity, and even to borrow some of its terms from the Turkish, which was com­monly spoken at Court. As to the modern dia­lect, no specimen of it needs be produced, since the Life of Nader Shah, which was written in Persian about fourteen years ago, and translated into French by the author of this Volume, may be consulted in the original by the learned reader.