After these preliminary general remarks on the poetry of the latest epoch, we may pass to the consideration of Biographies of modern poets. some of its chief representatives. For informa­tion as to those who flourished before about A.D. 1870 my chief sources have been the three works of that industrious writer Riḍá-qulí Khán, poetically Majma'u'l­Fuṣaḥá. surnamed Hidáyat, to wit the large general bio­graphy of Persian poets entitled Majma'u'l-Fuṣaḥá (“the Concourse of the Eloquent”); the smaller biography entitled Riyáḍu'l-'Árifín (“Gardens of Riyáḍu'l­Árifín. the Gnostics”), which deals chiefly with the mystical poets; and the Supplement to Mírkh-wánd's Rawḍatu'ṣ-Ṣafá, which carries that well­known general history down to about 1857 and was already well advanced in 1272/1855-6, when the author returned from the embassy to Khwárazm described in his Rawḍatu'ṣ­Ṣafá (Supple­ment). Safárat-náma, of which the Persian text was published by the late M. Ch. Schefer with a French translation in 1876-9. * At the end of the ninth volume of the Rawḍatu'ṣ-Ṣafá (the second of the Supplement), which concludes the reign of Fatḥ-'Alí Sháh, several pages (unfortunately unnumbered, so that exact references are impossible) are devoted to the notable states­men, poets, theologians and other eminent men of that period which sometimes contain biographical material lacking in the two earlier monographs. From these three sources, so far as they extend, the following particulars are chiefly drawn, but I have also made use of a rare manu- Tadhkira-i­Dilgushá. script work (possibly an autograph) entitled Tadhkira-i-Dilgushá, a biography of con­temporary poets by Mírzá 'Alí Akbar of Shíráz, who himself wrote poetry under the pen-name of Bismil, composed about 1237/1821-2. This fine MS., written throughout in a large, clear naskh with rubrications, formerly belonged to the late Sir Albert Houtum-Schindler, and now bears in my library the class-mark J. 18. Mention is made of this author and his work by Riḍá-qulí Khán (who in his youth used to see him at Shíráz) both in the Majma'u'l-Fuṣaḥá (ii, pp. 82-3) and the Riyáḍu'l-'Árifín (pp. 243-4).