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we revert to it , renews our disgust , but still attracts , excites as tonishment , and at last forces from us a certain reverence . ' ^ A series of remarks follow on the history of the Caliphs , Mahmud ofGasna , and primitive traditions . We are then successively introduced to the seven earliest Persian poets , who arose during a period of five hundred years . He remarks , that as
speculative men had inferred that the history of the first seven kings of Rome is fabulous , on account of a certain method and order in their character , and in the events of their reign—so that of the seven Persian poets might be thought a fiction invented to explain the nature of poetry ,, did not their works exist to disprove such a conjecture ; he characterises Ferdusi , who died 1030 , Enweri , Nisami , Dschelaleddin , Rumi , Saadi , Hafis , and Dscharmi , who died 1494 .
We cannot resist the temptation to translate a small poem by Nisami , not because it serves to illustrate the peculiar character of a poet of whom we know nothing else , but because it appears to us most curious that a Mahometan of the twelfth century should have invented an anecdote or fable of Jesus Christ ,
expressing with so much refinement and subtlety what appears to us to be most truly and profoundly characteristic of him and of his system of morals . The legend is anything but refined , and it is quoted to show the peculiar faculty of the author for extracting a fine moral lesson out of a mean and a disgusting subject :
< The Lord Jesus , who wandered over the world , came once to a market place . A dead dog , thrown out of the house , lay on the path . A multitude of persons , like vultures , surrounded the carrion . One said , my brain is dried up by the stink ; ano * - ther , these leavings of the dunghill bring only ill luck ; each in
his own way uttered reproach of the dead dog ' s carcass . When the turn came to Jesus , he said , without reviling , and thinking good , said from the goodness of his nature—The teeth are as white as pearls . This word made the bye-standers glow like red-hot muscle-shells /
We pass over the commentary showing the felicity in a Persian poet of the image—red-hot muscle-shells—to denote the deep feeling of shame . Nor can we follow our author in a variety of critical essays on the genius of the East , on the nature of poetry in general , on the language of flowers , and on the oriental practice of guessing at riddles . We shall be excused the following : —• When the mind
has taken this direction , it will work wonders . Of many tales , one : A pair of lovers , on their return from a journey of pleasure , amuse themselves by the exercise of their skill in charade guessing . They are alike skilful . Each is guessed the instant it is pronounced ; and at last , the faculty being heightened by exercise , it becomes divination , and the word is guessed that is about to be uttered . Such tales will not excite ridicule when
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Goethe s Works * 507
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1832, page 507, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1818/page/3/
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