336 THE DECLINE AND FALL fluency of his speech was corrected and enhanced by the practice of discreet and seasonable silence. With these powers of elo- quence, Mahomet was an illiterate barbarian ; his youth had never been instructed in the arts of reading and writing ; "^ the common ignorance exempted him fi-om shame or reproach, but he was reduced to a nan-ow circle of existence, and deprived of those faithful mirrors which reflect to our mind the minds of sages and heroes. Yet the book of nature and of man was open to his view ; and some fancy has been indulged in the political and philosophical observations which are ascribed to the Arabian frave/Ier.* He compares the nations and the religions of the earth ; discovers the weakness of the Persian and Roman monar- chies ; beholds, with pity and indignation, the degeneracy of the times ; and resolves to unite, under one God and one king, the invincible spirit and primitive virtues of the Arabs. Our more accurate inquiry will suggest that, instead of visiting the courts, the camps, the temples of the East, the two journeys of Mahomet into Syria were confined to the fairs of Bostra and Damascus ; that he was only thirteen years of age when he ac- companied the caravan of his uncle ; and that his duty compelled him to return as soon as he had disposed of the merchandise of Cadijah. In these hasty and superficial excursions, the eye of genius might discern some objects invisible to his grosser com- ° Those who believe that Mahomet could read or write are incapable of reading what is written, with another pen, in the .Surats, or chapters of the Koran, vii. xxi.x. xcvi. These texts, and the tradition of the Sonna, are admitted without doubt by Abulfeda (in Vit. c. vii.), Gagnier (Not. ad Abulfed. p. 15), Pocock (Specimen, p. 151), Reland(de Religione Mohammedica, p. 236), and Sale (Preliminary Discourse, p. 42). Mr. White, almost alone, denies the ignorance, to accuse the imposture, of the prophet. His arguments are far from satisfactory. Two short trading journeys to the fairs of Syria were surely not sufficient to infuse a science so rare among the citizens of Mecca ; it was not in the cool deliberate act of a treaty that Mahomet would have dropped the mask ; nor can any conclusion be drawn from the words of disease and delirium. The lettered youth, before he aspired to the prophetic character, must have often exercised, in private life, the arts of reading and writing ; and his first converts, of his own family, would have been the first to detect and upbraid his scandalous hypocrisy. 'hite's Sermons, p. 203, 204, Notes, p. xxxvi-xxxviii. [It seems probable that Mohammad had some knowledge of the arts of reading and writing, but that in practice he employed an amanuensis to whom he dictated his suras. On the subject of the knowledge of writing in Arabia see D. H. Mijller, Epigraphische Denkmiiler aus Arabien, in vol. 37 of the Denkschriften of the Vienna Acad. 1889.] 74 The Count de Boulainvilliers (Vie de Mahommed, p. 202-228) leads his Arabian pupil, like the Telemachus of F^n^lon, or the Cyrus of Ramsay. His journey to the court of Persia is probably a fiction ; nor can I trace the origin of his exclama- tion, " Les Grecs sont pourtant dcs hommes". The two Syrian journeys are ex- pressed by almost all the Arabian writers, both Mahometans and Christians (Gagnier ad Abulfed. p. 10).
