OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 33 and physicians there is no example of a poet, an orator, or even an historian being taught to speak the language of the Saracens.^^ The mythology of Homer would have provoked the abhorrence of those stern fanatics ; they possessed in lazy ignorance the colonies of the Macedonians, and the provinces of Carthage and Rome : the heroes of Plutarch and Livy were buried in oblivion ; and the historj' of the world before Mahomet was reduced to a short legend of the patriarchs, the prophets, and the Persian kinffs. Our education in the Greek and Latin schools mav have fixed in our minds a standard of exclusive taste ; and I am not forward to condemn the literature and judgment of nations of whose language I am ignorant. Yet I knoiv that the classics have much to teach, and I believe that the Orientals have much to learn ; the temperate dignity of style, the graceful proportions of art, the forms of visible and intellectual beauty, the just de- lineation of character and passion, the rhetoric of narrative and argument, the regular fabric of epic and dramatic poetrj^.^- The influence of truth and reason is of a less ambiguous complexion. The philosophers of Athens and Rome enjoyed the blessings, and asserted the rights, of civil and religious freedom. Their moral and political writings might have gradually unlocked the fetters of Eastern despotism, diffused a liberal spirit of enquiry and toleration, and encouraged the Arabian sages to suspect that their caliph was a tyrant and their prophet an impostor.^-^ The instinct of superstition was alarmed by the introduction even of the abstract sciences ; and the more rigid doctors of the law condemned the rash and pernicious curiosity of Almamon.®^ To the thirst of martyrdom, the vision of paradise, and the belief of predestination, we must ascribe the invincible enthusiasm of the
- i Abulpharagius (Dynast, p. 26, 148) mentions a Syriac version of Homer's
two poems, by Theophilus, a Christian Maronite of Mount Libanus, who professed astronomy at Roha or Edessa towards the end of the eighth centur}^ His work would be a literary curiosity. I have read somewhere, but I do not believe, that Plutarch's Lives were translated into Turkish for the use of Mahomet the Second. ^2 I have perused with much pleasure Sir William Jones's Latin Commentary on Asiatic Poetry (London, 1774, in octavo), which was composed in the youth of that wonderful linguist. At present, in the maturity of his taste and judgment, he would perhaps abate of the fervent, and even partial, praise which he has bestowed on the Orientals. ^ Among the Arabian philosophers, Averroes has been accused of despising the religion of the Jews, the Christians, and the Mahometans (see his article in Bayle's Dictionary). Each of these sects would agree that in two instances out of three his contempt was reasonable.
- D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 546. [Abd Allah al-Mamun (813-833
A.D.).] VOL. VI. 3
