"Zohak whose soul was in the Infernal's power, Zohak from Eblis, wond'ring, seeks to know From whence such knowledge, such improvements flow, 'Say, what rewards can such achievements grace?' My schemes, my labours shall not prove in vain, Champion's Ferdusi. The translation from which this extract is taken, claims great indulgence as the first attempt to introduce the great poet of Persia to the English reader; and as being the pro duction of one, who, like many who have distinguished themselves in the East, left his native country without those advantages which would have prepared him to execute his plan with better success. It is greatly to be lamented, that on account of the very early age at which the public life of the Company's servants begins, they have rarely brought to the study of oriental literature, minds previously well trained in a course of classical education at home. We are most willing to allow, that they have applied themselves, with a zeal that can never be surpassed, to extend our knowledge of the extraordinary nations that people the Asiatic continent; but theirs has sometimes been a zeal without judgement, the want of which useful quality has occasionally marred their most promising efforts. It is true, that they suffer under the disadvantage of being perpetually and necessarily compared and contrasted with one of the most eminent men of any age or country. Sir William Jones had a combination of talents that has been scarcely ever equalled by any scholar since time began. Other men have raised to themselves great reputations by a critical acquaintance with a single language, while his genius led him to add to the language of Greece and Rome, of ancient and modern Europe, the neglected tongues of the eastern world. His knowledge of classical literature would, of itself, have been sufficient to stamp his character as a distinguished scholar, and this was the acquisition of his early youth. He was still young when the Muses of Asia allured him into a path, that brought him to the eminent station which his name will ever maintain; and even then, though delighted with the brilliancy of the ori ental authors, his judgement was too well formed by his previous education, to allow him to be blind to the wanderings of their luxuriant imaginations. At the same time, with the candour of a sound critic, he made every allowance for the licence claimed for the difference of climate and manners. His judgement is no where more conspicuous than in his translations, where he seizes with promptitude the spirit of his originals without exposing their weaknesses; and frequently adapts to ordinary language, by a graceful turn of expression, a thought or figure, that, in less skilful hands, would seem quaint and unnatural. As an example of his success in this respect, we will quote from his Commentaries on Asiatic Poetry, an extract from a long passage of Ferdusi, which he has endeavoured, he says, to accommodate to the Virgilian metre. We must first notice, that the usurper Zohak was deposed by the rightful heir Ferídun; and, that this king was succeeded by his grandson Manucheher, during whose reign, the wars against the Tartars were still carried on by one of the most renowned of the Persian heroes, Sám, the son of Neriman. After one of his victo rious expeditions, he relates in person to the king, the total defeat of the army of Mazenderan; and in describing the agitation of the enemy before his rout, Sir William Jones has thus made him speak in Roman hexameters. "Gens est dura, ferox; non aspera sævior errat Non equus in lætis Arabum it velocior agris. Pars monte in rigido, aut depressâ valle sedebat: The first dynasty of the Persian monarchy does not yield materials for poetry in great abundance. It was too remote from age of Ferdusi and his contemporaries, either to inspire the one or to interest the others. They would look back with greater delight to the victories gained in a later period of their history, over enemies whose national hostility was not then forgotten, than to the more marvellous conquests of their earliest kings, in which dæmons and giants were the vanquished. In the one case, they would, it is true, indulge that love of the wonderful which is natural to them; but, on the other hand, their personal antipathies and partialities would be excited, and they would almost identify themselves with the actors in the scenes of the poet's description. So the heroes of Homer, the immediate predecessors of his first auditors, engaged their attention with infinitely greater force, as the victors in a contest which had engendered animosities that had scarcely then subsided, than if he had chosen as his subject the wars of the Titans, or the actions of the earlier heroic age. He The wars between Iran and Touran, or Persia and Tartary, occupy the principal part of the reigns of the three first princes of the second or Caianian dynasty; and this part of the Shah-námeh has been pointed out by Sir William Jones, as constituting a poem truly epic in the unity of action. Its subject is the overthrow and death of Afrasiab, King of Tartary, who claimed, by force of arms, the throne of Persia, as the descendant of one of the former race of monarchs. was assisted in his invasion by the Chinese and Indian emperors; and, for the machinery of the poem, the demons, giants, and enchanters of Asia appear in subordinate characters on those scenes, which they had been before permitted, with less judgement, to fill as the principal actors. In this part of the Sháh-námeh, we first read of the deeds of Rustem, the Persian Hercules, who placed himself at the head of his country's forces, and, after a series of exploits, the narrative of which is diversified with continual episodes, defeated the confederate monarchs, with the dragons and other monsters who assisted them as allies, and completed his triumph by the expulsion and death of Afrasiab. Were this story detached from the whole poem, it would of itself form a regular epic, as long as the Iliad. It would open with an adventure of Rustem, in which he meets with and espouses a Tartar princess, who bears him a son, named Sohráb, who distinguished himself in the armies of Afrasiab, when that king invaded Persia, and, at last, fell the victim of his father's sword, Rustem being at the head of the Persians, and unknown to his son, before whose birth he had returned to his own country. This is precisely the portion of the work which Mr. Atkinson published with a translation and notes. It is an excellent text book for the young Persian scholar, in a convenient octavo form, and in the typographical execution of the original greatly superior to the specimens that usually issue from the Calcutta press. The translator, we should judge, has been resolved to avoid the dry heartless tone of Champion's version, and has fallen into a style quite as remote from that of his author, who is as remarkable for the energetic simplicity, as he is for the life and raciness of his composition. We here present our readers with an extract, which describes the death of Sohráb, and his recognition of his father. In the first encounter, Sohráb, after carefully inquiring if his antagonist were Rustem, and hearing his disavowal of that name, was the conqueror, but spared the vanquished hero, on his assurance that such was the Persian custom on the first fall. They both retired from the field, and met the next day to decide the combat. Again they met. A glow of youthful grace Then mild the champion: Youth is proud and vain! Again dismounting, each the other view'd |