his wound. We would extract the soliloquy of Enone on Corythus's departure, but our limits forbid. The introduction of Corythus to Helen is well managed. The latter appears here invested with the same graceful majesty as in Homer.

ORIENTAL CRITICISM.

In the notices of Oriental Literature in your Classical Journal, 48., having observed a party statement of a literary dispute between me and another anonymous writer, under the signature of Munsif, in the Asiatic Register and Journal, I beg. leave to draw your attention to the other side of the question; and trust to your impartiality and candor for inserting what I now have to say, in your next number.

I passed the best part of my life in the East-India Company's Bengal establishment, and have for some years lived retired at a distant provincial capital in England, with the competent means of a gentleman; and having made the Oriental languages there my study, find in them here that recreation, which many of your learned readers at Oxford and Cambridge, Edinburgh or Dublin, do in Greek and Latin: and having, during the last six years, gratuitously indulged the public with lucubrations in Persian and Arabic Anthology every alternate month, in the Asiatic Journal, I could not, of course, help animadverting upon various and often questionable topics; and though on my own part I rather courted liberal criticism, and was occasionally threatened by the Hayleybury-college Professors, I might have quietly proceeded, had I not incidentally more than intentionally touched upon the tender craft of book-making!

And this was the occasion: Professor S., as you notice, had published a translation of the 7th chapter of the Anwari Sohaili, or Persian text of Bidpai or Pilpai's fables; a work which, next to the Bible with the Jews, the Gospel with Christians, and the Coran with Mohammedans, is highly prized throughout the East. Having had the loan of a copy of it for a few hours from a friend, I was so pleased with it, as to pledge VOL. XXVI. CI. JI. NO. LI.

H

myself in the A. J. of June to bring it into notice by a favorable review of it; but on a closer view, and putting it to the test afterwards of a comparison with the Persian text, 1 found I could not honestly praise it; and though so far committed, yet having no wish to wound the translator's feelings, I abstained from exposing his mistakes to a greater degree, than a just regard for truth, and the duty I owed the public, as a literary critic, required of me; and confining my lenient remarks to the first and last sentence of it, volunteered a translation of my own to supply its object and place. This appeared in the Asiatic Journal of October.

In the A. J. of November the translator answers me; and seems at first, as he expresses it, inclined" to let the public decide on its merits:" and had he maintained this prudent resolution, he and I would have been of one mind, and parted good friends. But he unfortunately adds, "the attempt of Gulchin appears very little calculated to recommend literal translations; its numerous errors and inaccuracies relieve me from all anxiety as to the effects of his censure." Here he concludes, without specifying what those errors and inaccuracies are: like a junior counsel, he thus contents himself with reading his brief, and cunningly, he thinks, manages to let his cause be opened, and his case detailed, by a leading counsel, and his evil spirit, Munsif. This the latter attempts in the Journal of November, not by justifying the mistaken translation of the Professor, but by recriminating on Gulchin; as a specimen of which I may quote the Persian compound substantive Abar-bahārī, which "Gulchin," he says, "renders a spring cloud-it should be a vernal cloud!" and two thirds of the 18 errors, which he thus specifies, are of a like hypercritical, trifling, and quibbling stamp! But the other six are of a more serious complexion, not as bearing against Gulchin, but as forcing upon me glaring examples, and what in mercy to the translator I had myself avoided, of the grossest blundering of himself in false grammar, and of his assistant in incorrect rhyme, quantity and accent!

But to prevent any misconception of my motives in these remarks, let me in justification of myself premise, that I consider the East-India Directors as the most liberal corporation in England, and the establishment of their colleges at Hayleybury and Addiscombe, as well as the mother-college at Calcutta, as an honor to the British nation. Nor can I ever bring myself to speak or think ill of the College Professors as a learned body; but when individuals of them submit to become book-makers

and pseudo-critics, they become in their turn the subject of fair criticism.

To follow Munsif through all his windings, and bring his own and party's blunders into entire view, would require a constant reference to the Persian text and type; and therefore in order to prove my assertions, we must be content with two examples in Persian, and one in Arabic; but as they are strong and full in point, and as I shall accompany them with an analysis and ordo verborum, a process I find Munsif flies from, or silently passes over, I can have no doubt of convincing your learned readers of the ignorance of this pretender to Oriental Litera

ture.

My first example is a clause of the first sentence of the 7th chapter of the Anwari Sohaili; and, as indeed it first struck me, it is an instance of the inadequateness of the Professor's translation for the purpose which he intended, and his own incapacity for the task. In the Persian characters it runs thus:

translation of which : چون قدم و دین کارخر

is; "that he inay, through any manner of exertion, put forward his foot in this business with safety;" the analysis and ordo verborum running thus: in order that, through, any, or any sort of, exertion, he may put forward, or

plant, the foot, business, with,

خر

in, (the contraction of this, ♫ safety: and no young gentleman of a month's standing in the first term at his college could find any difficulty in construing this: yet Professor S. divides it into two clauses; and Munsif repeats this division, and makes them thus separately the 11th and 12th articles of my imputed 18 errors! The first of these two clauses the Professor translates, " in order to effect his liberation:" and his assistant Munsif, after a month's deliberate consultation and study, alters it a little, but does not mend it, by re-echoing it as a charge against me in these words: "so that he muy escape in safety;" both of them thus converting the substantive noun jah'd, signifying effort, into the third person singular of the aorist of the verb jahidan, signifying to leap, spring, gallop, trot; but admitting it were otherwise right, in no sense implying, to effect liberation or escape!

This is not, however, the worst part of it; the second of his two clauses the Professor translates," say, how shall he attempt this?" thus giving the adjective noun , signifying any, and which in this sense should agree with its substantive jah'd,

effort, the combined signification of a verb and an interrogative pronoun in the two words of his translation," say, how?" And this assistant Munsif, in order again to make it a more plausible article of recrimination upon me, suppresses the verb "say," and retains only the interrogative pronoun "how," making it "how shall he attempt this?" Moreover, both have rendered this second clause into their English translations, for which they have no authority in the Persian text. As he had done in two or three other instances of his own detected blunders, Munsif would have called this an oversight, had he not, in his anxiety of imputing it as another of my 18 errors, made too deliberate an act of it, to get thus rid of it: yet with the same assurance, and although he has had my analysis and ordo verborum twice laid before him, in his rejoinder in the Asiatic Journal of February, he again calls on me to explain it-which, by the bye, I had done; and the party having my answer submitted to them in Ms., on finding it unanswerable, had the power of suppressing it!!!

In the Classical Journal, No. 48, Mr. Editor, Munsif says that, "in the small space of ten lines he has detected no less than 18 of Gulchin's errors;" and I now reply, that I thus dispose of two of the ten lines, and of three of his six errores maximi, and return them upon him and his party with interest; and it is only want of room, and having blunders of still greater magnitude to animadvert on, that prevent my re-assigning the whole batch to them.

My next example is a tetrastic of Persian poetry; and as it contains a series of the Professor's and Munsif's blunders, I shall have occasion to refer to it repeatedly, and must accordingly

مرد ثابت قدم انست که از quote it entire in the Persian text فلك مثل سيمرغ کشت بود کرد زمین چو جا نرود و چه در کشت بود کرد ک طوفان نبرد از جایش * ذچو کنی شک که افتر بدم از باد تفک

which Professor S. translates, "A man of resolution is he who will not deviate from his purpose, although compelled to wander round the world like the heavens: like the phanix he remains unmoved in the midst of storms, not like the sparrow, who falls by the wind of a pop-gun." And let me in the first place contrast this, as I fairly did the whole chapter, with my own translation: "Were the globe of this earth to whirl about, (or be turned upside down,) like the sky, the man firm to his purpose would not

budge from his place; like the Simorgh in mount Caf (our Caucasus), whom a hurricane cannot move from its place, and not like a wren, which will fall from the puff of a pop-gun (or rather pea-puffer and blower)." This fabulous bird, whose name is composed of sẽ, thirty, and morgh, birds, and hence referred to here, on account of its bulk and not melody, is not the phoenix, which the Persian dictionaries very accurately describe under the word cacnūs, its Rūmī, as they call it, or Greek name; but a rational bird destined to reside on mount Caf throughout all the fourteen revolutions of this world; and which Firdōsi makes the patron of his hero Rostam and the father Zal; and is no doubt the origin of our Griffin, of heraldic notoriety.

This, and many thousands of pure Persian words besides, I engage fully to explain from real Oriental documents, in my projected Persian Dictionary, on which I have been occupied above twenty years; and I might have bad it long ago in the press, had there not been that college cabal, which I have all along suspected; and which Munsif, in his last rejoinder in the Asiatic Journal of February, now barefacedly tells me is ready to oppose me. At a long distance from an Oriental press, and aware of the hostility of a junto which I have reason to believe is averse from all improvement in Oriental literature, and whose chief not only was, I suspect, the cause of garbling a critique on the Burhani Catai, also a Dictionary of pure Persian, pubJished lately at Calcutta, but of putting a stop to the Annals of Oriental Literature, the periodical work in Part 11. of which one half, and that so garbled, of this critique appeared, a solitary laborer like myself reaches that conclusion of a huge literary work, after much previous and additional preparation. Nevertheless despising such petty and malignant interventions, though this avowed opposition places me again in a prudential state of further preparation, I never meant to court such men's favor, had I needed it: still less as I can apply at once to the Honorable Court of East-India Directors, who with their wonted liberality will no doubt step between me (which is all I require of them) and any loss in so necessary, expensive, and patriotic an undertaking; and if I should desire to secure its copy-right, it would be rather with the view of preventing any such professed. book-makers, than of enabling myself to benefit from it.

I have not been accustomed to speak of myself; and, after this necessarily personal digression, make my apology; and beg