example, is it owing that TASSO, though constructing the plan of his immortal epic on the rules of classical criticism, was led to interweave so many of the specious wonders and sublime fancies, the magnanima mensogna, of gothic and oriental enchantment, with the more subdued imagery of Greece and Rome. The first complete edition of the Gierusalemme Liberata appeared at Ferrara, in the year 1581; and though, allowing for the rules to which the poet was subjected, it abounds as much as possible with the magic and machinery of the gothoarabic romance, With forests and enchantments drear; yet being more sparing in the use of supernatural agency than its illustrious precursor, the Orlando Furioso, it was on this account less highly esteemed than it ought to have been by the people of Italy: a decision widely different from that which, in the subsequent century, the French critics passed upon this admirable poem, who affirmed its chief fault to be that of having imbibed too much of the spirit and manner of Ariosto *. In England, toward the close of the sixteenth century, SPENSER, a genuine disciple of the Ita* Vide Boileau, and Voltaire, Essai sur la Poesie Epique.. lian school, published his Fairy Queen. Chivalry had, at this time, nearly ceased to exist, as a system affecting the habits and manners of mankind; and the poet thought it necessary, in order to give an air of importance to his fairy fictions, to envelope them in a veil of moral allegory. The attempt was injudicious and unfor tunate; allegory, when extended through so long a poem, must inevitably become dark and tedious; and it has contributed, in fact, more than any other circumstance, to obscure the lustre of an imagination which, when placed in a favourable light, is brilliant beyond competition. The sweet and pensive cast of fancy, indeed, which pervades this singular poem, its rich store of gothic and oriental imagery and incident, and its inexhaustible fertility in picturesque description, will ever charm the lovers of the higher poetry; and had its author adhered to the literal sense, and merely trusted to the fascination which still waited upon these wondrous tales, he would have been perused at the present day with as much avidity as his contemporary Tasso. Though, with the reign of Elizabeth, chivalry, the feudal system, and its gothic manners, may be said to have expired, a taste for oriental literature, both upon the continent and in this island, still survived. More particularly may the latter half of the seventeenth century be regarded as singularly rich in efforts to recommend the fancy and imagery of the East. One of our greatest poets, MILTON, has, in various parts of his picturesque and sublime compositions, shewn a great partiality for fiction of this kind, mixed, as he found it in his favourite authors, with all the romantic usages of gothic and chivalric life. "I may tell you," says he, "whither my younger feet wandered: I betook me among those LOFTY fables and rOMANCES, which recount in SOLEMN CANTOS the deeds of knighthood * ;" and we have seen how much he was delighted with the Arabian story of Cambuscan in the Canterbury Tales. It is, however, to the travellers and translators of this period, and particularly to those of France, that we are indebted for an intimacy with the manners and literature of the East, more accurate and extensive than had hitherto been obtained. The travels of CHARDIN into Persia and the East Indies, were productive of a fund of the most valuable and curious information; and, in 1697, the Bibliotheque Orientale of HERBELOT added a multitude of particulars relative to the learning, customs, and religion of the orientals, before unknown to Europe. The erudition of * Prose Works, vol. i. ii. Herbelot, indeed, was equally universal and profound; and his Dictionary includes, as it were, a library of Persian, Arabian, and Turkish books. The taste which these productions had the merit of imparting, soon led to an attempt to naturalize some of the most instructive and amusing efforts of Oriental genius. M. PETIS DE LA CROIX, Professor of Arabic, gave a version of The Thousand and One Days Persian Tales, and AnTHONY GALLAND of The Thousand and One Nights Arabian Tales, and of the Fables of Pilpay and Locman. These oriental fictions and apologues, which paint in glowing yet faithful colours the people and costume of eastern countries, were eagerly read and admired, and were very soon rendered familiar to the English reader by translations from the French. It was a little anterior to the appearance of these tales in his native language that Addison commenced the Spectator. In this work and the Guardian he has shewn a very decided partiality for oriental imagery and fable, and has not only seized every opportunity of introducing the eastern apologue, but has given us three most exquisite imitations of the oriental style and manner. The example, presented as it was in a book more popular than any other that English literature has afforded, operated most effectually in diffusing a taste for these productions through the island; and many of his successors in periodical composition, particularly Doctors Johnson and Hawkesworth, have very vigorously pursued the path which he had the merit of first opening. If Addison has been taxed with not sufficiently indulging the powers of imagination in his poetical effusions, it may justly be said, that he has amply atoned for the deficiency in his prose compositions. In his three oriental tales, the Vision of Mirza Shalum and Hilpa†, and Alnaraschin, king of Persia, the imagery and incidents are such as to display an imagination equally fertile and rich, whilst the costume and consequences, incident to the traditionary manners and longevity of the Antediluvians are, in the delightful tale of Shalum the Chinese, preserved with a consistency and propriety productive of the most pleasing emotion and surprise. That our author was intimately acquainted with the writings of Chardin, Herbelot, M. Petis de la Croix, and Galland, is evident from the beautiful apologues dispersed through the Spectator and Guardian. These, which are seven in number, he has acknowledged as derived either * Spectator, No 159. † Ditto, No 584, 585. |