purpose visiting before I leave England. I hear, with pleasure, that you have undertaken to publish a Treatife on Oriental Profody. As I am convinced that you will perform this task moft ably and fuccefsfully, I anticipate with fatisfaction the mortification of all our European poets, who muft blush at the poverty of their profaic language, when they find that the Oriental dialects (independently of rhyme, which is of their invention) have true fyllabic quantities as well as the Greek, and a greater variety of feet, and confequently the true fcience of metre and profody.

I take the liberty of fending you a rough sketch of one of my latest translations from Hafez, with whom I fometimes amufe myself in a leisure hour. You are too well acquainted with the genius of the Perfian language, not to perceive the rashness of

my attempt; I do not indeed pretend to give the

beauty of the original, but merely its sense, fimple and unornamented.

I have added to

it a very free paraphrafe in verfe, in which,

however, the greatest deviation from the text confifts in the occasional substitution of miftrefs for mignon, either to give a connection to the ftanzas, which in this kind of compofition is never preserved, or to make it more conformable to our European tafte. The Perfian poet indeed fpeaks of his mistress in the first verse.

You will find in the margin several quotations from the Greek and Latin Poets, which occurred to my recollection, whilft I was reading Hafez, expreffing the fame fentiments with the Perfian. I hope to have the fatisfaction of feeing you here before I leave England, affuring you with truth, that I confider the honour of your acquaintance among the greatest advantages attending my visit to this country.

* C. REVICZKI to Mr. JONES.

SIR,

London, Feb. 24,1768.

I received your learned and obliging letter on the fame day on which I wrote to you; and I read it with the greatest pleasure, though I could have wished that it had been more juft to your own merit, and less flattering to me. I will not however take your expreffions literally; and notwithstanding your declarations, the taste and judgment which you have displayed in the pasfages quoted by you, evidently prove that you have advanced far in Oriental literature. I must however beg quarter for the Greek and Latin; for, admitting, what I am not difposed to deny, the perfection, and even the fuperiority of the Orientals, particularly the Perfians in fome fpecies of poetry, I would without hesitation renounce all knowledge of the three Eastern languages for that of the

Greek alone. I rejoice that you have made fo much progress in your work, and that I

may hope foon to fee it published; but how to affift you advice I know not, as I with my have not with me a fingle treatise upon the subject of Oriental profody. It is in truth an ocean; and fuch are the abundance and variety of measures used by the Orientals, that no memory can retain them.

I am very anxious to learn under what head

you clafs the Kafidah, a fpecies of compofition highly admired by the Arabs, and very fuccefsfully cultivated by them; it has a nearer resemblance than any other kind of poetry to the Latin elegy, but its construction partakes of that of the Gazel*, with this difference, that the latter is restricted to thirteen couplets, whilft the number of those in the Kafidah is unlimited; and fecondly, that in each diftich of the Gazel, the sense must be complete and finished, whilst in the Kafidah,

* Amatory Poem; it is not restricted to thirteen couplets, as Reviczki writes, but to seventeen, and generally contains about seven or eight.

the fentiment is continued through fucceffive lines.

Of this fpecies of compofition, I do not know a more perfect fpecimen, than the poem on the death of Mohammed, fo celebrated throughout the Eaft, that every man of letters can repeat it. It is one continued allegory, but admirable and pathetic, and begins, if I rightly remember, thus:

Does memory recall the blissful bowers
Of Solyma, the seat of many a friend;

That thus, thy grief pours forth such copious showers,
And bursting sighs thy lab'ring bosom rend?

With refpect to your doubts on the fuppofed allegory of Hafez, much may be faid. I am rather inclined to believe, that the mystical exposition of this great poet, by the Mohammedans, may be imputed to their veneration and respect for his memory, and that their object in it is to justify his conduct as a poet, by representing him equally irreproachable in his morals and compofitions. Moft of the commentators, as Shemy, Surury, and others, labour to give a mystical inter