the European infidel: he will peruse with impatience the endless incoherent rhapsody of fable, and precept, and declamation, which seldom excites a sentiment or an idea, which sometimes crawls in the dust, and is sometimes lost in the clouds. The divine attributes exalt the fancy of the Arabian missionary; but his loftiest strains must yield to the sublime simplicity of the book of Job, composed in a remote age, in the same country, and in the same language. 94 If the composition of the Koran exceed the faculties of a man to what superior intelligence should we ascribe the Iliad of Homer, or the Philippics of Demosthenes? In all religions, the life of the founder supplies the silence of his written revelation: the sayings of Mahomet were so many lessons of truth; his actions so many examples of virtue; and the public and private memorials were preserved by his wives and companions. At the end of two hundred years, the Sonna, or oral law, was fixed and consecrated by the labors of Al Bochari, who discriminated seven thousand two hundred and seventy-five genuine traditions, from a mass of three hundred thousand reports, of a more doubtful or spurious character. Each day the pious author prayed in the temple of Mecca, and performed his ablutions with the water of Zemzem: the pages were successively deposited on the pulpit and the sepulchre of the apostle; and the work has been approved by the four orthodox sects of the Sonnites. 95 91 (return) [ For the Koran, see D’Herbelot, p. 85-88. Maracci, tom. i. in Vit. Mohammed. p. 32-45. Sale, Preliminary Discourse, p. 58-70.] 92 (return) [ Koran, c. 17, v. 89. In Sale, p. 235, 236. In Maracci, p. 410. * Note: Compare Von Hammer Geschichte der Assassinen p. 11.-M.] 93 (return) [ Yet a sect of Arabians was persuaded, that it might be equalled or surpassed by a human pen, (Pocock, Specimen, p. 221, &c.;) and Maracci (the polemic is too hard for the translator) derides the rhyming affectation of the most applauded passage, (tom. i. part ii. p. 69-75.)]