It is impossible for us to appreciate the influence exercised by those who had attained to eminence in the poetic art over their imaginative and passionate countrymen. The Arab bard was without exception the most important personage of his tribe. Wealth, rank, beauty, personal popularity, military distinction alike paid tribute to his genius. To his talent for improvisation and versification, he often united the threefold character of statesman, warrior, and knight-errant, and thus became the model of his associates, the idol of the fair sex, and the terror of his enemies, who were as sensitive to the poisoned shafts of his satire as to the keenness of his sword. The most famous of these rhyming paladins, and the author of one of the Moallakat, whose life and achievements have been made the subject of a romance which approaches more nearly to the nature of an epic than any other production in the Arabic language, was Antar. By instinct and training a Bedouin, he was, however, of Arab blood only on his father’s side, his mother having been an Abyssinian slave. According to the custom of his country, he shared her lot until his bravery in battle induced his father to emancipate him. His amatory exploits, as well as his daring enterprises against the enemy, made him the admiration of the fiery Arabian youth. It was the regret of Mohammed, often expressed, that he had never seen this knight-errant of the Desert, who shrank from no danger, however appalling, who redressed the wrongs of woman, who restored the property of the plundered, and whose favorite maxim was, “Bear not malice, for of malice good never came.”