“The Arabian chiefs, (with, it must be confessed, an alloy of ferocity) were in general brave, liberal, hospitable, ingenious, penetrating, fond of learning of every species, and carrying, to the most singular excess, their admiration of poetry and eloquence. With such dispositions and attachments, therefore, it is easy to conceive, that their language became naturally an important object of their attention. The dialects of their numerous tribes furnished them with rich mines: from these they freely borrowed; and formed, from the whole, a language, sublime, comprehensive, copious, energetic, delicate, majestic; adapted equally for the softness of love, or the poignancy of satire; for the mournfulness of elegy, or the grandeur of heroics; for the simplest tale, or the boldest effort of rhetoric. “In every stile of composition, therefore, the books in this language are numerous, and many of them of high intrinsic worth; their books, however, and their language, remain still but imperfectly known in Europe; nor can we ever hope, perhaps, for much advancement in this branch of learning, till the formidable fancied difficulties of the study are removed; till curiosity is stimulated by a hope of success; till attention is fixed by a conviction of its utility.” The Augustan age of Arabian literature may be considered to have been about the time that the power of the caliphs was at its height, and this was about the 170th year of the Hegira, and the 701st of the Christian Æra, and during the reign of Haroun Alraschid, who bears so conspicuous a part in these volumes, and of his immediate successors. “The monarchs themselves,” says Professor Carlyle, “loved and cultivated the sciences; the ministers followed their example; and men of genius flocked to the court of Bagdad, from all parts of the world, with an assurance of receiving those honors and rewards which their abilities merited. The empire of the Khaliphs was at this time one of the most powerful that has ever existed; it extended, in Asia, from the gulph of Persia and the confines of Tartary to the Mediterranean and Indian seas, and comprehended all the habitable part of Africa, from the isthmus of Suez to the Atlantic Ocean.” And it was probably not long after this, that most of these tales were written, for I believe it is generally supposed, that they were not all the production of one author, or of one age.