volume, are of little or none at all, being often unsatisfactory, and sometimes impertinent. The work, however, with all its faults is very valuable, and I should be guilty of ingratitude, did I not acknowledge myself much obliged thereto; but still being in Latin it can be of no use to those who understand not that tongue." Such is Sale's own confession of his obligation to Marracci-but it does not go nearly far enough. A comparison of the two versions shows that so much had been achieved by Marracci that Sale's work might almost have been performed with a knowledge of Latin alone, as far as regards the quotations from Arabic authors. I do not wish to imply that Sale did not know Arabic, but I do maintain that his work as it stands gives a misleading estimate of his original researches, and that his tribute to Marracci falls far short of his actual indebtedness. It must be mentioned that Marracci not only reproduced the whole of the Arabic text of the Korân but furthermore gives the original text and the translation of all his quotations from Arabic writers. It is indeed a profoundly learned work and has never received the recognition it deserves. Marracci had at his disposal rich collections of MSS. belonging to the Libraries of Italy. How he learnt his Arabic we do not know. Voltaire says he was never in the East. He was confessor to Pope Innocent XI, and his work which appeared in Padua in 1698 is dedicated to the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I. By way of Introduction to his Korân Marracci published a companion folio volume called Prodromus which contains practically all that was known in his day regarding Muhammad and the Religion of Islam. It may in any case be claimed that the present work presents to the Western student all the essentials of a preliminary study of Islam: for Sale's translation and footnotes will give him as clear an idea as can be obtained, without laborious years of study in Arabic, of what is regarded by so many millions of men from Fez to the Far East as the revealed word of God and the unshakable basis of their faith. George Sale was born about 1697 and died in 1736. Every biography calls attention to the statement made by Voltaire in his Dictionnaire Philosophique to the effect that Sale spent over twenty years among the Arabs. I think this must have been a lapsus calami on Voltaire's part, because it is unlikely that he would have invented such a story. Sale must also have been well versed in Hebrew, both biblical and post-biblical, as his numerous allusions to Rabbinical writings testify. Two years after the publication of his great work Sale died in Surrey Street, Strand, his age being then under forty. In 1720 he had been admitted a student of the Inner Temple-son of Samuel Sale, citizen and merchant of London-and the same year the Patriarch of Antioch had sent Solomon Negri (Suleiman Alsadi) to London from Damascus to urge the Society for Promoting