The remainder of this letter is loft: but from the context, and the answer of Reviczki, we may conclude that it contained an elaborate panegyric on Eastern poetry, expreffed with all the rapture which novelty inspires, and in terms degrading to the Muses of Greece and Rome.

C. REVICZKI to W. JONES, Efquire.

*

SIR,

London, Feb. 19, 1768.

I am highly gratified by your recollection of me, as well as by the repeated

let

compliments which you pay me, in your ters to Madame de Vauclufe. I muft ac

knowledge, that I feel not a little proud of them; but still more, that an interview of a quarter of an hour has procured me the honour of your friendship. I fhould be moft happy to cultivate it, if my plans allowed me to remain longer in this country, or if I could at least see you at Oxford, which I

6

* Appendix, No. 2.

purpofe vifiting before I leave England. I hear, with pleasure, that you have undertaken to publish a Treatise on Oriental Profody. As I am convinced that you will perform this task most ably and fuccefsfully, I anticipate with fatisfaction the mortification of all our European poets, who must 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 tranflations 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 paraphrase in verse, 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 stanzas, which in this kind of compofition is never preferved, 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 feveral quotations from the Greek and Latin Poets, which occurred to my recollection, whilst 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 lefs 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 paffages 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 difpofed 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

* Appendix, No. 3.

Greek alone. I rejoice that you have made so much progrefs in your work, and that I

may hope foon to fee it published; but how advice I know not, as I

to affift

with you

my

have not with me a fingle treatise upon the fubject of Oriental profody. It is in truth an ocean; and fuch are the abundance and variety of measures ufed by the Orientals, that no memory can retain them.

I am very anxious to learn under what head you class the Kafidah, a species 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 distich of the Gazel, the sense must be complete and finished, whilst in the Kafidah,

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

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