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him suffering from the same wound.

him drink spirits; and let him that prefers maajûn, I place till bed-time prayers. Mûll Mahmud Khalîfeh take maajûn; and let not the one party give any having arrived, we invited him to join us. Abdalla, idle or provoking language to the other.' Some sat who had got very drunk, made an observation down to spirits, some to maajûn. The party went which affected Khalifeh. Without recolleting that on for some time tolerably well. Bâba Jan Kabûzi | Mûlla Mahmud was present, he repeated the verse, had not been in the boat; we had sent for him when (Persian.) Examine whom you will, you will find we reached the royal tents. He chose to drink spirits. Terdi Muhammed Kipchâk, too, was sent for, and joined the spirit-drinkers. As the spiritdrinkers and maajûn-takers never can agree in one party, the spirit-bibing party began to indulge in foolish and idle conversation, and to make provok. ing remarks on maajûn and maajûn-takers. Bâba Jan, too, getting drunk, talked very absurdly. The tipplers, filling up glass after glass for Terdi Muhammed, made him drink them off, so that in a very short time he was mad drunk. Whatever exertions I could make to preserve peace, were all navailing; there was much uproar and wrangling. The party became quite burdensome and unpleasant, and soon broke up."

The second day after, we find the royal oacchanal still more grievously overtaken : "We continued drinking spirits in the boat till bed-time prayers, when, being completely drunk, we mounted, and taking torches in our hands came at full gallop back to the camp from the river-side, falling sometimes on one side of the horse, and sometimes on the other. I was miserably drunk, and next morning, when they told me of our having galloped into the camp with lighted torches in our hands, I had not the slightest recollection of the circumstance. After coming home, I vomited plentifully."

Even in the middle of a harassing and desultory campaign, there is no intermission of this excessive jollity, though it sometimes puts the parties into jeopardy,-for example:

"We continued at this place drinking till the sun was on the decline, when we set out. Those who had been of the party were completely drunk. Syed Kasim was so drunk, that two of his servants were obliged to put him on horseback, and brought hammed Bakir was so far gone, that Amîn Muhim to the camp with great difficulty. Dost Muhammed Terkhân, Masti Chehreh, and those who were along with him, were unable, with all their exertions, to get him on horseback. They poured a great quantity of water over him, but all to no purpose. At this moment a body of Afghans appeared in sight. Amîn Muhammed Terkhân, being very drunk, gravely gave it as his opinion, that rather than leave him, in the condition in which he was, to fall into the hands of the enemy, it was better at once to cut off his head, and carry away. Making another exertion, however, with much difficulty, they contrived to throw him upon a horse, which they led along, and so brought him off."

On some occasions they contrive to be drunk four times in twenty-four hours. The gallant prince contents himself with a strong maajun one day; but

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Next morning we had a drinking party in the same tent. We continued drinking till night. On the following morning we again had an early cup. and, getting intoxicated, went to sleep. About noon-day prayers, we left Istâlîf, and I took a maajûn on the road. It was about afternoon prayers before I reached Behzâdi. The crops were extremely good. While I was riding round the harvest-fields, such of my companions as were fond of wine began to contrive another drinking bout. Although I had taken a maajûn, yet, as the crops were uncommonly fine! we sat down under some trees that had yielded a plentiful, load of fruit, and began to drink. We kept up the party in the same |

Mûlly Mahmud, who did not drink, reproved Abdalla for repeating this verse with levity. Abdalla, recovering his judgment, was in terrible perturba tion, and conversed in a wonderfully smooth and sweet strain all the rest of the evening."

In a year or two after this, when he seems to be in a course of unusual indulgence, we meet with the following edifying remark: "As I intend, when forty years old, to abstain from wine; and as I now want somewhat less than one year of being forty, I drink wine most copiously!" When forty comes, however, we hear nothing of this sage resolution -but have a regular record of the wine and maajûn parties as before, up to the year 1527. In that year, however, he is seized with rather a sudden fit of penitence, and has the resolution to begin a course of rigorous reform. There is something rather picturesque in his very solemn and remarkable account of this great revolution in his habits:

"On Monday the 23d of the first Jemâdi, I had mounted to survey my posts, and, in the course of my ride, was seriously struck with the reflection that I had always resolved, one time or another, to make an effectual repentance, and that some traces of a hankering after the renunciation of forbidden works had ever remained in my heart. Having sent for the gold and silver goblets and cups, with all the other utensils used for drinking parties, I directed them to be broken, and renounced the use of wine-purifying my mind! The fragments of the goblets, and other utensils of gold and silver, I directed to be divided among Derwishes and the my resolution of ceasing to cut the beard, and of poor. The first person who followed me in my repentance was Asas, who also accompanied me in allowing it to grow. That night and the following, numbers of Amîrs and courtiers, soldiers and persons not in the service, to the number of nearly three hundred men, made vows of reformation. The wine which we had with us we poured on the ground! I ordered that the wine brought by Bâba Dost should have salt thrown into it, that it might be make into vinegar. On the spot where the wine had been poured out, I directed a wâîn to be sunk and built of stone, and close by the wâîn an almshouse to be erected."

He then issued a magnificent Firman, announcing his reformation, and recommending its example to all his subjects. But he still persists, we find, in the use of a mild maajûn, We are sorry to be obliged to add, that though he had the firmness to persevere to the last in his abstinence from wine, the sacrifice seems to have cost him very dear; and he continued to the very end of his life to hanker after his broken wine-cups, and to look back with fond regret to the delights he had ab

*This verse, I presume, is from a religions poem, and has a mystical meaning. The profane application of it is the ground of offence."

This vow was sometimes made by persons who set out on a war against the Infidels. They did not trim the beard till they returned victorious. Some vows of a similar nature may be found in Scripture."

jured for ever. There is something absolutely pathetic, as well as amiable, in the following candid avowal in a letter written the very year before his death to one of his old drinking companions:

In a letter which I wrote to Abdalla, I men. tioned that I had much difficulty in reconciling my. self to the desert of penitence; but that I had resolution enough to persevere,—

(Turki verse)

tribution levied on her private fortune. The following brief anecdote speaks volumes as to the difference of European and Asiatic manners and tempers:

"Another of his wives was Katak Begum, who was the foster-sister of this same Terkhan Begum. Sultan Ahmed Mirza married her for love. He was prodigiously attached to her, and she governed him with absolute sway. She drank wine. During her life, the Sultan durst not venture to frequent any other of his ladies. At last, however, he put her to death, and delivered himself from this reproach."

I am distressed since I renounced wine; I am confounded and unfit for business, Regret leads me to penitence, In several of the passages we have cited, Penitence leads me to regret. there are indications of this ambitious warIndeed, last year, my desire and longing for wine rior's ardent love for fine flowers, beautiful and social parties were beyond measure excessive. gardens, and bright waters. But the work It even came to such a length that I have found abounds with traits of this amiable and, with myself shedding tears from vexation and disappoint-reference to some of these anecdotes, apparment. In the present year, praise be to God, these troubles are over, and I ascribe them chiefly to the ently ill-sorted propensity. In one place he occupation afforded to my mind by a poetical trans-sayslation, on which I have employed myself. Let me advise you too, to adopt a life of abstinence. Social parties and wine are pleasant, in company with our jolly friends and old boon companions. But with whom can you enjoy the social cup? With whom can you indulge in the pleasures of wine? If you have only Shir Ahmed, and Haîder Külli, for the companions of your gay hours and jovial goblet, you can surely find no great difficulty in consenting to the sacrifice. I conclude with every good wish.'

found only in one narrow spot of ground, as we emerge from the straits of Ghûrbend."

And a little after

from them

chekin-taleh grass in a very beautiful manner, and "In the warm season they are covered with the the Aimâks and Turks resort to them. In the skirts of these mountains the ground is richly diversified by various kinds of tulips. I once directed them to be counted, and they brought in thirty-two or thirty-three different sorts of tulips. There is the rose, and which I termed laleh-gul-bui (the roseone species which has a scent in some degree like scented tulip). This species is found only in the We have mentioned already that Baber ap- of ground, and nowhere else. In the skirts of the Desht-e-Sheikh (the Sheikh's plain), in a small spot pears to have been of a frank and generous same hills below Perwân, is produced the laleh-sedcharacter-and there are, throughout the Me-berg (or hundred-leaved tulip), which is likewise moirs, various traits of clemency and tenderness of heart, scarcely to have been expected in an Eastern monarch and professional warrior. He weeps ten whole days for the loss of a friend who fell over a precipice after one of their drinking parties; and spares the lives, and even restores the domains of various chieftains, who had betrayed his confidence, and afterwards fallen into his power. Yet there are traces of Asiatic ferocity, and of a hard-hearted wastefulness of life, which remind us that we are beyond the pale of European gallantry and Christian compassion. In his wars in Afghan and India, the prisoners are commonly butchered in cold blood after the action-and pretty uniformly a triumphal pyramid is erected of their skulls. These horrible executions, too, are performed with much solemnity before the royal pavilion and on one occasion, it is incidentally recorded, that such was the number of prisoners brought forward for this infamous butchery, that the sovereign's tent had three times to be removed to a different station-the ground before it being so drenched with blood and encumbered with quivering carcasses! On one occasion, and on one only, an attempt was made to poison him-the mother of one of the sovereigns whom he had dethroned having bribed his cooks and tasters to mix death in his repast. Upon the detection of the plot, the taster was cut to pieces, the cook flayed alive, and the scullions trampled to death by elephants. Such, however, was the respect paid to rank, or the indulgence to maternal resentment, that the prime mover of the whole conspiracy, the queen dowager, is merely put under restraint, and has a con

"Few quarters possess a district that can rival side of it are gardens, green, gay, and beautiful. Its Istâlif. A large river runs through it, and on either water is so cold, that there is no need of icing it; and it is particularly pure. In this district is a garden, called Bagh-e-Kilân (or the Great Garden), which Ulugh Beg Mirza seized upon. I paid the price of the garden to the proprietors, and received garden are large and beautiful spreading plane grant of it. On the outside of the Trees, under the shade of which there are agreeable spots finely sheltered. A perennial stream, large enough to turn a mill, runs through the garden; and on its banks are planted planes and other trees. crooked course, but I ordered its course to be alFormerly this stream flowed in a winding and tered according to a regular plan, which added greatly to the beauty of the place. Lower down than these villages, and about a koss or a koss and a half above the level plain, on the lower skirts of the hills, is a fountain, named Khwajch-sch-yárán three species of trees; above the fountain are many (Kwajeh three friends), around which there are beautiful plane-trees, which yield a pleasant shade. On the two sides of the fountain, on small eminences at the bottom of the hills, there are a num ber of oak trees; except on these two spots, where there are groves of oak, there is not an oak to be met with on the hills to the west of Kabul. In front of this fountain, towards the plain, there are many spots covered with the flowery Arghwân* tree, and besides these Arghwân plots, there are none else in the whole country."

We shall add but one other notice of this

"The name Arghwân is generally applied to the anemone; but in Afghanistan it is given to a beautiful flowering shrub, which grows nearly to the size of a tree."

elegant taste-though on the occasion there | but of the native simplicity and amiableness mentioned, the flowers were aided by a less of this Eastern highlander. delicate sort of excitement.

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My solicitude to visit my western dominions is "This day I ate a maajûn. While under its in- boundless, and great beyond expression. The fluence, I visited some beautiful gardens. In dif- affairs of Hindustan have at length, however, been ferent beds, the ground was covered with purple reduced into a certain degree of order; and I trust and yellow Arghwan flowers. On one hand were in Almighty God that the time is near at hand, beds of yellow flowers in bloom; on the other hand, when, through the grace of the Most High, every red flowers were in blossom. In many places they thing will be completely settled in this country. sprung up in the same bed, mingled together as if As soon as matters are brought into that state, I they had been flung and scattered abroad. I took shall, God willing, set out for your quarter, withmy seat on a rising ground near the camp, to enjoy out losing a moment's time. How is it possible the view of all the flower-pots. On the six sides that the delights of those lands should ever be of this eminence they were formed as into regular erased from the heart? Above all, how is it possibeds. On one side were yellow flowers; on another ble for one like me, who have made a vow of abthe purple, laid out in triangular beds. On two stinence from wine, and of purity of life, to forget other sides, there were fewer flowers; but, as far the delicious melons and grapes of that pleasant as the eye could reach, there were flower-gardens region? They very recently brought me a single of a similar kind. In the neighbourhood of Per- musk-melon. While cutting it up, I felt myself shawer, during the spring, the flower-plots are ex-affected with a strong feeling of loneliness, and a quisitely beautiful.' sense of my exile from my native country; and I could not help shedding tears while I was eating it!"

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We have, now enabled our readers, we think, to judge pretty fairly of the nature of On the whole, we cannot help having a this very curious volume; and shall only liking for "the Tiger"-and the romantic, present them with a few passages from two though somewhat apocryphal account that is letters written by the valiant author in the given of his death, has no tendency to diminish last year of his life. The first is addressed our partiality. It is recorded by Abulfazi, to his favourite son and successor Humâiun, and other native historians, that in the year whom he had settled in the government of after these Memoirs cease, Hùmâiûn, the beSamarcand, and who was at this time a sover-loved son of Baber, was brought to Agra in a eign of approved valour and prudence. There state of the most miserable health: is a very diverting mixture of sound political counsel and minute criticism on writing and composition, in this paternal effusion. We can give but a small part of it.

sepa

"In many of your letters you complain of ration from your friends. It is wrong for a prince to indulge in such a complaint.

"There is certainly no greater bondage than that in which a king is placed; but it ill becomes him to complain of inevitable separation.

while several men of skill were talking to the em"When all hopes from medicine were over, and peror of the melancholy situation of his son, Abul Baka, a personage highly venerated for his knowledge and piety, remarked to Baber, that in such a receive the most valuable thing possessed by one case the Almighty had sometimes vouchsafed to friend, as an offering in exchange for the life of life was dearest to Hûmâiun, as Humaiûn's was to another. Baber, exclaiming that, of all things, his "In compliance with my wishes, you have in- him, and that, next to the life of Humaiun, his own deed written me letters, but you certainly never was what he most valued, devoted his life to Hearead them over; for had you attempted to read around him entreated him to retract the rash vow, ven as a sacrifice for his son's! The noblemen them, you must have found it absolutely impossible, and would then undoubtedly have put them by. I and, in place of his first offering, to give the diacontrived indeed to decipher and comprehend the mond taken at Agra, and reckoned the most valumeaning of your last letter, but with much diffi- able on earth: that the ancient sages had said, culty. It is excessively confused and crabbed. Who that it was the dearest of our worldly possessions ever saw a Moamma (a riddle or a charade) in alone that was to be offered to Heaven. But he Your spelling is not bad, yet not quite of whatever value, could be put in competition with persisted in his resolution, declaring that no stone, correct. You have written iltafat with a toe (in his life. He three times walked round the dying stead of a te), and kuling with a be (instead of a kof). Your letter may indeed be read; but in prince, a solemnity similar to that used in sacrifices consequence of the far-fetched words you have and heave-offerings, and, retiring, prayed earnestly employed, the meaning is by no means very intel-I have borne it away! I have borne it away! to God. After some time he was heard to exclaim, ligible. You certainly do not excel in letter-writing, The Mussulman historians assure us, that Humâiun and fail chiefly because you have too great a desire almost immediately began to recover, and that, in to show your acquirements. For the future, you proportion as he recovered, the health and strength should write unaffectedly, with clearness, using of Baber visibly decayed. Baber communicated plain words, which would cost less trouble both to his dying instructions to Khwâjeh Khali eh, Kamber Ali Beg, Terdi Beg, and Hindu Beg, who were The other letter is to one of his old com- then at court commending Humaiûn to their propanions in arms;-and considering that it is tection. With that unvarying affection for his written by an ardent and ambitious conqueror, of his life, he strongly besought Humainn to be family which he showed in all the circumstances from the capital of his new empire of Hin-kind and forgiving to his brothers. Hùmâiun produstan, it seems to us a very striking proof, mised-and, what in such circumstances is rare, not only of the nothingness of high fortune, kept his promise."

prose ?

the writer and reader."

POETRY.

(March, 1819.)

Specimens of the British Poets; with Biographical and Critical Notices, and an Essay on English Poetry. By THOMAS CAMPBELL. 7 vols. 8vo. London: 1819.

WE would rather see Mr. Campbell as a If he were like most authors, or even like poet, than as a commentator on poetry:-be- most critics, we could easily have pardoned cause we would rather have a solid addition this; for we very seldom find any work too to the sum of our treasures, than the finest or short. It is the singular goodness of his critimost judicious account of their actual amount. cisms that makes us regret their fewness; for But we are very glad to see him in any way: nothing, we think, can be more fair, judicious --and think the work which he has now given and discriminating, and at the same time us very excellent and delightful. Still, how-more fine, delicate and original, than the ever, we think there is some little room for greater part of the discussions with which he complaint; and, feeling that we have not got has here presented us. It is very rare to find all we were led to expect, are unreasonable so much sensibility to the beauties of poetry, enough to think that the learned author still united with so much toleration for its faults; owes us an arrear: which we hope he will and so exact a perception of the merits of handsomely pay up in the next edition. every particular style, interfering so little with a just estimate of all. Poets, to be sure, are on the whole, we think, very indulgent judges of poetry; and that not so much, we verily believe, from any partiality to their own vocation, or desire to exalt their fraternity, as from their being more constantly alive to those impulses which it is the business of poetry to excite, and more quick to catch and to follow out those associations on which its efficacy chiefly depends. If it be true, as we have formerly endeavoured to show, with reference to this very author, that poetry produces all its greater effects, and works its more memorable enchantments, not so much by the images it directly presents, as by those which it suggests to the fancy; and melts or inflames us less by the fires which it applies from without, than by those which it kindles within, and of which the fuel is in our own bosoms,-it will be readily understood how these effects should be most powerful in the sensitive breast of a poet; and how a spark, which would have been instantly quenched in the duller atmosphere of an ordinary brain, may create a blaze in his combustible imagination, to warm and enlighten the world. The greater poets, accordingly, have almost always been the warmest admirers, and the most liberal patrons of poetry. The smaller only-your Laureates and Ballad-mongersare envious and irritable-jealous even of the dead, and less desirous of the praise of others than avaricious of their own.

When a great poet and a man of distinguished talents announces a large selection of English poetry, "with biographical and critical notices," we naturally expect such notices of all, or almost all the authors, of whose works he thinks it worth while to favour us with specimens. The biography sometimes may be unattainable--and it may still more frequently be uninteresting-but the criticism must always be valuable; and, indeed, is obviously that which must be looked to as constituting the chief value of any such publication. There is no author so obscure, if at all entitled to a place in this register, of whom it would not be desirable to know the opinion of such a man as Mr. Campbell-and none so mature and settled in fame, upon whose beauties and defects, and poetical character in general, the public would not have much to learn from such an authority. Now, there are many authors, and some of no mean note, of whom he has not condescended to say one word, either in the Essay, or in the notices prefixed to the citations. Of Jonathan Swift, for example, all that is here recorded is "Born 1667-died 1744;" and Otway is despatched in the same summary manner-"Born 1651-died 1685." Marlowe is commemorated in a single page, and Butler in half of one. All this is rather capricious:-But this is not all. Sometimes the notices are entirely biographical, and sometimes entirely critical. We humbly conceive they ought always to have been of both descriptions. At all events, we ought in every case to have had some criticism,-since this could always have been had, and could scarcely have failed to be valuable. Mr. C., we think, has been a little lazy.

But though a poet is thus likely to be a gentler critic of poetry than another, and, by having a finer sense of its beauties, to be better qualified for the most pleasing and important part of his office, there is another requisite in which we should be afraid he

liar and fastidious style of composition, without being apprehensive that the effects of this bias would be apparent in his work; and that, with all his talent and discernment, he would now and then be guilty of great, though urintended injustice, to some of those whose manner was most opposite to his own. We are happy to say that those apprehensions have proved entirely groundless; and that nothing in the volumes before us is more admirable, or to us more surprising, than the perfect candour and undeviating fairness with which the learned author passes judgment on all the different authors who come before him;

would generally be found wanting, especially | bell was himself a Master in a distinct scnoo. in a work of the large and comprehensive of poetry, and distinguished by a very pecunature of that now before us-we mean, in absolute fairness and impartiality towards the different schools or styles of poetry which he may have occasion to estimate and compare. Even the most common and miscellaneous reader has a peculiar taste in this way-and has generally erected for himself some obscure but exclusive standard of excellence, by which he measures the pretensions of all that come under his view. One man admires witty and satirical poetry, and sees no beauty in rural imagery or picturesque description; while another doats on Idyls and Pastorals, and will not allow the affairs of polite life to form a subject for verse. One is for simplic--the quick and true perception he has of the ity and pathos; another for magnificence and most opposite and almost contradictory beausplendour. One is devoted to the Muse of ties-the good-natured and liberal allowance terror; another to that of love. Some are all he makes for the disadvantages of each age for blood and battles, and some for music and and individual-and the temperance and moonlight-some for emphatic sentiments, brevity and firmness with which he reproves and some for melodious verses. Even those the excessive severity of critics less entitled whose taste is the least exclusive, have a lean-to be severe. No one indeed, we will venture ing to one class of composition rather than to another; and overrate the beauties which fall in with their own propensities and associations -while they are palpably unjust to those which wear a different complexion, or spring from a different race.

to affirm, ever placed himself in the seat of judgment with more of a judicial temperthough, to obviate invidious comparisons, we must beg leave just to add, that being called on to pass judgment only on the dead, whose faults were no longer corrigible, or had already been expiated by appropriate pains, his temper was less tried, and his severities less provoked, than in the case of living offenders,and that the very number and variety of the errors that called for animadversion, in the course of his wide survey, must have made each particular case appear comparatively insignificant, and mitigated the sentence of individual condemnation.

But, if it be difficult or almost impossible to meet with an impartial judge for the whole great family of genius, even among those quiet and studious readers who ought to find delight even in their variety, it is obvious that this bias and obliquity of judgment must be still more incident to one who, by being himself a Poet, must not only prefer one school of poetry to all others, but must actually belong to it, and be disposed, as a pupil, or still It is to this last circumstance, of the large more as a Master, to advance its pretensions and comprehensive range which he was obabove those of all its competitors. Like the liged to take, and the great extent and variety votaries or leaders of other sects, successful of the society in which he was compelled to poets have been but too apt to establish ex- mingle, that we are inclined to ascribe, not clusive and arbitrary creeds; and to invent only the general mildness and indulgence of articles of faith, the slightest violation of his judgments, but his happy emancipation which effaces the merit of all other virtues. from those narrow and limitary maxims by Addicting themselves, as they are apt to do, which we have already said that poets are so to the exclusive cultivation of that style to peculiarly apt to be entangled. As a large which the bent of their own genius naturally and familiar intercourse with men of different inclines them, they look everywhere for those habits and dispositions never fails, in characbeauties of which it is peculiarly susceptible, ters of any force or generosity, to dispel the and are disgusted if they cannot be found.-prejudices with which we at first regard them, Like discoverers in science, or improvers in art, they see nothing in the whole system but their own discoveries and improvements, and undervalue every thing that cannot be connected with their own studies and glory. As the Chinese mapmakers allot all the lodgeable area of the earth to their own nation, and thrust the other countries of the world into little outskirts and by-corners-so poets are disposed to represent their own little field of In this point of view, we think such a work exertion as occupying all the sunny part of as is now before us, likely to be of great use Parnassus, and to exhibit the adjoining regions to ordinary readers of poetry-not only as under terrible shadows and most unmerciful unlocking to them innumerable new springs foreshortenings. of enjoyment and admiration, but as having With those impressions of the almost in- a tendency to correct and liberalize their evitable partiality of poetical judgments in judgments of their old favourites, and to general, we could not recollect that Mr. Camp-strengthen and enliven all those faculties by

and to lower our estimate of our own superior happiness and wisdom, so, a very ample and extensive course of reading in any department of letters, tends naturally to enlarge our narrow principles of judgment; and not only to cast down the idols before which we had formerly abased ourselves, but to disclose to us the might and the majesty of much that we had mistaken and contemned.

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