is all the poet's own, they often unite the fublimity of the Shah namah of Ferdofi, and the benevolence and morality of the good and gentle Sadi.

(مي لعل فام لا)

The popularity of Hafiz, however, feems to have depended upon the exquisite beauty of his gazels alone; for, notwithftanding his retirement, he by no means kept himself unspotted from the world. The pleafures of the ruby-coloured wine' were too powerful for his refistance; and his voluptuous wanderings among the fair fex did not conftitute, if we may, credit his own writings, the most criminal of his amours. To refcue him, however, from fo foul a charge as this laft, his commentators have pretended that his gazels are full of religious myfleries, and that almost every expreffion has a two-fold meaning, the external and cupidinous being only a veil for the efoteric and concealed, which is all purity and devotion. Mr. Hindley has paid a due tribute of refpect to two of thefe generous annotators, whofe names are Feridun and Sudi, and who have defended the falacious bard with all the elegance and force of the Turkish language, in which their commentaries are written. And D'Herbelot himfelf has been half perfuaded to credit their fantastic explanations, from the poet's having preferred a life of feclufion to the pomp of courts and the tumult of public fociety. Our English tranflators, however, notwithstanding the interpretation which has been ingenioufly contended for by the Turkish and Afiatic expofitors in favour of this eloquence of myflery,' (liffan ghaib) as it has been characterised by a celebrated Perfian biographer, feel themfelves under the perpetual neceffity of curtailing its luxuriance, and often of giving a very different idea to that conveyed by the text; and under their plaftic power of transformation, the peri-faki and mughpecké (¿ ¿~) ‹ the angel-faced cup-bearer' and 'infidel boy' are converted into damfels and nymphs of paradife.

In reality, however, the wildly figurative languages of the Eaft, and the bold excurfions which all Afiatic poets allow themfelves, lay an eafy foundation for the belief of an exoteric or myfterious meaning among readers of a warm and luxuriant imagination: and, on this account, the fame kind of double interpretation has been often attributed to the Song of Solomon by rabinical as well as by Chriftian expofitors; who, with undue faftidioufnefs, have been difcontented with its obvious and exoteric intention: as if the meft exquifite picture that can be conceived of conjugal affection and domeftic felicity, alluring us to the firft duties of life by example inftead of by precept, were not worthy, without fome myftical and recondite interpretation, of a place in the facred fcriptures.

With respect to Hafiz it is obvious, however, that religion occupied no great portion of his life, and, of courfe, that his gazels have little pretenfions to pietifm, both from his own confeffion and the conduct of the populace upon his decease. It is thus he expreffes himself in a gazel of high merit, but which is not inferted in the collection before us:

هم کارم زخود کامي ببر نامي كشببر

All my voluntary actions have tended finally to procure me a bad

name.'

And, on his death, fo great was the oppofition made to his enjoying the rites of interment, by many of the chief men of Shiraz, on account of the indecency of his poems, that a violent conteft enfued between his friends and his oppofers. It was at length, as fir W. Jones informs us, (Poefeos Afiatica Comment.) agreed, by way of appeal to heaven, to open the poet's works, and to be decided by the firft ftanza that should occur; which, luckily for Hafiz, happened to be the following:

قرم وریغ مدار از جنازه حافظ اگر چر غرق کنام ست میرود بهشت

Oh turn not your steps from the obfequies of Hafiz, For, though immerfed in fin, he will enter into heaven.' The pricfts no longer hefitated, and the poet, as we have before obferved, was interred in the Valley of Mofellay, whofe delightful bowers he had fo often celebrated in his poetry. His epitaph, which is not very commonly known, we fhall extract from Mr. Hindley's introductory obfervations,' premifing that it is elegantly and faithfully tranflated.

In the year feven hundred ninety and one,

A world of excellence and genius departed to the refidence of mercy. The incomparable, fecond Sadi, Mohammed Hafiz,

Quitted this perishable region, and went to the garden of paradife. Khojeh Hafiz was the lanp of the learned;

A luminary was he of a brilliant luftre :

As Mofella was his chofen refidence,

Search in Mofella for the time of his decease.' P. 21.

We may here remark (what, indeed, has been frequently done by others), that there is no work in Perfian literature more deferving the attention of the learned than this work of Hafiz. Independent of its literary beauties (which clearly place it, if not firft, at leaft in the first rank amongst the moft fplendid compofitions in that elegant language), it has the merit of illuftrating, in a confider

able degree, the manners, not only of a magnificent and intelligent people, at a period highly refined and polished, but of other great kingdoms and principalities of Afia. Princes, ftatefinen, warriors, poets, learned and venerable characters, of various courts and coun tries, are frequently alluded to throughout the poems; and, next to Sadi and Firdauf, we may rank our author as one of the moft correct in style, and as one in whom we may reasonably expect to find fome of the leaft corrupt remains of the pure and ancient Perfian. The few gazels hitherto printed and explained, have spoken fuffciently for themselves, with the learned world, to raise an anxious with for the publication of the whole feries: and from the fpecimens already given of the commentaries, we are authorised to conclude, that the untranflated part must contain much new and curious matter, interesting, no doubt, to the Oriental hiftorian, philologift, and philofopher, fince the beft copies of the Diwan are known to cons tain at least five hundred fixty-nine gazels, fourteen only of which have been regularly published, with thefe elucidations.

Hafiz himself, his commentators, and other writers, are amply defcriptive of the effect his poetry had in thofe times. So extravagant indeed was the general enthufiafm of thofe days, that national veneration feems to have carried its fondness for him into a wild and frantic fuperftition, as may be inferred from many wonderful narratives of ferious appeals made to the fuppofed oracular and ominous influence of thefe compofitions, both at and after his death, by a mode of footh-faying, or divination fimilar to that of the Sortes of the Latians, and familiar to the Afiatics. An old anonymous Perfian poet, preferved by Sudi, declares, that the delicate fuavity of thefe gazels is completely unparalleled in the productions of any poct whatever: and in truth Hafiz himself is but too often found, like Horace, trumpeting forth his own praife, and pluming himself on the univerfality of his fame, from the extenfive celebrity of his works over the then known world.

We have abundant evidence of the operation of his poetry on fucceeding ages, from a variety of fources, but particularly from the refearches of grammarians, as will very fully appear on confulting Sudi's introduction to his paraphrafe on the Diwan, where, with all the panegyrical and enthufiaftic phrafeology of an admiring mufelman, he afferts, that the peefy of Hafiz derived its innate grace from having been bathed in the waters of life, and that it equalled the virgius of paradife in beauty; and from the narratives alio of travellers, among whom it may fuffice to mention the names of fir Thomas Herbert, Kampfer, Chardin, and captain Francklin. Again, we are affured, on the authority of gentlemen belonging to the Hon. Eaft India company's fervice in Hinduftan, that, even at that diftance from Shiraz, the gay and lively airs of their mirth-infpiring Perfian are more frequently introduced in their musical feftivities than the compofitions of any other poct, however celebrated, whe

ther native or foreigner, Hindu or Mufelman, either of Bengal or Dekkhan.' P. 17.

Among the gentlemen whofe names are here defervedly mentioned, or are referred to in the fubjoined notes, we are attonished we have not met with that of Mr. Richardson, who is well known to have been a confiderable proficient in Oriental literature, and to have enriched the European world with many Oriental publications: one of them, indeed, upon the immediate fubject of the prefent work, being A Specimen of Perfian Poetry, or Odes of Hafiz, with an English Tranflation and Paraphrafe. This fpecimen did not, we believe, include more than three diftinct gazels, neither of which are to be found in Mr. Hindley's felection; but both the metrical paraphrafe and the profe verfion are poffeffed of great merit, and may at leaft challenge a competition with the labours of the author before us. To thefe were alfo added a copy of the tranflated odes in the original Perfian, and a variety of useful notes, hiftorical and grammatical. Mr. Richardfon was a particular friend of the late fir W. Jones, prior to his leaving his native country; and when the former conceived the defign of publishing a new edition of the learned Meninski's Thefaurus, with an English tranflation, the latter generously engaged to fuperintend and affift in the publication. We are forry to add, that, from want of due encouragement, this very valuable work was obliged to be relinquifhed, after the tranflator had bestowed an infinity of labour upon it, and incurred a confiderable portion of expenfe.

We have dwelt the longer upon this fubject because we were hurt at the filence with which Mr. Richardfon's name is paft over in the work before us, and because it seems almost impoffible that fuch a filence could be the effect of mere accident. Mr. Hindley ftates the number of gazels compofed by Hafiz to amount to five hundred and fixty-nine; and moft of the copies of the Diwan give us no more. There is a difference of two or three, however, in feveral of them; but we fully believe with our author, that Meniníki and Kollar muft have made an egregious mistake in calculating them at not lefs than fix hundred and feventeen, and we think he has fatisfactorily accounted for the error in the commencement of his Ap pendix, where he compares the manufcript of Meninski with that of the Chetham library. It is eafy to account for fome variety, however, in the different copies, from the recollection that there were feveral other poets of Perfia befides Mohammed Shemfeddin who were honoured with the firname of Hafiz, or men of extenfive memory,' although this adjunct has been almost exclufively appropriated to himfelf by the world at large; and it is not improbable that one or two of the CRIT. REV. VOL. XXX, November, 1800. U

fupernumerary gazels may have been erroneously copied from the diwans of thefe minor poets. Independently of which fome degree of confufion muft neceffarily exift in determining the originality of many individual lines as well as complete beits, fince, like Virgil and Terence, Mohammed Hafiz never helitated to copy from other bards a verfe that he thought was poffeffed of fuper-eminent merit, and to amalgamate it with his own productions. Occafionally, indeed, he went beyond his native tongue; and the very firft gazel under the letter eliph begins and ends with a line borrowed from the Arabic of the kalif Yezid and when upbraided for this pillage from a Mohammedan bard, he replied to his expoftulator Doft thou not know this maxim, that it is lawful for the faithful to rob the unbeliever? This gazel is not in Mr. Hindley's felection: it is, however, one of the most beautiful of the whole Diwan, and the Arabic line with which the laft beit concludes is peculiarly animated and tender.

متي ما تلف من تهوي دع الدنيا و اهملها

When thou fhalt poffefs the maid thou loveft, bid adieu to the world, and abandon it.'

(To be continued.)

Geological Effays. By Richard Kirwan, Efq. &c. Svo. gs. Boards. Bremner.

COSMOGONY has been the object of ridicule, not because it is in itself a trifling or an unfatisfactory study, but becaufe it has too often been a ftructure of the imagination only. A fertile genius might contrive a thoufand methods by which this planet may be fuppofed to have been conftructed, as Des Cartes is faid to have found it more difficult to prefer one of his many fyflens of the world than to invent them. Even within the period of ftrict philofophical investigation, the reveries of Buffon, to which we may add thofe of Dr. Hutton, have had fcarcely any fupport from obfervation; while Sauffure, De Luc, Dolomieu, and naturalifts of the first credit, have fupplied numerous facts on which a fyftem may fecurely repote. In reality, if founded on facts only, cofmogony is a branch of feience highly refpectable: it raifes the mind from earth to heaven, from the creation to the Creator; and though undoubtedly, in the feries of profound investigation, errors may arife, they are not more numerous than in other scientific puriuits, and more eafily corrected from obfervation. It is not one of the leaft of its advantages, that, in the hands of true