just mentioned, afforded an amusing instance of his familiarity with
Persian in the conduct of business when, having occasion to take notes of the evidence at an important trial at the County Assizes, some thirty years after he had retired to his paternal estate, he took down the evidence in Persian rather than in the Somersetshire dialect in which it was given. To the Magistrates and Collectors, and other officials of the Indian Administration in the present generation, this may seem as odd as it does to the Englishman at home ; but it would have been quite natural to every Indian civilian of fifty years ago. And even now, if there is much to be said in favour of the change, there are also weighty arguments against it.
But our concern here is not with the loss or gain to the peoples of India, but with the loss to the Englishmen who live among them as their rulers. In the old days, when all official business was transacted in Persian, every man who desired to do his work well found it expedient to read and write the language for him- self, and not merely by means of an interpreter. But he turned this necessity to glorious gain, and through the duty of his daily life obtained entrance into one of the great literatures of the world. Warren Hastings was a Persian scholar. The learning of Sir William Jones—an Orientalist before he went to India—was extensive rather than deep, and his taste was that of the eighteenth century ; but he greatly helped the young servants of the Com- pany in their study of Persian by his example and precept. And that noble generation of men who were formed to public life by Cornwallis, Shore, and Wellesley, constantly combined a love of Persian literature with devotion to their public duties. In the remaining libraries of the Anglo-Indians of that day, may be found the first printed editions of Persian classics, with the apologies of the editor—some distinguished civilian or soldier— for the rudeness of the attempt to reproduce the beautiful writing of the manuscript with modern type, translations, dissertations, grammars, and vocabularies, ranging from the thick folio to the slender pamphlet without auy author's name,—all now alike forgotten. Those whose memories can carry them back to the time when they were in touch with the remaining men of that generation, know the love which they had preserved for that literature; and Sir Edward Colebrooke's "Life of Mountstuart Elphinstone " has put that love on record, as it was vividly expressed in Elphinstone's correspondence with his friend Strachey. We might describe that love and its accompanying enjoyment in the well-known words of the Roman orator in his defence of Archias. And they may be imagined by the man who, in the wearisome work of his office or his profession, cheers himself with lines from that Greek or Latin anthology which his memory made for itself at school or college, and has never forgotten. Such classical recollections were not unknown to Elphinstone and his friend, and it was in the words of Homer that Elphinstone expressed the stern and solemn feelings with which he mounted the breach at Gawilghur. But in Hafiz or Saadi they found thoughts and words in which to embody emotions and sentiments, vaguer and more dreamy, indeed, but deeper than any known to Greeks or Romans. And to the youth—and there must have been many such—who had left his home at the age of sixteen or younger to spend his days in India, unfurnished with any literature, ancient or modern, a new world and a new life were opened to him by Persian. or was it necessary that a man should be a lover of sentiment in order to profit by Persian literature. There was not only heroic poetry for those who preferred it, moral philosophy and natural theology not inferior to much found in Europe in the eighteenth century, mathematical science and authentic Oriental history not other- wise to be known. Such was the world of knowledge which was opened to the Anglo-Indian by the official use of Persian, and which was at that entrance quite shut out by the legislation under Lord Auckland. Here and there an individual student, in India or at home, reads and enjoys Persian literature ; but it is no longer the common atmosphere and life of the ordinary man.
But those who only know this literature through translations will reply,—`After all, does it matter? Translations will give us all we want as to historical or other facts, and do they not show us that the rest—the heroic, moral, and sentimental poetry—is worth very little, and its loss not to be deplored P' We rejoin that this is tree of all literatures, and not more true of Persian than of any other. There is but little enjoyment of auy poetry except in the language in which it was written, whatever intellectual culture may be got by reading translations. Who would care for the Elegy on Bion, or for the most pathetic ode of Horace, in a translation P The thought must live in the very words, in the very atmosphere to which it belongs, or it cannot live at all. We will give an illustration of our meaning. Here is a translation of a quatrain in the first ode of the " Diwan " of Hafiz :—" To me what love or pleasure in the halting-place of souls, when every moment the camels' bells give the warning, ' Bind on the loads ?' " Who cares for this sentiment so ex- pressed ? Who would care for it, though it were rendered into English verse ? Yet he who will for a moment throw himself into the imagery of the caravan on its journey, and assume that the Persian poet has expressed himself in words as felicitous, rythmical, and melodious as those of Horace, will understand what the Persian student means if he says that these verses of Hafiz are not inferior in beauty or in pathos to the "Ehen fugaces" or the " Linquenda tellus " of the Roman. We might, in like manner, justify the rythmical prose combined with every variety of lyric verse, of the " G-ulistan," or Rose-Garden, of Saadi, or his other great poem of the " Bustan," or Flower-Garden. The latter is written in the heroic couplet of Persian poetry, a measure as harmonious and as dignified as the heroic couplet of Pope, which, indeed, is its best representative in English. Oar rhythm of accent corresponds no better with the Persian rhythm of closed and open syllables than it does with that of the long and short syllables of Latin. A translator of the " Hasten " has, with strange misapprehension and unhappy result, represented the measure by one of cantering anapests to which it has no resemblance. The Introductions of these two poems fill every reader of the original with delight, though they fall flat in trans- lation. The one opens with an idyllic description of spring, and of the emotions of gratitude to God which the consciousness of life in that pleasant season awakens. That of the other is an expansion of the formal superscription of all Persian and Arabic books,—" In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate," —into a noble song of praise of the Creator and Ruler of the world and its inhabitants. The poet then describes the ascent of the Prophet to heaven under the guidance of Gabriel, till the archangel says, "I can go no higher, or I shall burn my wings ;" and then the Prophet proceeds alone into the Presence before which " the only Sarapnrdah " (the veil or curtain which shields the sovereign from the public gaze) " was glory." Panegyrics follow on the reignin g E mperor and his Minister, that on the latter concluding with " I cannot praise him as he deserves ; I will pray for him." And then the poet gives the "reason for writing the book," by representing himself as a traveller who has visited many lands and peoples, and gathered profit from all, but who has seen no such blest and happy land or people as those of Shiraz (Saadi's own home); and therefore he brings back to his friends these fruits of his sojourn in that land. There are at least three translations of the " Gulistan," and one of the "Bustan," as also a translation of the "Diwan " of Hafiz, as well as of works of other Persian poets, into English. There are also, we believe, French and German versions of Persian poets ; but, as we have said, there is no exception to the rule that poetry can only be enjoyed in the language in which it is written.
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