The late Gertrude Bell's Poems from the Divan of Hails
(Heinemann, 5s.) have long been out of print ; they now come to us in a new edition, with a preface by Sir E. Denison Ross,
who gives us an interesting literal rendering of the most passionate and perfect of the ghazals Miss Bell translated. The author's introduction, with her wholly admirable account of Sufi. mysticism and her comparison between Dante, through whose fiery spirit the fortunes of Florence are even now almost as important to us as they were then to her citizens, and Hails, who saw Shiraz sacked five times yet wrote of the roses of Mosalla rather than the clash of rival captains, sums up for us one of the chief differences between the Eastern and Western outlook on life. No one can begin to know the East who will not study Hafiz, its Dante and its Shakespeare : than
Miss Bell's there is no better short guide.
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