'A Dictionary, Persian, Arabic, and English; with a Dissertation on the Languages, Literature, and Manners of Eastern Nations' [‎19v] (43/1826)

XXtl
DISSERTATION.
all men, be interested in knowing what strangers
say relative to their own or neighbouring kingdoms.
The Caliph Almamun, in particular, was a prince
of extensive erudition, and unbounded curiosity.
He could not well be indifferent with regard to
what the ancients might say relative to Babylonia,
his royal residence and seat of government. He
had ordered, without restriction, a general collec
tion of Greek authors to be made for the purpose
of translation ; and it is impossible to suppose that
historians could be excepted; they must have been
submitted, amongst the rest, to the review of the
learned ; their subject would naturally be reported
to the Caliph ; and if not translated, it could ap
parently arise only* from the consideration, that
their history of those countries seemed merely the
Tale of a Tub seriously told; and by no means
agreeable to the belief either of the aborigines of
the country, or of the ingenious men of all nations,
who, from every quarter of the empire, flocked
to Bagdad, as the centre of magnificence and
science. When we reflect, then, that the Muham
madan writers have paid no regard to the Grecian
histories ; that they have given us facts of a very
different complexion ; that no historian- will ever
presume to publish annals of his own country, to
tally dissimilar to the great lines of ancestorial
achievement, which must ever remain strongly
impressed upon the minds of a people ; and that
those histories of Persia are considered as genuine
by the Asiatics in general; no observation on
the manners of mankind can justify a total dis
regard to them, though dissonant to the relations
which we have hitherto been accustomed to re
ceive. Modern compilers of ancient history may
wish indeed to conceal their ignorance of the
languages and literature of the East, under one
general unsupported assertion, that they are
wild, uninteresting, and obscure ; but such a
mode of indiscriminate censure can tend only to
perpetuate error. Truth ought to be searched
for wherever it can be found ; and a well authen
ticated fact, if told by a Persian, an Arab, or a
Chinese, should remove an improbability, though
adorned with all the eloquence of Greece Or
Rome. 44
It will not be conceived, however, that I wish
any ancient story exploded but upon grounds of
obvious propriety. A free and candid investiga
tion is all that is proposed. Even the most impos
sible and most absurd of the Grecian and Roman
fables may keep their ground, till more rational and
well supported facts appear to fill their room. Any
thing is better than a vacuum. Geographers of
unknown regions, according to the poet, place in
their maps “ elephants instead of towns and
there can be no harm in allowing the elephantine
Wends of old Greece still to amuse our leisure
©
hours ; but if a town is at length discovered, the
elephant should surely change his station. Se-
miramisy the Argonauts, Sesostris, and half the
marvellous tales of early times, are all elephants:
but as they would leave a mighty blank in those
high ages of fable, they may still continue to fill
their respective nitches; like Bacchus, and Venus,
and Hercules, and Ceres: but I cannot help think
ing that it is refining rather too much upon the
credulity of man, to fix, like the great Newton,
the precise epochas of those Pagan gods and heroes,
by introducing even eclipses, and other astrono
mical observations, to demonstrate the eras and
adventures of beings, whose existence stands upon
a ground by no means more substantial than the
Garagantua of Rabelais, or the Brobdignaggs of
Lemuel Gulliver. “ I do not pretend” says Sir
Isaac, (in the eighth page of his Chronology), “ to
“ be exact to a year : there may be errors of five
“ or ten years, and sometimes twenty, and not
“ much above.” This publication, indeed, bearing
the name of the immortal Newton, though highly
built upon by subsequent chronologers, is so un
speakably inferior to that great man’s other works,
that I am almost unwilling to believe its authenti
city ; and can hardly be persuaded he ever would
have published it himself. The materials of which
it is composed were probably mere memoranda,
committed to paper in the intervals of relaxation
from more abstracted studies. He could not but