"قاموس، فارسي، عربي، إنجليزي، مع أطروحة عن لغات أمم المشرق وآدابها وعاداتها" [و‎‎١‎٥] (١٨٢٦/٣٤)

DISSERTATION.
xm
with such powerful incentives to the invention
of the wildest and the most improbable of fictions . 29
Take many points of modern history, and all
the information we receive is merely what each
nation or party has written relative to public affairs:
whilst the events themselves are still surrounded
with obscurity and doubt. Read the Protestant
writers of France, and every circumstance of
horror marks the massacre of St. Bartholomew’s
day : but turn to the Catholic page, and it be
comes a necessary, a prudent, and a lawful act;
the mere preventive of a similar tragedy, meditated
by the Admiral de Chatillon against the adherents
of the House of Guise. Take two foreign writers
of our English history, over whom country and
party-prejudices ought to have had no influence ;
and how different is the colouring of the same tale?
With Rapin, the Caligulas and the Neros fall short
of the inhuman James, on the suppression of Mon
mouth’s insurrection : whilst the mild, the just,
the forgiving prince is the portrait of the Fere
d’Orleans. Contrast the Memoires de Sully with
the Libels of the League against Henry IV. or the
Siecle de Louis Quatorze with the invectives of the
Protestant Refugees j and the Glorious Monarch,
or the Savage Tyrant, appear before you in
successive review. To enlarge upon the various
opinions of our own writers, on the great events
of English history, would be endless and unneces
sary : the circumstances I have mentioned being
merely intended to inculcate this simple position,
That few facts, either of ancient or modern times,
are so fully authenticated as to render farther
inquiry improper . 30
The Romans have read us many a lesson on
Punic faith : had we Punic writers, merciless jea
lousy, and perfidious ambition, might, and per
haps with justice, have been retorted on the
Romans. The Grecians have told us many a sur
prising tale of Eastern nations; there can be no
impropriety in listening to what those nations say . 31
The reigning families of Persia, previous to the
Arabian conquest, are comprehended, by their
historians, under four dynasties *, the Feshdadians?
the KaydnianSy the Ashl anians, and the Sctssdnians.
The Persians, like other people, have assumed the
privilege of romancing on the early periods of
society. The first dynasty is, in consequence,
embarrassed by fabling. Their most ancient
princes are chiefly celebrated for their victories
over the demons or genii, called Dives ; and some
have reigns assigned to them of eight hundred, or
a thousand years. Amidst such fictions, however,
there is apparently some truth. Those monarchs
probably did reign; though poetic fancy may have
ascribed to them ages and adventures which the
laws of nature reject. We dispute not the exis
tence of our English Arthur, though we believe
not in the giants and magic of Geoffrey of Mon
mouth : and Charlemagne was undoubtedly a great
prince, though we subscribe not to the wonderful
adventures of Turpin's Twelve Feers. The Dives
may have been savage neighbours, conquered by
the Peshdadian kings ; and magnified by tradition
as beings of a supernatural species. The gods, the
Titans, and the heroes of the Greeks ; the giants,
the savages, and the monsters of G othic romance,
seem all to have originated from similar principles .
from that wild irregularity of fancy, and that ad
miration of the marvellous, which, in various
degrees, runs through the legends of every darker
period of the history of mankind. The longevity,
at the same time, ascribed to this race of monarchs,
may either have been founded on some impel feet
antediluvian idea; or may be resolved by sup-
families instead of individuals: and that the
Kay Umars y the Jamsheds, and the Fariduns of the
East, were merely successions of princes, bearing
one common surname ; like the Pharaohs, the
Ptolemies, or the Ccesars of the West . 32
With the second dynasty, a more probable
system of history seems to commence: yet still the
era of Kaykuhad, the founder of this house, cannot
be precisely fixed. Though historians difi’er, how
ever, with regard to the chronology of this prince;
in one point, which may lead us to ascertain it with
tolerable accuracy, they appear, in general, to be
unanimous. Dariib the \ounger, dethroned by