THE FOREIGN QUARTERLY REVIEW. VOLUME XXIV. OCTOBER, 1839, AND JANUARY, 1840. AMERICAN EDITION. NEW YORK: PUBLISHED BY JEMIMA M. MASON, (LATE LEWER) CORNER OF BROADWAY AND PINE STREET. 1840. THE 171 FOREIGN QUARTERLY REVIEW, No. XLVII. FOR OCTOBER, 1839. ART. I.-1. Coranus textus Arabicus. Edi- and a phraseology very different from those of dit Dr. G. Flügel. 4to. 2. Coranus Arabice Recensionis Flügelianæ any other work with which he may be acquainted-are all the most attentive reader can at first discover. If he makes an attempt at translation, his patience has to undergo a still severer trial: 'the only tolerable version is that of Sale, who, though a master of the language, has been betrayed by a cruel scrupulousness into translating words rather than ideas. In both cases the result is commonly the same-the student throws by his book in disgust, and adds another to the number of those who are content to hear of the beauties of the Korann, without attempting to become acquainted with them. Or, if his resolution is proof against the difficulties he meets with, he runs through it without attention and closes it without an idea. Many chapters indeed, to all but the linguist, are better passed over than read, as they are mere repetitions of others more instructive— and none can be perused with interest till some clue is obtained to the order and ob. How is it the Korann is so little read? Our most popular tales are adopted from the East, our most popular poetry coloured from its imagery and its mannerisms;-Why is the most imaginative and most poetical of all Eastern compositions comparatively unnoticed? The deepest investigations of the historian relate to the stupendous revolutions which Asia has undergone. Why is the eloquence in which the most stupendous of these originated suffered to sleep in silence on the shelf? In an age when philosophy probes, and religion strives to reconcile, all the varieties of mental persuasion, why is the impregnable faith of half the world gen-ject of composition. erally unread and almost always unstudied? We flatter ourselves, therefore, that we Such are the reflections and anticipations shall be doing an acceptable service to more with which the literary tyro enters on the pe- than one class of readers, by taking a cursorusal of the Korann; but he has hardly ry review of the style, matter, and general concluded a chapter, before he finds the an- peculiarities of this extraordinary work, and swer to his queries, and feels himself obliged applying the leading chapters to the circumto struggle with the very apathy he had con- stances that explain their purport. This it demned in others. A tissue of reiterated is impossible to do without considering at the rhapsody--allusions which are unknown-re- same time the character and fortunes of the gulations the necessity and the object of which author; and this article will consequently are not understood-couched too in an idiom | treat of Mahomet as well as of his Scripture. |