in it delineated the Persia of the heroic age, an age of chivalry,
eclipsing, in romantic emotion, deeds of daring, scenes of love and
violence, even the mediaeval chivalry of France and Spain. Again, this
poem deals principally with the adventures of one man. For all other
parts of the work are but accessories to the single figure of Rustem,
the heroic personage whose superhuman strength, dignity, and beauty make
him to be a veritable Persian Achilles. But when we regard the details
of this work we see how deeply the literary posterity of Homer are
indebted to the Father of European Poetry. The fantastic crowd of
demons, peris, and necromancers that appear as the supernatural
machinery of the Sháh Námeh, such grotesque fancies as the serpents that
grew from the shoulders of King Zohák, or the ladder of Zerdusht, on
which he mounted from earth to heaven--all these and a hundred other
fancies compare unfavorably with the reserve of Homer, in his use of
such a personage as Circe, and the human grace and dignity which he
lends to that genial circle on Olympus, whose inextinguishable laughter
is called forth by the halting wine-bearer a god like themselves. While
we read the "Sháh Námeh" with keen interest, because from its study the
mind is enlarged and stimulated by new scenes, new ideas and
unprecedented situations, we feel grateful that the battle of Salamis
stopped the Persian invasion of Europe, which would doubtless have
resulted in changing the current of literature from that orderly and
stately course which it had taken from its fountain in a Greek
Parnassus, and diverted it into the thousand brawling rills of Persian
fancy and exaggeration.

It is a hundred years ago that a certain physician in the employment of
the East India Company, who then represented British supremacy in Bengal
and Calcutta, published the "Story of Sohrab," a poem in heroic
couplets, being a translation of the most pathetic episode in the "Sháh