Note 8 — INTRODUCTION.

The later Arabic poets were mostly incapable of the genius of the old singers: the times had changed, and the ancient poetry appeared almost as exotic to their ideas as it does to our own. No greater mistake can be made than to judge of the old poets by such a writer as Behá-ed-deen Zoheyr, of whom Professor E. H. Palmer has lately given us so beautiful a version. There is nothing in common between El-Behá and ´Antarah—scarcely even the language.