Note 16 — ARABIC LITERATURE (continued 3)

In this Assembly the author displays more than his usual rhetorical subtlety, and while there is none more admired by those whose taste has been formed on Eastern models, there is none which appears more extravagant to the European student. Alliterations, verbal caprices, far-fetched expressions, and the conceits which were usual among poets of the age, so abound, that we may almost imagine the author to be desirous of satirizing what he professes to imitate. The subject is as follows: Harith in his passion for the society of literary persons makes his way to Holwan, a town in Irak, on the mountains east of Bagdad, and a resort of the higher classes from the heat of the capital. Here he meets with Abu Zayd, who is pursuing his calling of improvisatore and mendicant under various disguises, and enjoys for a long time his company and literary guidance. Abu Zayd, however, disappears, and Harith returns to his native place, Basra, where after a time he again meets Abu Zayd in the public library, among a crowd of dilettanti who are discussing the beauties of the popular poets. The admiration of one is especially excited by a line in which the teeth of a lady are compared to pearls and hailstones, and the white petals of a flower; and Abu Zayd instantly produces a number of comparisons in the same style, which give him a high place in the esteem of those present, when they are assured that he is really the author of them. They reward him, and the Assembly concludes by his reciting to Harith, who had recognized him, some lines on the fickleness of fortune.