Note 20 — ARABIC LITERATURE (continued 4)

This Assembly is the first of a remarkable series of compositions which, though they may be set down by Europeans as merely examples of laborious trifling, are highly esteemed by the Orientals as works of ingenuity and scholarship, and have found in every succeeding age numerous imitators. The incident is that Harith, being once on a visit to Meraghah, in Azerbijan, the northwest province of the present Persian monarchy, found a number of literary men lamenting the decline of learning, and depreciating all contemporary authors in comparison with their predecessors. Sitting in a humble place in the outskirts of the company was an elderly man, who showed by his glances and scornful gestures that he did not value highly the opinions of these critics. When they paused in their fault-finding he took up the conversation, and declared that one person, at least, of the present age was capable of rivaling any who had gone before in scholarship and the arts of composition. He is asked who is this genius, and answers that it is himself. The company are skeptical, but as the stranger persists in asserting his great ability, they determine to test him, and one of them proposes to him a most difficult task. He tells the company that he is a professional writer attached to the Governor, who, though a man of generosity, had declared that he would help him no further, till he had composed an address in which the alternate words should consist entirely of pointed and unpointed letters; that is, that the first, third, fifth words, and so forth, should consist of letters without a point, while the second, fourth, sixth, and so forth, should have only pointed letters. He adds that he had been striving a whole year to produce such a composition, or to find some one who could produce it. The stranger, on hearing this, accepts the task with alacrity, and instantly dictates an address in praise of the Governor, fulfilling the conditions that had been imposed.