I PR 508 .07 W5 Copy 1 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS Vol. XVII May 1. 1916 No. 9 Published semi-monthly from January to June and monthly from July , December, inclusive, by the University of Kansas HUMANISTIC STUDIES Vol. II, No. 1 ORIENTAL DICTION AND THEME IN ENGLISH VERSE, 1740-1840 BY EDNA OSBORNE, A. M. Fellow-elect in English, The University of Kansas LAWRENCE, MAY, 1916 Entered as second-class matter December 29, 1910, at the postoffice at Lawrence, Kansas, under the act of the July 16, 1894 Monograt)ik *ar *•;■■" '/ THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS COMMITTER ON HUMANISTIC STUDIES FRANK HBYWOOD HODDER EDWIN MORTIMER HOPKINS FRANK WILSON BLACKMAR ARTHUR TAPPAN WALKER SELDEN LINCOLN WHITCOMB, Editor The University of Kansas Humanistic Studies are offered in exchange for similar publications by learned societies and by universities and other academic institutions. All inquiries and all matter sent in exchange should be addressed to the Library of the University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas. Volume I Number 1. Studies in the Work of Colley Gibber, by DeWitt C. Croissant. October, 1912. Seventy pages. Fifty cents. Number 2. Studies in Bergson's Philosophy, by Arthur Mitchell. January, 1914. One hun- dred and fifteen pages. Seventy-five cents. Number 3. Browning and Italian Art and Artists, by Pearl Hogrefe. May, 1914. Seventy- seven pages. Fifty cents. Number 4. The Semantics of -mentuni, -bulum, and -culum, by Edmund D. Cressman. January, 1915. Fifty-six pages. Fifty cents. Volume n. Number 1. Oriental Diction and Theme in English Verse, 17JfO-18W, by Edna Osborne. May, 1916. One hundred and forty-one pages. Seventy-five cents. BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS HUMANISTIC STUDIES Vol. II MA Y, 1916 No. 1 Oriental Diction and Theme in English Verse, 1740-1840 ,by Edna Osborne Seventy-five Cents BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS HUMANISTIC STUDIES Vol. 2 May 1, 1916 No. 1 J. ORIENTAL DICTION AND THEME IN ENGLISH VERSE, 1740-1840 p, .rr-.-.y. EDNA OSBORNE, A. M. Fellow-elect in English, The University of Kansas W [>kP LAWRHNCE. MAY, 1916 rUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY ^0^ "oo 60 (y W -Yi 01 ±: i PREFACE The writer's interest in Orientalism in English literature began at the University of Illinois in 1911, when Professor H. G. Paul, in a lecture on the Romantic poets, emphasized Byron's Oriental coloring and suggested that its study would make a good thesis. A little later this interest took form in a master's thesis on The Orientalism of Byron, which was accepted by the English Depart- ment of the University of Kansas in 1914. This preliminary study opened up a field which seemed boundless, and which offered very attractive appeals to the student of foreign influences on English literature. One does not need to be acquainted with Oriental languages or Oriental literature to trace with some profit the effects of Oriental interests on English verse and prose. It has been impossible to examine all the English verse from 1740 to 1840; but the chief poets have been reviewed with a good deal of care, and many of the minor ones. The Oriental drama offers a field by itself, and only a few dramas have been included in the present survey. It is hoped that all the main characteristics of Oriental diction and theme in the period have been recognized and given some attention in this paper. There has been no effort at a microscopic examina- tion, at inclusion of every possible poet, passage, or term. It is hoped and presumed that such values as the present study yields will prove sound in and for themselves. The writer wishes to thank Dr. C. G. Dunlap, Head of the Eng- lish Department, and Miss Carrie Watson, University Librarian, and her assistants for courtesies extended; and also Dr. E. D, Cressman, of the Latin Department, for assistance in matters relating directly to Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit. To Professor S. L. Whitcomb, the editor of this series of Studies, the writer is especially grateful for constant assistance during the past year — assistance as generous as it was helpful. Without it this paper could hardly have been brought to completion at the present time. Edna Osborne. The University of Kansas, June 28. 1916. CONTENTS Chapter I Introduction: Orientalism in English Verse 7 Chapter II Oriental Vocabulary 21 Chapter III Oriental Phrase and Figure 31 Chapter IV Oriental Passage and Poem 43 Chapter V The East and the West 56 Chapter VI The Orient Itself 69 Chapter VII Poetic Values in English Orientalism 83 Appendix I. Bibliographical Notes. A. Poems and Passages 93 B. Collections of Poems 129 C. General Bibliographical Notes 130 II. Notes on the Oriental Vocabulary. A. Oriental Vocabulary in Sir William Jones 134 B. English Words of Oriental Derivation 136 C. Oriental Vocabulary in the King James Version of the Bible 138 Index 139 Oriental Diction and Theme in English Verse, 1740-1840 CHAPTER I Introduction: Orientalism in English Verse This study aims to present within brief compass the general character of the Oriental diction and the Oriental theme in English verse between 1740 and 1840. Every noteworthy fashion, manner, or school in the history of English poetry has a vocabulary and a phrasing that are char- acteristic and leveal something of the spirit beyond the words, Pastoralism is not njerely a matter of certain themes and certain moods, but, almost of necessity, of certain verbal tendencies. One who reviews the Oriental poetry of England for the century after the publication of Collin's Eclogues soon becomes familiar with a characteristic diction and its relation to mental and moral states. In some Oriental poems there is little Oriental quality in the diction; the Orientalism may be confined chiefly to the setting, to a character or characters, or to a general thenie. On the other hand, there are i)assages and poems whose exotic character is mainly in the hmguage. The ideal poem is one which expresses Eastern life or Eastern feeling in Orientalized diction. In the present study, the term "Orientalism" is somewhat broadly interpreted. It includes, first, the presentation of life in the Orient and of Oriental objects, ideas, or persons in the West; second, the treatment of any theme in a style Oriental or supposed to be Oriental. The first interpretation covers the Englishman in India as well as the native, and the gypsy and the elephant in England as well as in their original homes. The second type of Orientalism would, in a lax application of the idea, be found in all poems of a peculiarly rich, luxurious, and figurative fancy and 8 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies decorative style. This second conception, however, is too vague to furnish a safe guidance in such a study as this. There is too much in common between Orientalism so interpreted and the neo-Italianate manner so much in vogue during the latter part of our period! The emphasis must be laid upon the first interpre- tation, which is logically more distinct and historically more tangible. "The Orient" in this paper includes not only all of Asia and all of Africa, with the neighboring islands, but Russia, Poland, Lap- land, Zembla, Bohemia, Turkey in Europe, and some of the Balkan states. Literary criticism usually recognizes a certain Asiatic element in Russian literature, and the racial character or the political history of the other countries mentioned allies them, to a certain degree at least, with the Orient. Mohammedan Africa is certainly Oriental so far as the English poets of our period are concerned . Partly as a manner of convenience and part- ly in recognition of the poetic treatment it receives — often very similar in general tone to that given to Arabia or Persia — all the rest of the continent may be included. Even the negro in America may appear and does sometimes appear as a genuine Oriental subject. Spain in itself does not belong to the world of Eastern poetry, but many of the poems of the period dealing with Spain are concerned largely with the Moors or with the relations of the Spaniard to the Moor. Martha Pike Conant has faced the problem of separating the Hebraic element from the Oriental for critical purposes.^ The distinction often seems somewhat arbitrary. One remembers Carlyle's interpretation of the Book of Job — Biblical at least if not fully Hebraic—- in the "Hero as Prophet". The King James version of the Bible contains many words which belong to the Oriental vocabulary of English poetry .^ Furthermore, our poets often take a character, a subject, or a situation from the Bible and elaborate and expand it in Oriental instead of strictly Biblical fashion. It seems sound criticism to call Byron's Destruction of Sennacherib an Oriental poem though it is one of the Hebrew Melodies; Wells' Joseph and His Brethren has passages of marked Oriental quality. In The Christian Year there are a few poems. 1. The Oriental Tale in England, p. XVI. 2. See Appendix, II, C. Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 9 theoretically on Biblical subjects, decidedly akin to the general Oriental tone of the period. A conception of Oriental diction may be based on that of Orient- alism as just given. Not all words of Oriental derivation, however, belong to the poetical vocabulary. "Algebra", "zero", and other scientific terms from the Orient do not belong to English Oriental style. "Check", though derived from the Persian, is surely less akin to the Oriental vocabulary of English poetry than "glitter- ing", which happens to be of Scandinavian origin. Such are the complications in the relations of language and feeling in English Orientalism. Much of the general subject belongs to the philolo- gist, rather than to the historian of style. So little has been done in the field of Orientalism in English verse, that a brief historical survey may not be amiss. There is no Orientalism in Beowulf; but it is a long path from Beoivulf to Kipling. Prior to Chaucer, in the verse romances and in the medieval drama, many terms of Oriental place and person are introduced. Mohammedanism, the Crusades, and pilgrimage to the Holy Land are favorite topics. Herod, in the Coventry Shearmen and Taylors, declares that the "whole Orent ys under myn obbeydeance". He swears several times "Be Mahownd", and compares his own "triumphant fame" to that of "most myght Mahownd". In the same play there is what might by courtesy be called a brief Oriental passage. The angel is sent to the— "Kyng of Tawrus, Sir Jespar, Kyng of Arraby, Sir Balthasar, Melchor, Kyng of Aginare. " In the Play of the Sacrament, the merchant has traveled quite extensively in the Orient, as has Jonathan the Jew. The real business of the latter is to be converted by a miracle. Before conversion, he prays to "Almighty Machoniet", and thanks him for his gifts. The list of these treasures resembles many an Oriental passage in later poetry, and includes "gold, silver, and precious stones" — amethysts, emeralds, sapphires, rubies, pearls, etc.; spices "both great and small" — ginger, licorice, pomegranate, pepper, cloves; and other Eastern products — rice, almonds, dates, and figs. There are no strictly Oriental poems in Chaucer, unless we con- 10 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies sider the Man of Laiv's Tale and the Prioress's Tale as such. Chaucer, however, mentions a number of Oriental countries and products, and he speaks of Eastern idols, magic, and sorcery. His Oriental diction is distinct, if not very extensive, including such words as carbuncle, crystal, date-tree, figs, nutmegs, peacock, ruby, spicery, etc. In both Chaucer and The Pearl there is ref- erence to the "Fenyx of Arraby ". The third and fourth lines of this poem are: "Oute of Oryent, I hardyly saye, Ne proued I neuer her precios pere. " The Fall of Constantinople in 1453 probably had some effect on the English interest in the Orient, as well as on the general progiess of humanism in Europe. The relation of Spain to England in the Tudor period has been ably considered by Dr. Underhill.^ No great body of Orientalized English verse, however, resulted from these influences. Yet from Surrey to Milton, that is in the Eliza- bethan period in the broadest possible interpretation. Orientalism in diction and theme is a richer and more varied subject tlian in earlier English literature. The early English secular drama shows many traces of Oriental influence, though few or no plays strictly Oriental. Cambises may perhaps be called the first Oriental drama in England, though aside from its setting and, in diction, a few proper names, it has little Eastern quality. The word "elephant" is about all to represent Oriental diction in Roister Doister. In Gorhoduc, the theme of English descent from a Trojan is of course really classical, in source and significance. In The Fuure PP, the pardoner has on exhibition an "ej^e-toth of the Great Turke", the palmer has of course been in the Holy Eand, and the apothecary's store includes a few Eastern drugs, one being "cassy" — said to be the oldest drug known to medicine. The Orientalism in Shakespeare is somwhat diffuse or uncertain in tone, Oberon is from "the farthest steppe of India, " and there are many brief references here and there to the Turks, Ethiopians, Tartars, the Nile, etc. The Moor appears in Titus Andronicus as well as in Othello. Antony and (leopatra has not only an Oriental setting, but, in 3. Spanish Literature in the Envland of the Tudors. Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 11 spite of its general Roman character as a play, passages of true Eastern character. In Dacid and Bethsabe and in Cotnpaspe the coloring in part is clearly of the Oriental type. But it is in Tani- burlaine that we find a true and extensive treatment of Oriental themes expressed in Oriental diction; so far, at least, as certain motifs — luxury, tyranny, excess — are concerned. In this play is much that suggests the general character of the later Oriental drama in England. Surrey's Sardanapalus is a good early example of an English subject Orientalized; and is an introduction to an Eastern character destined to receive more extended consideration in English poetry. Several pages at least could be given to the Oriental element in Spenser. It is rich in diction and fairly so in theme; but is noAvhere concentrated into an Oriental poem or extended passage. An examination of Dr. Bradshaw's Concordance shows a liberal use of Oriental diction in Milton. Professor Beers quotes a number of phrases from Milton to prove that he "had more of the East in his imagination than any of his successors".^ Before the publication of Paradise Lost, the Siege of Rhodes and the first work of Waller had appeared, and English poetry was treading the path toward pseudo-classicism. The Siege of Rhodes is the forerunner of a long line of plays set in the Orient and having at least some Eastern characters and some Eastern language, if little of true Oriental coloring. Many of the scenes in the heroic tragedies are laid in Asia, Africa, or the Mohammedan regions of Europe. This was an easy task, as it was to include a considerable number of names for the characters smacking at least of something non-English. A few striking foreign customs or objects — such as the Chinese Wall — were also easy of access; but few playwrights attempted to escape entirely their home training and mode of thought. "Fancy you have two hours in Turkey been", directs the epilogue of The Conspiracy. Through The Mourning Bride and The Siege of Damascus this type of drama flourishes, till in Zara it almost reaches the opening of our period, and in Miller's Mahomet actually passes into the period. Waller's Orientalism consists mainly of a number of poems dealing with the political and military activity of the Turk'^, and of a sprinkling of such Oriental terms as Moor, Persian, Soldan, 4. History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Ccntunj, p. 45. 12 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies Bassa, the East, and such conventional phrases as Cross and Crescent, Arabia's spices, Afric's shore, "from India to the frozen north", etc. In Pope we have the same general tradition, more liberally represented however. Dr. H. S. Canby has written a paper on Congreve as a Romanticist.^ A study could be made of the pseudo-Oriental element in Pope, but that phase of his work, like some others, lies mainly on the surface. Lines 93-118 in The Temple of Fame might be considered an Oriental i)assage; and here and there in his verse there is the use of Oriental diction for effects of glittering sensuous richness. All studies of English verse between 1740 and 1840 must recog- nize the gradual waning of the pseudo-classical taste and the grad- ual triumph of its successors — by whatever name we call them. Orientalism, as a stylistic manner of English poetry, is either pseudo-classical or romantic. It, like pastoralism, made its appeal to the old-fashioned among the English poets, and to the innovators, when they arrived on the scene. The history of Eng- lish poetry proves that the Orient was capable of making a deeper, more emotional or more imaginative effect on English poets than it made on Waller or Pope. The present study should indicate, without a strenuous effort, the shifting of values between the middle of the Eighteenth Century and the opening of the Victorian Era. The old died hard. There are traces of the conventional early Eighteenth Century manner even in Shelley and Keats; even in Coleridge and Wordsworth. ^ The exact date with which our period opens is chosen as a matter of convenience. There is of course no absolute break in the con- tinuity of English Orientalism between The Fair Circassian (1720) and Lady Montagu's residence in Turkey (1718) and the poems of Sir William Jones. Already in Croxall we have a con- scious use of Orientalism in opposition to the "dry and insipid stuff" of the pseudo-classicists. His phrase "a whole piece of rich glowing scarlet" sounds very much like Jones and some of the other later Orientalists.^ These items of chronology may, however, be worth noting: 5. Publications of the Modern Language Association of America. New Series, Vol. XXIV; I, pp. 1-23. 6. For the significance of Croxall, see Gosse. p. 138; Phelps, p. 30, and Beers, Eighteenth Century, p. 84. Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme IS 1742. Collins: Persian Eclogues. 1744. The death of Pope. 1746. The birth of Sir William Jones. 1763. Lady Montagu's Letters published. At the close of our period we are at the threshold of the Victorian period. This study includes the work of a number of poets who lived and wrote after 1840; but is concerned only with their earlier verse. It omits Tennyson, Browning, and Bulwer Lytton, as on the whole to be considered Victorians. There are probably no new Oriental "notes", of importance, so far as poetry is concerned, between Byron and Sohrab and Rusium (1853). The pseudo-classical phases of Oriental verse are essentially the same from Pope to Byron. These include the practical, didactic treatment of Eastern life; the satirical manner, and especially a purely literary, stylistic interest — imitative, and characterized by conventional ideas and diction which present few signs of im- aginative and emotional processes. The satirical manner of Byron is not notably different from that of Butler or Pope; the didacti- cism of Southey, at its worst, resembles that of Young or Johnson; Mangan's fiction of translation from Oriental sources follows the model of Collins. Crabbe's heroic couplets, in his Oriental pas- sages as elsewhere, are not suggestive of any great renovation in English versification. If Byron wrote from personal observation in the Orient, so did Lady Montagu. Moore was far less of an Ori- entalist than Sir William Jones, though the former embodied more of his knowledge of the East in verse than did the latter. In the Oriental verse of both Moore and Southey, the reader feels a certain artificiality, a striving for effect, as in much of the work of the Augustans. In both poets the results of carefully selected themes, of extended literary preparation, of laborious composition, are all too much in evidence. Yet much in the Orientalism of our period is allied with the new spirit. As a phase of the Romantic Movement, Orientalism devel- oped, no doubt by more faltering stages, and with less extensive results, side by side with the new Gothic and Celtic tastes, and in association with sentimentalism, with the humanitarian and rev- olutionary spirit. It has far less kinship with the "return to nature", as Romanticism understood it, or with that medievalism which Professor Beers chooses to select as the central conception in his studies of English Romanticism. Above all, in its deepest H University of Kansas Humanistic Studies poetic significance, Orientalism represents that craving for free range of the imagination, that craving to escape the local, the practical, the "regular", that at times almost terrible appetite for the unknown and the limitless, which Paul Elmer More rebukes so firmly in his Drift of Romanticism. The hostility of the classicist to Oriental art itself is apparent in such a critic as John Foster, loving the simple.^ Of the general strangeness of the Orient to the English mind, of the general ignorance of that mind as to Eastern life — excei)t its picturesque surface — there are many records in English prose during the latter part of our period. It was, in jmrt, just this strangeness, just this sense of the unknown and the unmeasured, that attracted many of the poets. To some of them, as Orientalists, one might venture to ai)ply an expression in one of Keble's lyrics — "Thy tranced yet open gaze Fixed on the desert haze."* In our period the word "Gothic" (often capitalized) occurs with more frequency than "Oriental". So far as simple phrases go, the relation of the two tastes is rather neatly indicated by these citations. Eloyd places in an English garden a 'temple, Gothic or Chinese'. Armstrong actually carries the Germanic word into the regions of the East. He writes that the "cheerless Tanais" flows through a "Gothic solitude".^ Both the Orient and the (xothic North were adapted to produce certain emotional or sen- sational effects of remoteness and wildness; both were rich in the evidences of the decay of human achievements. The ruins of the temples of the East and of the castles of the North were both ruins ; both registered the frailty of the conventional pride and purpose of man. Both, under easy conditions, could satisfy the romantic craving for silence and solitude. As to the Celtic taste, only the lighter element in Eastern mythology harmonized with it. But this lighter element was present — in the peris and houris, in the milder characters among the genii. The more grim elements could be neglected at the will of the poet. Something of that charming wilfulness of feminine nature, of that irresponsible caprice and sudden change in narra- 7. See his review of Oriental Scenery; and his other essays listed in the Appen- dix. I, C, 2. 8. The Christian Year; Second Sunday after Easter. 9. The Art of Preserving llmlth: II. 11. 364-5. Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 15 tion, of that delicate charm in lyric expression which are asso- ciated with Celtic genius, are found at times in English Oriental verse. This may be said without reference to the possible remote historical kinship of Celtic and Oriental poetry. As to Occidentalism, the following pages will note more than one connection of this interest — comparatively new- in the Romantic period, and given large attention — with the taste for matters Eastward. Many a poet's fancy travelled indifferently, in the phrase of Keats, "Or in Orient or in West". Both regions were generously open to fresh, untrammelled poetic treatment. Both gave abundant oj)portunity to introduce novel words, strange stories, and characters far more nearly 'elemental men' than the average residents of London. Burns actually bade fare\\ell to his friends, ready for Jamaica, but he also wrote one poem imagining himself in India. Moore, Campbell, Mrs. Hemans, and many other poets wrote at some length on both East and West. With both regions, as time passed, the practical relations of England became so pressing, the information of Englishmen became so much larger concerning both, that it became difficult to summon the old motifs of the wild and intangible. Today it would be almost impossible for an English poet to dream in the early Nine- teenth Century romantic manner of the St. Lawrence and the American 'Forest Sanctuary'; almost impossible, probably, to think of the Ganges and the Euj^hrates as streams of fancy unfettered by prosaic facts. Sentimental ism may perhaps lurk in Arabian and Persian poetry. However that may be, the English sentimental taste — not destroyed by any number of parodies, or by resolute opponents among the playwrights — found something to satisfy it in Orientalized verse. Persia and even Africa became pastoral countries, companions if not rivals of Sicily and Arcadia. Sentimentality is one of the varied notes in Sir William Jones himself. If "earth's melancholy ma])" lay open to the sombre imagination of Edward Young, Mrs. Hemans found it possible to carry the sentiments of a sensitive nature into many of the remote regions of the globe, including the East. There are many sentimental passages in The Bride of Ahydos as well as in Lalla Rookh. Long before these works were published Collins had written, in the preface of the first edition of the Eclogues^ that "our geniuses are as much too cold for the enter- 16 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies tainment of such [Eastern] sentiments, as our climate is for their fruits and spices". Perhaps the deepest interpretation of the Orient, in the verse of our period, was made by EngUsh poets moved by the varying humanitarian, reform, and revolutionary interests of the day. There are a host of poems on African slavery written, most of them, from the point of view of the social reformer. The con- templation of the tyrannies of the East aroused vigorous protest; the enslavement of Eastern peoples to cruel or superstitious cus- toms and creeds — such at least to English thought — called forth severe criticism, and praises of the mission of England in the East, in politics and religion. The dominion of the proud Turk in Greece, while it cost the life of only one English poet, excited poetical protests from many pens. In Lalla Rookh even, the struggle for liberty is one of the themes, and Smollett looked with admiration upon the Arabs and the Tartars as peoples conspicuous for their love of freedom. Though the "brotherhood of man", in a Twentieth Century sense, is hardly in evidence, many of the English poets spoke against tyranny in any form, and showed at least poetic sympathy with the oppressed sons of man, in the East as well as in the West. In the decline of great Eastern tyrannies, they often found a direct lesson for Europe. Ozymandias has its sermon. The Orient is more than once called as a witness against French pride. Shakespeare and Marlowe felt a certain enthusi- asm for the tyrant, provided he was sufficiently great and successful in his tyranny; but the times changed — after the English poets had known Napoleon. After our period, many of the traditions of Orientalism are car- ried on with little essential change into the Victorian and post-Vic- torian eras. Different poets continued to express different phases of this large subject. Mathew Arnold felt the fatalism of the East. This conception, together with local color which he obtained from Sir John Mal- colm's History of Persia, he wove into Sohrab and Rustum. But Southey also dealt with the fatalistic element in the thought of the East. Edwin Arnold gave sympathetic interpretation of the religions of the Orient in The Light of the World and The Light of Asia — though, perhaps, in no more scholarly manner than Sir William Jones. It might be interesting to compare the diction and the themes in two such different poems as Sohrab and Rustum Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 17 and The Light of Asia. In general tone the latter bears some resemblance to the Oriental poetry of Emerson and not a little to that of Southey. Elaborate and modern as it is, it can hardly be said to mark a new departure in the same degree as do the poems of Browning and Kipling. Sohrab and Rustum is one of the noblest Oriental poems in English literature. The central theme, certainly, is not peculiar to the Orient, nor are the mental and moral tones of the poem. The spirit of the poem is largely Greek. Sohrab and Rustum is one example of that mingling of varied and even oppos- ing styles which is so characteristic of English poetry. The settings of the poem, however, general and specific, are Eastern; the Oriental diction is adequate and of memorable quality. In beauty and depth this poem is superior to most English Oriental poems, earlier or later. Browning brings into Oriental poetry a more manly humanity, a more generous, deeper morality than most of his English fellow poets. Miss Conant has discussed the moral tale of the Eighteenth Century and all students know the didactic emphasis of that period; but Browning's didacticism, as well as his optimism, belongs to himself alone. He was much interested, along with other masters, in the ethics, the wisdom, the mysticism, the religion, and the hot-headed emotions of the Oriental peoples. These themes and others he expressed with dramatic force and with his usual psychological insight in many poems — Ferishtah's Fancies, Ben Karshook''s Wisdom, The Epistle of Karshish, Rabbi ben Ezra, A Death in the Desert, Luria, The Return of^the Druses, Solomon and BalJcis, Through the Metidja, and others. In Mideykeh the vigor of such phrases as "the thvmderous heels" and "Buheyseh is mad with hope" are in striking contrast with the languorous tone of much Eighteenth Century Oriental verse. The Russian element, in whatsoever form, rarely appears in the verse of the English Romantic Movement. Ivan Ivanovitch is one of the first important embodiments of an interest wliich develops through the remainder of the Nineteenth Century and into the Twentieth. Clive is almost an authority on its subject. Tennyson's Orientalism is considerable, but it is less forceful and less original than that of Browning. It is mainly, if not entirely, in the Romantic manner. Tennyson reveals a love of Eastern story inherited from his boyhood reading and a mature English- man's interest in the relations of the Orient to his own country. 18 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies In his Recollections of the Arabian Nights, he has chosen a theme found in several poets of our period. In the Defense of Lvcknow, Montenegro, and other poems, he treats that military struggle between the East and the West which, in other forms, was an important subject in The Siege of Rhodes, in Hoole's translation of Jerusalem Delivered, and in many a lesser poem of our period. The Cup is his nearest approach to an Oriental drama. In AJchars Dream Tennyson shows less of the mystical and phantasmagoric quality associated with the Orient than appears in Kubla Khan; more of the ethical. Fitzgerald is, of course, a figure of great importance in a sketch of English Oriental verse. The first edition of his Ruhaiyai appear- ed in 1859, the second in 1872, and the third in 1879. The neatness and comparative independence of the single quatrain, the concise and exotic imagery, the love of happiness and the half -worldly, half-mystical philosophy have given the work a wide and an enduring popularity. Omar's denunciation of the inexorable fate which dooms to slow decay or sudden oblivion all that is charming and beautiful in this world resembles the lament of many a poet of the Romantic Movement. Much of the Oriental diction in Fitzgerald is similiar to that in English verse prior to 1840. The naturalism of the Rubaiyat is of a somewhat different type from that appearing in the Oriental verse of Byron, Southey, or any of their contemporaries. In Kipling, it would be no more difficult to find some of the old Oriental motifs and language than it would be to trace the English ballad traditions in his form and subjects. The Englishman in India is not a new theme, nor is that of the heat in the East. What affects us in Kipling is the large number of his Oriental poems, his extensive realistic and dialectic vocabulary, and the general realism, modernism, and anti-academic quality of his work. Though he sounds more loudly than his predecessors the note of imperialism, it is far from being an absolutely new note in English poetry. Yet Kipling, on the whole, is new. Sir William Jones was a scholar; he knew East Indian life in ways unknown to Kipling; but he could not have expressed the tragic shiver and the mournful music of Oriental experience in Danny Deever and Gunga Din, or the humor and irony in such poems as Fuzzy-Wuzzy and Oonts. The Dove of Dacca relates an old Bengal legend, not in the scholarly manner of Sir William Jones or the erudite manner of Southey, but with Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 19 a touch of Moore's sentimentalism, Route Marchin and many other poems are in Kipling's own style, The further story of Orientalism in English verse from 1840 to the present time is a long one, which cannot even be outlined here. It includes many poets, many themes, many moods. James Thomson, like Byron and Crabbe and Wordsworth in our period, like Tennyson, was influenced by his early reading of Arabian Nights. His City of the Dreadful Night in some respects suggests the Oriental poems of Southey. Rossetti reverts to the theme of ruined grandeur in his stately Burden of Nineveh. Charles Mac- kay, a somewhat voluminious poet probably little read in this country, tells a legend of Australia in The Lump of Gold, and em- bodies the mysticism of the Orient proper in The Prayer of the Priest of Isis. He joins his voice to that chorus of singers for liberty which is prominent in the period of our study. He writes of the abolition of slavery, and in The Brotherhood of Nations records of words breathing the spirit of international comrade- ship — "From the cold Norland to the sunny South — From East to West, they warmed the heart of man. " Sydney Dobell enters the field of Orientalism in Czar Nicholas and A Musing on a Victory. Andrew Lang unites the traditional theme of the golden East, the tradition of Ophir, with the modern exploitation of the wealth of Africa in his Zimbabwe. Edmund Gosse — cosmopolitan in his verse as in his criticism — goes back to the Persian sources in his rather long poem on Firdausiin Exile. The deeper note in much recent Oriental verse, in contrast with much of that examined for this study, may be seen by a comparison of Mathilde Blind's sonnet on Nirvana with the brief fragment on that theme in Miss Baillie's Bride.^'^ In The Madras House of Granville Barker we have a drama par- tially Orientalized, with a view of Mohammedanism in striking contrast with that in medieval English, Elizabethan, or Eight- eenth Century tragedies. Orientalism in American literature has a somewhat different tendency at present from that in English literature; owing in part to our greater distance from Turkey and Persia eastward, and our 10. Act I, close of Sceae 2, W University of Kansas Humanistic Studies much closer neighborhood to China and Japan westward. In the early periods of American literature the conventional themes and diction of English Orientalism, like most conventions of English literature, are in evidence. Even in Emerson, one finds the old phrases — the "mummied East", "Africa's torrid plains", the "grave divan"; and his Oriental vocabulary includes many words worn by time — "Giaours", "caravan", "Allah", "dervish", "crocodile", "siroc", and many others. Yet in Emerson there is much language more fresh than these citations indicate; as well as an unusual appreciation of the mysticism of the East, — not a mere matter of literary fashion, but rooted in the nature of his imaginative and religious life. His Oriental poems include The Romauy Girl, the Bohemian Hymn, Brahma, (parodied by Andrew Lang in a poem of the same name), Saadi, several of the Quatrains and most of the Translations. The recent cult of Eastern religions, and the vogue of Tagore may be barely mentioned. The relations of America to the Orient based on the War of 1898, on the large number of Orientals in this country, and on our present commercial and diplomatic problems, have been more or less distinctly recorded in verse or imaginative prose. Such dramatic pieces as Madame Butterfly and The Bird of Paradise may perhaps be insignificant as literature, but they are nevertheless poetic renderings of the modern relations of the East and the West. The contrast in ethical and emotional nature between the soul of Eastern peoples and the soul of Western peoples appears in both these plays. It is an old theme, prominent in the verse and prose of England a century ago; but here showing new forms under new conditions. In Omar the Tentmaker, the playwright gives careful attention to Eastern coloring in the characterization, in the diction, and especially in the stage settings. By weaving into the text some of the lines of Fitzgerald, the author helps to bind together the American Orientalism of today with the English Orientalism of the early Victorian period, and so with an interest which may be traced back to Chaucer himself. What the effect of the present world crisis may be on this special phase of English poetry, one does not venture to prophesy. One sees today new and startling intermingling of Eastern and W'estern life — and death. In the era soon to be, who can tell what new themes, what undreamed inspirations of hope or what terrifying despair may come to English poets out of the East? CHAPTER II Oriental Vocabul.\ry Between 1740 and 1840 extensive additions were made to the English poetic vocabulary. Some critics have considered the enriching of language in England and on the continent as one of the most important results of the Romantic Movement. English poets enlarged the scope of their diction by a revival of medieval and Elizabethan terms, and they also went abroad into fairly fresh fields. They found new words as well as new ideas and new images from Celtic, Scandinavian, Occidental, and Oriental sources. The fresh Celtic vocabulary is familiar in Burns, Macpherson, Collins, and other poets. A striking Scandinavian diction is found in Motherwell, ^^ as well as in his more famous predecessor. Gray. Among the poets who introduced geographical or cultural terms, new to many of their readers, from the New World are Bowles, Grainger, Mrs. Hemans, Thomas Moore, James Montgomery, and Southey. Not rarely a poet resorts to two or more of these sources. Mrs. Hemans writes The Forest Sanctuary, as well as The Caravan in the Desert; the Oriental diction of Lalla Rookh accompanies diction drawn from Moore's travel in Canada and the States; Southey wrote A Tale of Paraguay as well as The Curse of Kehama. In poem after poem of the period these exotic words are of such character as to require, or at least receive, explanation in foot- notes; sometimes in glossary. The poets did not assume that their readers would be familiar with "bigging", "kraken", "'pixie", "quaigh", "Torngarsuck", or "sea-grape"; nor with "dallim", "kellas", and "Swerga". The scenes of Bowles' Missionary are in South America, and the author explains quite a number of words used in the text, including, Almagro, Chilian, chrysomel, cogul, Guecubu, ichella, opossum, Ulmen, and sea-blossom. During our period some few poems Oriental entirely or in part 11. See his Battle-Flag of Sigurd, Wooing Song of Jarl Egill Skallagrim, and other poems. Note also the two Danish Odes "attributed" to John Logan. 21 22 University of Kansas Hwnanistic Studies were written in Greek or in Latin. Probably the best examples of the Oriental poem in Greek are Praed's Pyraviidcs Mgyptiacae and In Obitum .... Thomw Fanshawe Middleton. It is interesting to note that the latter poem is indebted to The Curse of Kehama, and that it presents the theme of the suttee among other Oriental subjects. Among the distinctly Oriental lines of In Obitum are, "NafidrcDv naze p. HaOuTzAotjTe rdyya\ "« ?.uyf)d Ila5d).u)'/(i^ aoAa\ and, ' 0£u NsaAAi'i/fr y'/.ntfiov yafi civ^oc." Sir William Jones wrote a number of Oriental poems in Latin. From his Elegia Arabica one may select these lines as examples of the Eastern tone or theme in the academic tongue: "An roseas nudat Leila pudica genas?" "Nardus an Hageri, an spirant violaria Meccae, Candida odoriferis an venit Azza comis?" There are Oriental passages of somewhat didactic quality in John- son's Septem JEtates and in Browne's De Aninii Im mortal itate. In the first poem is this line: "Imperium qua Turca ferox exercet iniquum;" and in the second poem this: "Aspice quas Ganges interluit Indicus oras." The English form of certain geographical words is identical with the Latin form, as, for example, in the case of Africa, Byzantium, Euphrates, Libya, and Tigris. Occasionally the Latin form is used in place of the English, for poetical or metrical purposes. " Nilus " is a common substitute for "Nile". The extent of the English Oriental vocabulary proper will of course depend on the definition of "Oriental". Words derived directly or indirectly from Oriental tongues would probably num- ber several hundred. Other words, of whatever linguistic origin, are naturally and habitually associated with the East. Then follows a third class of words, large and indeterminate, borrowed from the general vocabulary to express such Oriental motifs as luxury, remoteness, etc. A complete study of Oriental style would Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 2S consider words of this third chiss as worthy of close attention, though it is somewhat difficult to reduce them to law and order. There are practically no Avords in the verse of our period appear- ing in the characters of Oriental alphabets. ^^ The nearest approach to true Eastern word-form is found in transliteration. In the verse of Jones there are several hundred transliterations, largely proper names, of which only a few have even yet found assured place in the standard English dictionaries.'-^ After Jones had established the method in English verse (for in some sense he may be said to have introduced it), it was followed by later Oriental poets, such as John Scott, Byron, Southey, and Mangan. In the following twenty lines from Jones' Enchanted Fruit, there are thirteen examples of transliteration; "nargal" ("narghile") being the only word among them found in the New International Dictionary of 1910. "Here marked we purest basons fraught With sacred cream and famed joghrat; Nor saw we not rich bowls contain The chawla's light nutritious grain. Some virgin-like in native pride. And some with strong haldea dyed; Some tasteful to dull palates made If merich lend his fervent aid, Or langa shaped like od'rous nails, Whose scent o'er groves of spice prevails. Or adda breathing gentle heat. Or joutery both warm and sweet. Supiary next (in pana chewed. And catha with strong powers endued, Mixed with elachy's glowing seeds, Which some remoter climate breeds,) Near jeifel sat'% like jeifel framed, Though not for equal fragrance named; Last, nargal whom all ranks esteem, Poured in full cups his dulcet stream." A partial list of English words of Oriental derivation is given in the Appendix.^* It is clear that many of these do not belong to the poetic vocabulary. Others are of rare occurence in the verse of our period. Of those that remain, some are very Oriental in 12. Byrom introduces words in Hebrew characters (in Epistle III to the Rev. \fr. L — .),a practice, it will be remembered, of which Browning was rather fond. 13. See the Appendix , II, A. 14. See II, B. 21). University of Kansas Humanistic Studies suggestive value, while some are of rather indifferent quality in this respect. The following table arranges according to source a few of the words of genuine Oriental import which are in more or less common use in the verse of our period. (In a few examples the derivation is problematic.) Arabic : alcove — amber — atabal — caliph — fakir — gazelle — giraffe — harem — houri — Koran — Mohammedan — minaret — monsoon — Moslem — mosque — muezzin — mufti — nabob — saffron — Saracen — sheik — simoom — sirocco — sultan — tamarind — vizier. Avestan : paradise. Egyptian : gum, Malay : bamboo — lory — proa. "Oriental " : peacock. Persian : attar — azure — ^bazaar — caravan — caravansary — dervish — divan — firman — jackal — jasmine — khan — lemon — lilac — Magi — Mogul — musk — orange — pagoda — peri — saraband — scarlet — scimitar — shah — tiger. Russian : Cossack. Sanskrit : avatar — banyan — ^beryl — Brahman — camphor — champac — crimson — jungle — rajah — rice — sandal-wood — Veda. Tatar: horde. Turkish : coffee — dey — giaour — Janizary — kiosk — pasha — tulip — turban. The list in the A'ppendix shows a remarkable preponderance of nouns over the other parts of speech. This fact is of interest from the poetic as well as the linguistic point of view. Only two verbs are given — "chouse" and "garble" — , neither of any poetic value. The words which may be considered pure adjectives are only five : azure, crimson, saccharine, Sanskrit, and scarlet. Words which by the average reader are probably conceived as having some adjective quality are more numerous: — bamboo, Bedouin, bril- liant, calico, gamboge, Moslem, Mohammedan, mammoth, orange, Ottoman, rattan, saffron, shagreen, silk, and Tartar. There remain some two hundred and thirty nouns. It is clear that Eng- Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 25 lish Oriental verse must depend on words from non-Oriental sources for its rapid narration, its analysis of psychic process — or else omit such matters altogether. A brief note on words of Hebrew derivation may not be amiss. Skeat gives a list of about eighty-five such words, a list which is somewhat altered by the New International. Some of these words belong, in the verse of our period, quite as much to the Oriental vocabulary as to the Biblical in a narrow sense. Among them may be named, balm, balsam^ camel, cassia, cinnamon, ebony, elephant, hyssop, sapphire, and teraphim.^"^ There are many other words in the King James version of the Bible, of various derivation, which belong to the Oriental vocabulary.*^ Our Oriental poets paid considerable attention to propriety in their diction. Byron distinguishes the Italian form of "giaour" from the more Eastern form. Montgomery accompanies the phrase "medzin's cry" with a footnote explaining that the proper form of the word is "muedhin". Yet the ideal of embodying Oriental theme in purely Oriental language was at times curiously neglected, and at all times except for brief passages practically impossible. One does not find "cromlech" or "Woden" intro- duced into an Oriental context; but there are a number of refer- ences to a "glen" in Lalla Rookh, and to Bowles the Tartar society is composed of "clans". "Glittering" and other words from the same Scandinavian root are of frequent service in Jones and his followers. The term "pastoral" seems at first reading strangely applied to Madagascar (Mickle's Lusiad), or to Gara- mant (Shelley). To American readers a "canoe" may probably seem a strange boat for the east coast of Africa ; but the etymolog- ical authorities tell us the word is probably of African origin. "Cacique", however, occasionally found in Oriental context, is an importation from the West. An interesting example of varied appeal in different words for the same object is found in the pseudo-classical "Philomela", the English "nightingale", and the Oriental "bulbul". In the early j)art of our period, especially, the evidences of pseudo-classical diction are all too numerous, and conventional diction of regulation Eighteenth Century type blurs the Oriental quality of many a 15. Southey uses the singular ' 'teraph", in The Curse of Kehama, in strictly Oriental context. 16. See the Appendix, II, C. 26 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies passage. In the Oriental life of Jones' verse love is a "smart"; in this or that passage of other poets we find the '* Armenian knight ", the "Syrian dames", and "Asia's fair". Among the most common Oriental words in the English verse of our period are proper names, geographical and personal. This is true in a degree of Persian, Arabian, Turkish, and East Indian l)assages, but is especially marked for such outlying regions as central Africa, Siberia, and Lapland, whence, at the time in ques- tion, comparatively few native words other than proper names had entered the English language. The exotic quality in the diction of Coleridge's Lapland passage in the Destiny of Nations depends mainly on some half dozen strange place-names. Coleridge in this respect has made no progress beyond Thomson, who in the north- eastern passage in Winter, while relying mainly on geographical names, introduced "caravan", "sable", and "reindeer". Consultation of mai)s or books of travel is an easy process, and not a few poets introduce geographical words rare if found at all in the verse of other poets. Among such words are Bojador, Bom- bay, Cormandel, Madras, Molucca, Oka, Pekin and Sumatra, in Dyer; Bassora," in Collins; Benares and Ki (a river), in Jones; Dahomay, in Walter Scott; Beder and Hoangho, in Southey; Istakar, Liakura, and Ukraine, in Byron; Carmanian and Choras- mian, in Shelley. There are rare words in each of the two passages compared just above; in Thomson, Niemi, Tenglio, and Tornea; in Coleridge, Balda Zhiok, Lieule-Oaive, Niemi, and Solfar- kapper. Among the most common words of this class are Arabia, Atlas, Africa, Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Ethiopia, Euphrates, Ganges, Libya, Persia, Russia, Scythia, Tartary, and Tigris. The words in the following tabulation are of more or less frequent occurence; and are examples from a much longer list that could be given:'* Abyssinia Bengal Cairo Algiers Bengala Calcutta Bactria Bokhara Cashmere Bagdad Bosphorus Cathay Balbec Byzantium Caucasus Barbary Caffraria Ceylon 17. Found in Emersons Hermione; doubtless in other English poets. 18. The spelling is often very various, and antiquated, as in the case cl "Sahara", and "Tahiti." Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 21 Samarcand Senegal Shiraz Siam Susa Tahiti Tibet Volga Chilminar Lahore China Lapland Damascus Moscow Danube Nineveh Fez Nubia Golconda Numidia Japan Ormus Java Sahara Kamchatka The proper names for persons include those of Oriental gods, of historical or legendary characters, and of the dramatis person ae of tale, drama, or lyric. If the Gothic revival emphasized such names as Woden, Balder and Valkyrie, Oriental taste responded with its Allah, Buddha, Brahma, Isis, Osiris, Nealliny, and Vishnu. One could readily make a longer reckoning than this from the verse of Jones alone. Among the historical or legendary names are Con- fucius, Ghengis Khan, Hafiz, Mahomet, Osman, Sadi, Sardanap- alus, Semiramis, and Zenobia. The names of contemporary celebrities in the East are comparatively rare. Oriental fiction has its Leila, Abdallah and Hassan, who take their places beside the Daphnis and Chloe of pastoral poetry, and the Laura, Lesbia and Delia of love lyrics. It is not often that such a splendid name is discovered as that which Shelley gives us in "Ozymandias". The word "Orient" itself is not uncommon, but is in less fre- quent use than "The East", which occurs in a multitude of phrases— "the golden East", "the burning East", "the soft luxurious East", "Venice and the East", "the East for riches famed", etc. The adjective "Oriental" seems less frequent in verse than in prose; and, again, "Eastern" is often a substitute. It may be noted in passing that "Occident" and " Occidental" are of rather infrequent occurence. If one accepts a liberal interpre- tation of "Oriental", one must reckon with "South" as often significant of much the same poetic qualities as were associated with the Orient proper. In fact the contrast between England and Persia or Arabia sometimes takes the form of a 'North and South' phrase. There are, of course, more general expressions, such as 'Moslem lands', 'paynim countries', etc. Special poetic forms for familiar words are frequent. The rather bewildering variety in spelling is of slight literary interest, except 28 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies in cases where the phonetic or rhythmical value of the word is essentially altered. So far as literary meaning goes, Bramin, Brachman, Brahmin, and Brahman may probably be considered identical. The exigencies of rhyme, meter or rhythm, or the effort to fashion poetic diction, however, produce some interesting variants. Thus one finds Afric, Bengala, Bombaya, Buddh, Byzance, Bazantion, Calicut, Ganga, and, very frequently, Ind. Words created by English poets after Oriental models are not of great significance. "Ozymandias" — if the word is a product of Shelley's imagination — may be taken as perhaps the best of its class. Many another proper name is coined, due attention being given to certain characteristic consonants. Search in the verse of Blake would probably discover some Orientalized words used for the purposes of the mystic. For humorous effects, one may note the "Crocodilople " of Southey, and the long list of *'outlandish" Russian names in his March to Moscow. Moore passes beyond Southey, however, in daring if not in humor, in his burlesque Russian word of twenty-eight letters — " Wintztschitstopschin- zoudhofl^"!i9 The compounds found in Oriental verse are of no little interest. Some are transliterations; some are fashioned from words of Ori- ental derivation; some, of whatever etymology, express a char- acteristically Oriental conception, image, or poetic tone. While the formation of compounds is no special privilege of the Romantic poets, the best examples are probably found in the later poets of our period, especially in Byron, Moore, and Shelley. Others, how- ever, sometimes of high poetical quality, are scattered through a thousand pages of a hundred other poets. Only a few examples, of special Oriental value, can be given here: AUah-illa-Allah Desert-wearied (Keble) Atar-gul Fire-god Aullay-horse (Southey) Fur-clad Russ (Cowper) Camel-driver Gem-emblazoned (Peacock) Citron-dram Hunter-founder (t. e., Nimrod) Cobra-di-capel (Shelley) Million-peopled (Shelley) Date-season Minaret-crier Desert-circle Mosque-like 19. In The Twopenny Post Bag; Letter V. Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme S9 Mosque-work Seraglio-guard Mother-land of all the arts Seven-headed idol (of Egypt, Southey) Spice-time Mummy-king Sun-idolater Musk-wind (Moore, Mangan) Swer-god (Southey) Nile-bird Turban-forms Prophet-chief (?*. e., Mahomet) Vapor-belted (of the Pyra- Razeka-idol (Southey) niids, Shelley) River-dragon (?*. e., crocodile) Widow-burning Sand-waves Wul-wulleh Scymetar-petals (of the lily, Zemzem-well Mangan) A distinct though slight service of Oriental diction to English verse is found in the matter of rhyme. No examples are found in the Persian Eclogues, but a half century later this detail of tech- nique is quite conspicuous; in The Bride of Abydos, and Lalla Rookh, among other poems. In The Bride of Abydos "divan", "Carasman", and "Galiongee" are used twice in rhyming posi- tion; and fifteen other words, including Oglou, Ottoman, sherbet, scimetar, etc., are so used. In Lalla Rookh we find about thirty- six Oriental words at the end of the verses; Cashmere, Bendemeer, Chilminar, Nile, and Samarcand, each twice, Araby three times, Nourmahal seven times. Among the other rhyming words of this poem are Amberabad, Candahar, cinnamon, Caliphat, Isfahan, Jamshid, Kathay, kiosk, Malay, myrrh, Saracen, Sultana, Shad- kiam, Zenana, and ziraleets. Mrs. Hemans rhymes "scimetar" with "bear", and with "war". Praed uses "Bengal" some four or five times as a rhyming word. Many words of this Oriental vocabulary, the vocabulary of the "soft, luxuriant East", have a phonetic beauty and delicacy. Perhaps none can equal those words of gliding vowels which Stevenson discovered and praised in the islands of the South, but those word melodies do not belong to the main body of English verse. A true poet could scarcely use any of the following words without some sense of charm in the mere sound : Araby, Arabia, Arabian, azure, cinnabar, Chilminar, cassia, gazelle, Leila, Mala- bar, spicy, Siberia. These are chosen from a very considerable vocabulary offering similar values. On the other hand, for moods more strenuous, there are Oriental 30 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies words of sufficient consonantal friction — words like a hiss or a blow, suggesting spirited action, though they are nouns. With such a value, at least to the imaginative reader, appear Caucasus, Cossack, Ganges, giaour, Janizary, Juggernaut, muezzin, sheik, vizier, and many others. Something of the effect of ferocious attack in Motherwell's Ouglous Onslaught, A Turkish Battle Song is surely gained by an apt use of Oriental diction — in these lines, for example: "Tchassan Ouglou is on! Tchassan Ouglou is on! For the flesh of the Giaour Shriek the vultures of heaven. Bismillah ! Bismillah ! Through the dark strife of Death Bursts the gallant Pacha." While there was a lively interest in Oriental words on the part of many of the poets of our period, it is doubtful if many of them j)aid as close attention to root meanings as the English poet is expected to pay in the case of classical or native vocabulary. Often the ultimate meaning of the words used was probably unknown. Jones gives his readers some careful notes on the etymological significance of the names of certain Indian deities. Probably some poets imaged black eyes when they wrote "houri", and felt the effect of the root meaning "poison" when they referred to the simoom.2" But it is only a great poet or a great scholar who can be trusted to consider words habitually as the records of remote experience or fancy in the lives of men; and many of the authors of our study were essentially verse writers rather than artists. 20. The word " juagle"' is an interesting example of wandering from the ancient root meaning, which Skeat gives thus: "Skt. jangala, adj. dry, desert". CHAPTER III Oriental Phraspi and Figure For present purposes by "phrase" is meant any simple combi- nation of words, coherent when isolated, a line or less in length. Even the adjective-noun form indicates much concerning the general character of Oriental diction. This paper should prove, if proof were needed, that the English Oiiental poets are not mere phrasemongers; yet a good deal of the novelty and of the special value of the Oriental taste is shown by examination of the simpler elements of its language. There are many titles clearly Oriental in diction; others give no clue to the Eastern quality of the poems. On a Beautiful East- Indian, The Moorish Maiden's Vigil, The King of the Crocodiles, The Enchanted Fruit; or. The Hindoo Wife, The Caravan in the Desert, and many others-^ are in themselves interesting phrases. Persian Eclogues is as suggestive as Danish Odes. The Trav- eller at the Source of the Nile is almost a poem in itself, as is The Wail of the Three Khalendeers. The refrain is often found, sometimes with genuine Oriental value, sometimes without. It is used by Collins in his third Eclogue, in Lalla Rookh, and, late in our period, by Mangan. "Karaman" is found as a complete line twenty-three times in Mangan's Karamanian Exile. Tendency of the Romantic- Movement to favor the refrain is apparent in the verse we are studying, though it may perhaps yield no such striking examples as the refrains of The Lady of Shalott, Sister Helen — or of Pre- Raphaelite poetry in general. Few if any such lines as Tennyson repeats in the body of the verse in the Idylls of the King — "From the great deep to the great deep he goes". "Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,"-- 2 1. See Appendix. I, A. 32 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies appear in the Oriental poetry. The most dynamic Oriental refrains are transliterations, such as Motherwell's "Allah, il allah, " and "Bismillah! Bismillah!" The purely Oriental phrases, composed of words derived from Eastern languages or of strictly Eastern connotation, are not numerous, and, from the nature of the English language, they are brief. A few examples are Pollok's "Tartar horde", Southey's "Moorish horde", Thomson's "horde on horde", Smart's "tur- baned Turk", Harte's "Moorish sarabands", and Chatterton's "scarlet jasmines". Other examples could be found in personal names and in passages of geographical description. Geographical phrases are among the most conspicuous. Many of them are what may be called "spatial phrases", in which the sense of distance is expressed. Such phrases, when of two terms, may have both in the Orient, or one in the Orient and the other elsewhere. A model for the first class is found in the first verse of the Book of Esther — "From India even unto Ethiopia". A simple example of the second class is found in the familiar "From China to Peru". As most of these geographical phrases are of the same general character, not many citations need be given. In a few of the following the idea of contrast is expressed. The first example is of a familiar type, in which a mere list of geographical units is given. Blake: China and India and Siberia. Burns : From Indus to Savannah. Cunningham : From Zembla to the torrid zone. Harte: 'Midst Abyssinian flames or Zembla's frost. Jenyns : From frozen Lapland to Peru . Keats : Or in Orient or in west. Langhorne: From Bactria's vales to Britain's shore. From Ganges to the golden Thame. Ly ttelton : From Atlas to the Pole. Mickle's Lusiad : From Calpe's summit to the Caspian shore. Peacock: From northern seas to India's coast. Pollok : From Persia to the Red Sea Coast. PoUok and Wordsworth : From Agra to Lahore. Praed: Arabia's sands or Zembla's snows. Mrs. Radcliffe: From Lapland's plains to India's steeps. Shelley: From the Andes to Atlas. Wilkie: From Zembla to the burning zone. Osborne: Orientol Diction and Theme S3 An example of this type with some special interest is found in the common 'either Ind', or 'both the Indies'. At times this phrase refers undoubtedly to the West Indies and the East Indies, but the reference is sometimes obscure. In the following citation its strictly Eastern range is clear: "Either India next is seen With the Ganges stretched between. "-^ But Southey writes, *'In Eastern and in Occidental Ind." In compiling a considerable number of simple phrases in which "east" ("East") or "eastern" ("Eastern") is the basal word, one perhaps trespasses somewhat on the study of Oriental themes, but it seems convenient to consider the matter here. While during, our period the word "Gothic" is in frequent service, one questions whether it would be as easy to gather as many examples of phrases with that word as it was to collect the following. Certainly one could read far and wide before as numerous examples as those below could be found for phrases with "West", "Western", or "Occidental". Among the nouns to which "eastern" (or "Eastern") is prefixed in our verse are: Arab — bards — beauty — bower — calm — caste — clan — diamond — evening — fire — gems — gold — grandeur — heart — hunt — isles — jewels — kings — lands — legend — Magi — magician — minds — monarchs — moonstone — nabobs — Nile — opal — opulence — oppression — pageantry — parliament — patriarchs — pearls — pomp — queens — rajah — ruby — ruins — satrap — star — story — tales — talisman — warfare. Among the phrases with "east" or "East", in addition in addition to those previously given, are: the liberal East, the wondrous East, the slumberous East, the East wrought by magic, the Imperial City of the East, etc. There are almost innumerable examples of phrases formed by lists of items in the same category — the names of persons, deities, flowers, animals, etc. These may be given simply to represent the type: Byrom: Sophy, Sultan, and Czar. 22. James Montgomery: A Voiiaye Round Ihe World. SJt University of Kansas Humanistic Studies Cawthorn: Of Isis, Ibis, Lotus, Nile. Harte: Moloch and Mammon, Chiun, Dagon, Baal. Hoole's Orlando Furioso: Moors, Turks, and Tartars. Mangan: Guebre, Heathen, Jew and Gentoo. Montgomery: Jews, and Turks and Pagans. Smollett: Jews, Turks, and Pagans. Such series in Oriental verse rarely have the beauty of the list of feminine names in The Blessed Damozel; nor have they received, in all probability, such severe criticism as Nordau, in Degeneration, gave to Rossetti's passage. Certain items given above have suggested the imitative and conventional element in the phrasing of the Oriental poets. Such results are due in part to inheritance of pseudo-classical tenden- cies; in part, to the nature of Oriental themes, and particularly to their novelty in English verse. A study of conventionalized phrase is of value for its indication of the social mind of the era. Occasionally an individual poet will write the same phrase several times. Milton's "Araby the blest" occurs three times in the ob- scure verse of Thompson. Boyse responds with a thrice-used " Zembla's icy coast ". There are a number of natural associations of ideas or images which lead to association of words in the phrase. Thus we often find named together the Cross and the Crescent, the Turk and his turban, the rose and the nightingale, the Chaldean and the stars, Mahomet and Allah, Zembla and frost, snow, or ice. "Harut" and "Marut" are as naturally members of a single phrase as Damon and Pythias, or Roland and Oliver. Perhaps no better example could be given of a strictly stereotyped phrase than "Tyrian dye", though even this is varied to "Tyrian purple". One or the other of these last expressions is found in poet after poet, minor and major. The epithetical phrase proper is also very frequent, and is the result of the same influences that shaped the conventional phrase. The pseudo-classical facility in phrases of this type is impressed on every reader of Waller. To that poet it is natural to say that a trumpet is "loud", that a noise is "powerful". Is it Waller or one of his followers who is responsible for "watery sea"? Some of these epithetical phrases are taken from Greek and Latin poetry and have therefore a certain historical dignity. Others are due to lack of imagination or imaginative effort on the part of the poet; others as clearly give emphasis to certain characteristics in Ori- Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 35 ental matters which attract the fancy. The Ganges is often "sacred", the Nile often "seven-mouthed", sometimes "oozy", "slimy", frequently "fertile" or "o'erflowing". To many writers the Pyramids are simply "tall" or "old" or even "Egyptian". Shelley's fine "vapor-belted" stands out in clear relief. To one poet the Danube is "huge", to Campbell, "dark-rolling". The crocodile is "armed", or "scaly"; the desert variously "burn- ing", "dry", "scorching", "vast", or even "sandy" and "un- fruitful". The effect of a rather slight variation — looking almost like a printer's error — is seen in the comparison of "wandering Arab's tent", and "Arab's wandering tent". While the elephant is found in Chaucer, probably the first serious efforts of English poets to give it adequate description date from our period. In Langhorne this quadruped is "pon- derous", in Thomson, "huge", in Jago, "unwieldy", in Shen- stone, "tusky". Hoole, in his translation of Jerusalem Delivered, fashions a phrase with two of these adjectives and the idea of a third — "The huge elephant's unwieldy weight". Epithetical, no doubt, but more poetic are the compounds "castle-crowned", and " tower-crowned ". Shelley makes a good phrase out of very simple elements in the "wise and fearless elephant ".^^ A good example of a phrase at once conventional, epithetical, and of Oriental etymology, is "Tartar horde". What may be called the "formal poetic phrase" has some kin- ship with the epithetical phrase, but in characteristic form appears in somewhat longer expressions. Such phrases may be lyrical in quality, but are perhaps more likely to be epic or merely descrip- tive. They are often cheapened by reliance upon such details as capitalization and alliteration, and particularly by overuse; but at their best add something to the Oriental values of the verse. This is particularly true when they are virtualy translations of Oriental conceptions: as in Moore's "Apricots, Seed of the Sun", or Thomson's "stony girdle of the world", which he explains as an English rendering of the Russian "Weliki Camenypoys" — a name for the Riphean Mountains. "God and The Prophet", "Mahomet is His Prophet" are other examples of phrasing shaped in the East. Or the English expression may be credited to some 23. Shelley is not always above following leas poetic predecessors. His "Scythian frost" has no originality : we find "Scythian snows" in Fergusson, and "Scythia's snow-clad rocks" in Mickle. S6 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies foreign western poet: "Imperial Calicut" occurs several times in Mickle's Lusiad. Whatever its origin, "Mountains of the Moon" is found several times in the verse of James Montgomery, and is once used by Thomson. Sometimes the poet plays variations on his linguistic theme, as later Tennyson varied "Holy Grail" with "Holy Thing", "Holy Vessel", "Holy Cup", etc. Southey pre- sents the Simorg as the "Ancient Simorg", the "Ancient Bird", and the "Bird of Ages". This formal type of phrase is much more frequent in some poets than in others. It is characteristic of the Oriental verse of Southey, Moore, and, probably to a less extent, of Byron and Mangan. While based in part on pseudo-classical methods, it belongs in large part to what might be called pseudo-romanticism. Yet in its formal, decorative, frequently figurative qualities, it may often be a true sign of Oriental style. Its general type is familiar to any reader of the Apocalypse; and it is probably found in all literatures of peoples who love ceremony. The values of the following ex- amples will be readily perceived: Akenside: The Python of the Nile. Blair: The mighty troublers of the earth. Bowles: The City of the Sun. The Chambers of the dead. The God of silence. Byron: Blest — as the Muezzin's strain from Mecca's wall. With Maugrabee and Mamaluke. Macaulay : The Palace of the golden stairs. The city of the thousand towers. Mangan: The Flower of Flowers. The Old House with the Ebon Gates (i. e., the earth). Scales and Bridge. The Shadow of God. The Time of the Roses. Moore: The Feast of Roses. For God and Iran. The Isles of Perfume. The land of Myrrh. The Light of the Harem. Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 37 People of the Rock. Prophet of the Veil. Province of the Sun. The Spirit of Fragrance. Yizd's eternal Mansion of the Fire, The Moon of Love. The Queen of Slaves. Southey : Bowers of Paradise. Guardian of the Garden. Icy Wind of Death. Master of the Powerful Ring. Prince of the Morning. Servant of the Prophet. Sorceress of the Silver Locks. Spirit of the Sepulchre. After reading a thousand such expressions as "Afric's burning sands", "the wealth of all the Indies", and "spicy Arabian gales"; after familiarity with such prosaic expressions as "late-discovered Tibet" and "the long canals of China"; after noting the fre- quency of such phrases as those just given; after realizing the cheaper phases of the Oriental diction — one is glad to discover fresh and vigorous language in this field, whether it takes the form of humor, or of genuine individual imagination. There are, to use a figure surely appropriate in this connection, not a few oases in the "sandy waste". In a mood of distaste for the trite ex- pressions, even "flat-nosed China" seems a welcome phrase; and one is glad to read of the 'land of muslin and nankeening, the land of slaves and palankeening;' glad to try to realize the simple but surely Oriental conception in "some tiger-tamer to a nabob", to listen to Mason's "pigmy chanticleer of Bantam", or pass into the reception room to greet that "Chinese nymph of tears, green tea". Such a phrase as "snorting camels" helps one to believe the camel was sometimes a real animal to the imagination of the English poet. In biverbal phrase or longer, as a matter mainly of diction or mainly of imagery, many expressions are found, of more elevated type than those just given, which add something to the beauty or S8 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies dignity of English verse. The Lapland witch is a conventional idea, but Wordsworth gives us "Lapland roses", and Shelley the simile, "Lovely as a Lapland night". It is Shelley, also, who writes "the swart tribes of Garamant and Fez", "the sins of Islam", "the million-peopled city vast", "the rose-ensanguined ivory". Among the more decorative phrases of Byron are "a Koran of illumined dyes", "fragrant beads of amber", "lamp of fretted gold", and "Sheeraz' tribute of perfimie". Landor, for all his classicism, occasionally falls into the luxuriant style of Oriental verse, as in "Arabian gold enchased the crystal roof", and, "Myrrh, nard and cassia from three golden urns". The tendency is of course toward such decorative expressions. Wordsworthian taste found little to satisfy it in genuine Oriental style. Yet there are themes within the wide range of Oriental taste that could be expressed with a noble simplicity, and at some- what rare intervals were so expressed. Wordsworth himself writes the line, "Mindful of Him who in the Orient born", and Hawker has a similar line — "Therefore the Orient is the home of God '. Crabbe images Egypt as a "far land of crocodiles and apes", and Montgomery notes, simply enough for the nonce, how "terribly beautiful the serpent lay ". Cowper has this line in Expostulation : "The fervor and the force of Indian skies." Beddoes in general is over-ornate and often vague; but he is capable of such lines as these, even in Oriental passages: "The skull of some old king of Nile. " "Under the shadow of a pyramid. " One might suppose the thought of the desert would lead to some clear, restrained expressions. Perhaps these selections from Rogers, Beddoes, Bowles and Keble, in the order named, may be credited as such: Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 39 "Every wild cry of the desert." "A spectre of the desert deep." "The camel's shadow on the sand." "The dry unfathomed deep of sands." Peacock is hardly less severe in the line, "O'er deserts where the Siroc raves." Yet one must return again and again to the more characteristic style, as "flowery" as the plain of Zabran and the vale of Aly in Collins' fourth Eclogue. Much was written in the prose of our period concerning the figurative nature of Eastern style; and this nature of course appears in the English Oriental and Orientalized verse. In the preface to the 1 772 edition of his poems, Sir William Jones asks the reader to "compare the manner of the Asiatic poets v\'ith that of the Italians, many of whom have written in the true spirit of the Easterns. " In his text he includes a number of son- nets and portions of sonnets from Petrarch, in the original and translated into English, that the reader may make the comparison suggested in the preface. In his essay On the Poetry of the Eastern Nations he gives in transliteration an ode of Hafiz, and translates it into English thus — according to his statement, "word for word " : "O sweet gale, thou bearest the fragrant scent of my beloved; thence it is that thou hast this musky odour. Beware! do not steal: what hast thou to do with her tresses.'' O rose, what art thou, to be compared with her bright face? She is fresh, and thou art rough with thorns. O narcissus, what art thou in comj)arison of her languishing eye? Her eye is only sleepy, but thou art sick and faint. O pine, compared with her graceful stature, what honour hast thou in the garden? O wisdom, what wouldst thou choose, if to choose were in thy power, in preference to her love? O sweet basil, what art thou, to be compared with her fresh cheeks? They are perfect musk, but thou art soon withered. O Hafez, thou wilt one day attain the object of thy desire, if thou canst but support thy pain with i)atience. " This suiely is to some degree comparable with the "conceits" of the Elizabethan Muse, in- toxicated by the wine of Petrarchism. It also suggests some Oriental passages in Byron, and much in the style of Lalla Rookh. The Arabians also make many figurative comparisons in their poetry. They compare the foreheads of their mistresses to the 40 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies morning, their locks to the night; their faces to the Sun, the Moon, or to blossoms of jasmine; their straight form to a pine-tree or a javelin, etc. It is natural to expect some attention to this characteristic of Eastern poetry in the Oriental poems of Byron and Moore, and the reader is not disappointed. Both in the text and in the usual footnotes of the period, specific examples are given of the results of Arabian or Persian imagination in the form of simile or metaphor. This passage in The Giaour, is, according to Byron, an "Oriental simile": "On her fair cheek's unfading hue The young pomegranate's blossoms strew Their bloom in blushes ever new. " From Moore's annotation of Lalla Rookh we learn that "the two black standards borne before the Caliphs of the House of Abbas were called, allegorically, the Night and the Shadow". Further, that the mandrake is the Devil's candle; that falling stars are the firebrands good angels use to drive away the bad; that fingers tinted with henna are like the tips of coral branches; that the Malays call the tube-rose the "Mistress of the Night", and that in their language one word serves for "women" and "flowers". Other English poets are perhaps not quite so much inclined to follow Eastern style in its figurative aspects. In certain passages, either in verse or prose, one occasionally notices a tendency to apologize for an over-decorative quality, according to the ancient formula of Chaucer in another matter — it was so put down in ' my author'. Jeffrey opens his rather elaborate and on the whole enthusiastic review of Lalla Rookh'^^ with some approval and some disapproval of the general glamour of its style. "The beauteous forms, the dazzling splendours, the breathing odours of the East, seem at last to have found a kindred j)oet in that green isle of the West; whose Genius has long been suspected to be derived from a warmer clime, and now wantons and luxuriates in those volup- tuous regions, as if it felt that it had at length regained its native element There is not, in the volume now before us, a simile or description, a name, a trait of history, or allusion of romance which belongs to European experience; or does not indicate an entire familiarity with the life, the dead nature, and 24. In the Edinburgh Review, November, 1817. Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme If.! the learning of the East. Nor are these barbaric ornaments thinly scattered to make up a show. They are showered lavishly over all the work; and form, perhaps too much, the staple of the poetry — and the riches of that which is chiefly distinguished for its richness." But the critic adds: "we rather think we speak the sense of most readers . . . that the effect of the whole is to mingle a certain feeling of disappointment with that of admiration! to dazzle, more than to enchant — and, in the end, more frequently to startle the fancy, and fatigue the attention, by the constant succession of glittering images and high-strained emotions, than to maintain a rising interest, or win a growing sympathy, by a less profuse or more systematic display of attractions." Such unfavorable opinion of the highly colored style of Oriental poetry, or of poetry Orientalized in England, did not begin with Jeffrey. At the opening of our period Collins wrote, apparently with the idea of defense in mind,^^ of the "rich and figurative" style of the Arabian and Persian poetry in contrast with the "strong and nervous" style of his countrymen. Shortly before Jeffrey's review appeared, John Foster had occasion to review a translation of the Ramayunar^ He opened his remarks thus: "Scarcely so much as a third part of a century has passed away, since a large proportion of the wise men of here in Europe were found looking, with a devout and almost trembling reverence, toward the awful mysteries of Sanscrit literature." The dis- appointment of the sturdy soul of Foster when the "mysteries" arrived in the form of the translated masterpiece is evident throughout his review. He writes of the Ramayuna, it is "a formless jumble .... [it] will encounter utter contempt in Europe .... The lingo in which these feats are narrated, defies all imitation Xn insurmountable obstacle to the popularity of this sort of reading in Europe . . . would be the vast number of names by which each of the gods or heroes is designated", etc. It is well, perhaps, that in most of our Orientalized verse the rich coloring is not emphasized, that the sparkling similes and metaphors are often a mere passing adornment of some more or less simple English conception, in some cases quite practical, even 25. See the original preface of his Eclogues. Professor Phelps' statement in The English Romantic Movemfnt (p. 95) that Collins "apologized" for the florid manner of Abdallah of Tauris seems a little too strong. 26. See his paper on Sanscrit Literature; listed in Appendix, I, C, 2. ^2 University of Kcuisas Humanistic Studies didactic. The following examples may indicate the quality and range of such figures. Few poets of our period attained the sim- plicity of style found in Sohrab and Rusturtiy but in style Arnold's poem is hardly Oriental. Blake: "Black as marble of P^gypt. " Campbell: "As easily as the Arab reins his steed." "That I^pas-tree of power." "Sultan of the sky." (For the eagle.) Chatterton : "Swift as the elk. " Hartley Coleridge: "Keener than the Tartar's arrow." Keble: "The tresses of the palm. " Lloyd: "In curves and angles twists about Like Chinese railing, in and out. " (Of the prosody of the Pindaric ode.) Montgomery: "Mad as a Libyan wilderness by night With all its lions up, in chase or fight." Praed: "Swift as . . . the flight of a shaft from Tartar string." Procter: "Witching as the nightingale first heard Beneath the Arabian heavens." "Wild as a creature in the forest born That springs on Asian sands." Shelley: "A Babylon of crags and aged trees. " "Rose like the crest of cobra-di-capel. " Southey: "Proud as a Turk at Constantinople." Wilson: "... lovely as the western sky To the wrapt Persian worshipping the sun. " Beddoes shapes a common metaphor into the phrase, "tears of crocodile coinage". Another expression of his is " the hieroglyphic human soul"; still another, unhappy perhaps but forceful in its way, "whole Niles of wine". That he can attain directness and simplicity even in his metaphors is shown by this selection : all the minutes of my life Are sands of a great desert." CHAPTER IV Oriental Passage and Poem Orientalism in English verse appears in the word, the phrase, the passage, the poem, and group of poems. In this chapter some discussion is given to the last three of these units of structure. The passage varies in length from one line to a himdred lines or more. As a matter of significance in the history of English poetry, Orientalism is concerned in large part with these thousands of passages, of varied tone, on varied themes, scattered through the most diverse poems by poets of widely difi"erent schools, from Chaucer to Kipling. As examples of the couplet passage, we may take the following, the first from Piaed's Australasia, the second from Newman's Solitvde : " On thee, on thee I gaze, as Moslems look To the blest Islands of their Prophet's Book." "By this the Arab's kindling thoughts expand. When circling skies inclose the desert sand." Occasionally one finds an Oriental stanza as well unified, as distinct from the context, as some of the best known stanzas of The Fairy Queen or The Castle of Indolence. A few stanzas of this type occur in some of the poems of The Christian Year. In William Thompson's Hymn to May, the thirteenth stanza is almost a poem in itself; if not a poem of very high quality: "All as the phenix, in Arabian skies. New-burnished from his spicy funeral pyres, At large, in roseal undulation, flies; His plumage dazzles and the gazer tires; Around their king the plumy nations wait. Attend his triumph, and augment his state: He, towering, claps his wings and wins th 'ethereal height." 44 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies Poems which may be called Oriental in their entirety often contain passages of heightened Oriental value, either in diction or in presentation of sharply defined theme; just as in pastoral poems there are frequent passages of pastoralism par excellence. The Bride of Miss Baillie, for example, is Oriental as a whole, but the Nirvana passage at the close of I, 2, and the palanquin, elephant, and monkey passages in the opening of the next scene, stand out in rather high relief. There are in our period numerous poems of a type which natur- ally includes Oriental reference. For convenience we may call this type the "world-poem". In poems of this class the poet passes from country to country, either for the mere delight of wandering, or for the purpose of tracing the history or present status of some idea, some social condition, or some phase of nature. Without attempting a complete enumeration, the following poems of this type or closely allied with it may be named: Akenside: The Pleasures of the Imagination. Armstrong: The Art of Preserving Health. Blair; The Grave. Bowles: The Spirit of Discovery by Sea. The Spirit of Navigation. Campbell: The Pleasures of Hope. Cawthorn : The Vanity of Human Enjoyments. Coleridge: The Destiny of Nations. Dyer: The Fleece. Langhorne: Fables of Flora. Mallet : The Excursion. James Montgomery: A Voyage Round the World. Pollok: The Course of Time. Rogers: Ode to Superstition. Smollett: Ode to Independence. Joseph Warton : Fashion : A Satire. Ode to Liberty. Young: Night Thoughts. These all contain Oriental oassages. For present purposes Montgomery's poem of imaginary travel is one of the best. It opens with the stanza : Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 45 "Emblem of eternity, TJnbeginning, endless sea! Let me launch my soul on thee. " We first touch earth in Greenland — a favorite country with this author; then pass to Labrador, Canada, New England, Pennsyl- vania, the West Indies, across South Anterica; to begin the Oriental portion of the trip in '*pale Siberia's deserts". In one or another poem with the world-view, we find the roll- call of great rivers, as in Peacock's Genius of the Thames, of famous cities, of lands and of peoples. Probably there are no stranger Oriental passages in any English poet than some of those in Blake; yet in the first quotation below we have a bare simplicity, suggesting some of the American catalogues of Whitman, which is in striking contrast with the mysticism of the second passage: "France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Poland, Russia, Sweden, Turkey, Arabia, Palestine, Persia, Hindostan, China, Tar- tary, Siberia, Egypt, Lybia, Ethiopia, Guinea, Caffraria, Negro- land, Morocco, Congo, Zaara, Canada, Greenland, Carolina, Mexico, Peru, Patagonia, Amazonia, Brazil, — Thirty-two Nations. "^ "Egypt is the eight steps within, Ethiopia supports his pillars, Lybia and the Lands unknown are the ascent without: Within is Asia and Greece, ornamented with exquisite art; Persia and Media are his halls, his inmost hall is Great Tartary; China and India and Siberia are his temples for entertainment. "^** A form of simple geographical concept is found in what may be called the "compass-passage". It often has obvious affinity with the "China to Peru" phrase noticed in Chapter III. "Simple" in general, for in Blake, again, the cardinal points of the compass are given mystical meaning. As suggested by some of the titles given above, this or that poet traces poetry, superstition, liberty, commerce, disease or death 27. Jerusalem, Chapter III (72). 28. Ibid., Chapter III (58). 46 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies around the globe, and for all these themes and others the Orient offers its contribution. Thus in Fashion: A Satire, Joseph Warton selects from the East a curious custom of the Tartar, and of the Chinese, and his India is a land, " Where sainted Brachmans, sick of life, retire, To die spontaneous on the spicy pyre. " Such travels of fancy are not new in our period. Jt will be remem- bered that Thomson journeys far and wide to find appropriate examples of the heat and fructifying power of summer, and the storms and desolation of winter; not forgetting to visit the Orient in both seasons. A special interest attaches to Oriental passages in poems of Celtic, Gothic, Occidental, and Biblical quality; largely by way of contrast. Brief touches that might be considered Oriental are found in Miss Baillie's William Wallace;^^ Hogg, in his poem on the same hero, introduces a couplet on the "great Tartar". In Montgomery's Greenland we find this passage of unmistakable Eastern flavor: "Unwearied as the camel, day by day. Tracks through unwatered wilds his doleful way. Yet in his breast a cherished draught retains, To cool the fervid current in his veins. While from the sun's meridian realms he brings The gold and gems of Ethiopian kings. "^*' Miss Baillie's Christopher Columbus contains at least a mention of the Moors, while in Rogers' poem on Columbus there is a passage of six lines given to the Oriental desert.^^ No more interesting example of contrast could be found than this passage from Rogers' Human Life, though the poem as a whole is English or vague in setting: "At night, when all, assembling round the fire. Closer and closer draw till they retire, A tale is told of India or Japan, Of merchants from Golcond or Astracan, What time wild Nature revelled unrestrained. And Sinbad voyaged and the Caliphs reigned: — Of some Norwegian, wliile the icy gale 29. Strophes .58 and 91. 30. Canto I. 31. Canto VIII. Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme A7 Rings in her shrouds and beats her iron sail. Among the snowy Alps of Polar seas Immovable — forever there to freeze! Or some great caravan, from well to well Winding as darkness on the desert fell. In their long march, such as the Prophet bids, To Mecca from the land of Pyramids, And in an instant lost — a hollow wave Of burning sand their everlasting grave!" Whether we include Wells' Joseph and His Brethren among Oriental poems or not is a matter of definition. Its source is in the Old Testament and its coloring partly Hebraic, but against the general background there are several passages of the clearest Oriental value; especially the Prologue of Act II, and in I, 3, II, 3 and III, 3. In III, 3, in the midst of a rich Oriental context we have this excellent example of a brief faunal passage : "The supple panther and white elephant, The hoary lion with his ivory fangs, The barred tiger with his savage eye. The untamed zebra, beasts from foreign lands," etc. Campbell's Gertrude of Wyoming is an interesting poem, showing several distinct historical influences. Written largely in Spen- serian stanza, with scenes and characters of the new world, and 'entirely Germanized in style', it is not without its Oriental touch, slight though it be. Stanza "24 of Part II closes with the lines, "And more than the wealth that loads the breeze When Coromandel's ships return from Indian seas. " It is interesting to remember that the word "Indian" is of frequent occurrence in the poem, but outside this passage refers to the red man of America. Many other examples could be given of Oriental passages in a context which gives them a certain strangeness or at least a cer- tain relief. Such are the references to the Eastern life, even if generally rather prosaic, in Crabbe's realistic, novelistic tales; the numerous citation of Oriental standards for the sake of comparing English values in Wordsworth's Prelude; and the "parable" of Eastern type introduced into Lamb's Wife's Trial to help unravel complexities at the end of the story. The Oriental passage sometimes serves to jjoint a moral, some- 1^8 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies times to give a bit of strange, foreign qnality to commonjjlace characters or situation. It often appears in the form of simile or metaphor. As to theme, it varies from a general conception of the Orient, or of some large section of it, to very specific subjects. The Oriental theme in general is discussed in the two following chapters. Among the common subjects of concrete nature are the car of Juggernaut, the caravan, the camel, the elephant, the rich natural products of the Orient, the hidden sources of the Nile, the ruins of Babylon, Palmyra, or other cities, the return of a traveller from the East, the tyranny of the Turk, the cold of Siberia, the gypsies in England, memories of Arabian Nights, etc. We have previously noted the general geographical passage. There are, however, several types of passage which may be given a further word here. One of these presents the flower theme; another the jewel theme. A botanical passage in English verse is not necessarily Oriental, l)ut in many cases it is partly Orientalized. We find examples in Collins' third Eclogue, in Mason's English Garden, in John Scott's Ejpistles, and elsewhere. Probably for Oriental if not for poetic quality no passage could surpass this from Jones' Enchanted Fruit: "Light-pinioned gales, to charm the sense, Their odorif'rous breath dispense; From belas pearl'd, or pointed, bloom. And malty rich, they steal perfume: There honey-scented singarhar. And juhy, like a rising star. Strong chempa, darted by camdew, And mulsery of paler hue, Cayora, which the ranies wear In tangles of their silken hair. Round babul-flow'rs and gulachein Dyed like the shell of beauty's queen, Sweet mindy press'd for crimson stains. And sacred tulsy pride of plains. With sewty, small unblushing rose. Their odours mix, their tints disclose." The flower passage may be Orientalized; the jewel passage in our period is naturally Oriental in general, for obvious reasons. The jewels themselves and in many cases their names, came from the East. In the Bible there are three distinct passages of this type; in Exodus XXVIII, 17-20, Ezekiel XXVIII, 13, and Reve- Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 49 lations XXI, 19-20. All three passages, though written at long intervals, include, besides gold, the beryl, emerald, jasper, sapphire, sardius and topaz. In two passages we find amethyst, carbuncle, diamond, onyx, and sardonyx; while the following are found in only one passage: agate, chalcedony, chrysoprasus, chrysolyte, jacinth, and pearls. The jewel passage in Thomson's Summer — introduced as evidence of the beneficent power of the sun, "Parent of Seasons" — names only the amethyst, diamond, emerald, opal, ruby, sapphire, and topaz, but with the descriptions given occupies twenty lines. Later passages of this type are found in Hoole's translations of Ariosto and Tasso, in Brooke, Crabbe, Harte, Procter, Shenstone, and other poets. Harte's passage''^ is interesting in this point: for all the jewels — a standard list — except the turquoise he gives a Biblical reference; for the jewel named a reference to an authority stating that "The true oriental tur- quoise comes out of the old rock in the mountains of Piriskua, about eighty miles from the town of Moscheda." The Oriental poem, as we have seen, may occasionally be written in Greek or Latin; but such poems are rare. In length it varies from a few lines to epic proportions. Montgomery's Parrot con- tains only thirty-three words; his Pelican and Ostrich being slightly longer. Jones' To Lady Jones contains less than one hundred words. There may perhaps be some epigrams or epitaphs of couplet length that could be called Oriental, but they do not seem at all frequent; nor do we find the quatrain, later made so famous by Fitzgerald, popular in our period. Some poems with Oriental title and setting prove to contain a very slight element of Oriental diction or real Oriental color. The only word which could in any sense be called Oriental in Jones' Chinese Ode Paraphrased is "ivory". In the same poet's Song from the Persian, "lily", "cypress", and "rose" must serve for Eastern terms. There is doubtless conveyed to most readers, something of a vaguely "Indian" atmosphere by Shelley's Sere- nade. Yet it contains but a single word of genuine Oriental quality. That word, though found in other P^nglish poems, is habitually associated by many readers, one may imagine, with this particular poem. In Kuhla Khan, the per cent of Oriental words is two or three; in Mangan's Karamanian Exile, on account In Thomas a Ketnpis: A Vision: beginning "The Gold of Ophir." 50 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies of the repetition of the word "Karaman", the proportion rises to some fifteen or sixteen per cent. For much higher proportions than this we must go, not to the poem, hut to the phrase or line; at most to the brief passage. The Orientahsm of our period is not to any remarkable degree expressed by novel or characteristic verse forms. A large number of the Eastern poems are written in a versification which served English poets of various tastes — in heroic couplets, octosyllabics, blank verse, Spenserian stanza, ottava rima, and varied lyric stanzas, mostly of simple type. As to rhythm, there is some use of humorous anapestics, some of niore serious triple movement, as in Byron's Destruction of Sennacherib. There seems little or nothing so characteristic of this taste as the short lines with rugged rhythm and alliterative tendency were characteristic of the Gothic taste. That is not the whole story of Orientalized verse, however. Jones gives us at least one ghazel, in transliteration, not transla- tion; and one at least is written by Mangan. Another is found in Moore's Twopenny Post Bag, Letter VI.-^^ Jones writes under the titles of several of his poems *in the measure of the original', and in a few cases rewrites in more regular English verse to bring out the difference. To one unacquainted with Eastern prosody, there is nothing very distinctive of the Orient in such lines as "With cheeks where eternal paradise bloomed, Sweet Laili the soul of Kais had consumed. " There is something strange, for the period, however, in the ver- sification of the Ode of J ami : "How sweet the gale of morning breathes! Sweet news of my delight he brings: News, that the rose will soon approach the tuneful bird of night he brings." There is perhaps fully as much interest in the rendition of A Turkish Ode of Mesihi into paragraphs of poetic prose. Jones, who was a translator of Pindar, writes the Hymn to Durga in the form of a regular Pindaric ode; and it seems likely that the extensive use of this form in the Eighteenth Century had its effect on the 33. This form is found among the burlesque poems of Thackeray. Oshorne: Oriental Diction and Theme 51 Oriental verse of other poets, including, perhaps, Southey. All of the poets after the Lyrical Ballads, with few exceptions, were interested in experiments in English verse, and Southey carried into the composition of The Curse of Kehama and Thalaba a definite purpose to embody his Orientalism in appropriate versi- fication. To say the least. Oriental verse from Jones to Mangan showed the general tendency to substitute anything and every- thing for the conventional heroic couplet. As a detail, the fre- quency of the refrain, from Collins' Eclogues to Lalla Rookh may be mentioned. While Orientalism, so far as noted, produced no sonnet sequences, it has given a number of typical and worthy poems in sonnet form. One may recall again that the Sardanapalus of Surrey is both a sonnet and an Oriental poem. We could not afford to lose from our poetry the Crocodile of Beddoes, the Ozymandias of Shelley, or the sonnets of Keats and Shelley on the Nile. Simply as poems, these, with Kubla Khan, are among the best products of Oriental taste during our period. The titles of some of our poems are flat or without specific Oriental quality. On the other hand, one has only to remember Lalla Rookh, The Curse of Kehama, Kubla Khan, Asia, as well as among poems of minor fame. Juggernaut, Palmyra, The Caravan in the Desert, and a host of others. The Wail of the Three Khalen- deers seems as good as Mandalay. If one wishes something in lighter vein, he may choose The King of the Crocodiles, from Southey; or Fm Going to Bombay, and The Kangaroos: A Fable, from Hood. The miscellaneous character of the verse forms of Oriental poetry is suggestive of the variety in the poetic types themselves. The list of these types is long; the roll of forms distinctly Oriental, much shorter. We find poetic types ranging from the dirge to the epic, and including the love lyric, vers de societi, epithalamium, fable, eclogue, ode, ballad, fictitious epistle, allegory, battle song, hymn, tale, parody, inscription, serenade, drama, and other forms. The proverb, so familiar in Old Testament literature, seems rare, even in passages; but Southey opens his Sonnet XI with 'Beware a speedy friend!' the Arabian said." Among the poetic types which seem characteristic of the Orient, or at least of the Oriental taste in England, are the fable, the tale. 52 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies the drama, and the eclogue. The tale has been considered at length, for the earlier part of the Eighteenth Century, by Miss Conant. A word may be given here to the drama, the eclogue, and the translation. The "ballad" and the "ode" are often falsely so named in the poetry of the earlier part of our period. A complete account of the Oriental drama from 1740 to 1840 would require a separate paper. The type is as old as the Eliza- bethan era, and there are signs of it in the medieval epoch. Ori- ental plays of the same general character as those of the Restora- tion period continued to be produced in England until the Romantic Movement was triumphant. Hughes' Siege of Damascus appeared in 1720, Aaron Hill's Zara in 1736. The influence of Voltaire's Orientalism is to be traced in Zara and in later plays. Among the plays of our own period, we may name Miss Baillie's Bride and Constantine Paleologus; Miller's Mahomet the Imposter; Irene; Hellas; and Sardana/palus. It is interesting to note some Oriental elements in two "oratorios" of the period, both Biblical in subject and general treatment — Brooke's Ruth, and Jago's Adam. Many plays not entirely Eastern include some Oriental elements. Miss Baillie's Martyr has as a prominent character, Orceres, a Parthian ; Brown's Barbarossa is Algerian in setting; Coleman's Mountaineers is Moorish in part. Wells' Joseph and His Brethren was noted a few pages above. For prologues, we may name Wells' again, and add Goldsmith's Prologue to Zoheide. This couplet from Young's Epistle to Lord Lansdoivne is of interest: "Then with a sigh returns our audience home From Venice, Egypt, Persia, Greece, or Rome." To return for a moment to Constantine Paleologus. The settings include Mahomet's camp near Constantinople; the interior of St. Sophia; a view of the city in the background, "seen in the dimness of cloudy moonlight"; and this — which perhaps has a slight sug- gestion of Vathek: "a large sombre room, with mystical figures and strange characters painted upon the walls, and lighted only by one lamp, burning upon a table near the front of the stage". At the opening of Act III, Mahomet is discovered "sitting alone in the eastern manner ". At the opening of Act I, Scene 2, of Beddoes' Death's Jest-Book we read this stage direction: "The African Coast: a woody solitude near the sea. In the back ground ruins overshadowed by the characteristic vegetation of the Oriental Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 53 regions". The chief Oriental element in Dodsley's brief Rex et Pontifex is in the stage directions. Among those who attempted Oriental opera were Dodsley, Lewis, and Miss Mitford. In the Eighteenth Century the writing of eclogues was a habit of English poets. One finds 'Amoebsean Eclogues', 'Moral Eclo- gues', "Sacred Eclogues', 'Town Eclogues', and even 'English Eclogues'. It is not strange that we should also find eclogues African, Arabian, Chinese, East Indian, Persian; and a group devoted to life at Botany Bay. Some of these have considerable Oriental color; others have comparatively little. The shepherd life is no doubt correctly associated with certain parts of the Orient, but one often feels that the pastoralism of these pieces is pseudo-Latin rather than vitally Eastern. Collins' mature view of his success in his pastoral venture was not favorable. The life of the caravan and the harem seems more distinctly Oriental than the keeping of the flocks — as the conventional poetic shepherd kept them — or making love to a pastoral mistress. Real translation of Oriental poems is found in Mrs. Montagu — with the aid of other wits — and in Jones. Pseudo-translation and paraphrase seem far more characteristic of the English Orientalism of the Eighteenth Century. It is the period of Chatterton, Ireland, and Macpherson. Why should not Collins tell his readers that his Eclogues were written by 'Abdallah, a native of Tauris'? He closes the preface of the first edition with the reflection, "the works of orientals contain many peculiarities, and through defect of language, few European translators can do them justice". Mangan, at the end of our period, announces that his Hundred- Leafed Rose is "By Mohammed ben AH Nakkash, called Lamii, or, The Dazzling". Pseudo-translations appear from the x\rabic, Chinese, Persian, and Turkish. None from the Japanese have been noted. The real translations of the period, in the main, were from the old familiar sources — Greek, liatin, Italian, French; and from the newly-discovered Germanic or Celtic literatures. For the reception of one real translation, see above, page 41. Among other translators of note were Sir John Bowring, Joshua Marshman, and Sir Charles Wilkins. The tendency in translation and in paraphrase seems to be to expand, as was the case in earlier periods — in the rendering of the Psalms, for example. Jones' paraphrase of the Chinese Ode in twenty-four lines is followed by a "verbal translation" in only 54 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies nine lines. His translation of A Persian Song of Hafiz is written in fifty-four lines; the transliteration occupies thirty-six. The setting of the Oriental poem is as various as its form or theme. It may appear in a real letter (Mrs. Montagu), in an essay (Jones), in prose fiction (Mrs. Radclifte and Walter Scott), or in a prose frame (Lalla Rookh). As a lyric it appears in the long narra- tive poem, Childe Harold, for example; or in the drama, The Bride, for example. It can be found as a member of a group of Oriental poems, as in the Eclogues of Collins and John Scott; or in non- Oriental groups, as in Mrs. Hemans' Lays of Many Lands and Songs of Spain, Keble's Christian Year and Moore's National Airs. The Oriental poems under the last title, as well as poems by Burns and Byron, are among those written, in imagination at least, for Eastern tunes. The number of Oriental poems written in England from the death of Pope to the opening of the Victorian era will depend on the definition of the vital adjective. In the Appendix^* we have listed about 370 poems. Many of these would doubtless be rejected by a more exact critical method. Many others would be added by a more sweeping examination of the verse of the period. The number as well as the variety of the poems, in any case, is sufficient to indicate a wide-spread vogue, however artificial in part; a vogue much more extensive in this period than before, and destined to live and develop, in some respects with more satisfac- tory poetic results, in the Victorian era, and in the Twentieth Century. No English poet of any note has devoted himself entirely to the Orient. Our review has made it clear that in many poets Oriental- ism is simply one poetic experiment among several. The Oriental poet is usually an eclectic poet. Even Jones, leader in the move- ment, is a Grecian and a Latinist. In such poets as Chatterton, Moore, Montgomery, Southey, and Mrs. Hemans, the Eastern element is accompanied by elements offering the greatest contrast. In spite of Lalla Rookh and Byron's Turkish tales, there seems to be in our period no poet, with the exception of Jones, whose name is so intimately associated with Orientalized poetry as are the names of Fitzgerald, Edwin Arnold, and Kipling. The experiments of the early Romantic Movement, and of its 34. See the pages under I, A. Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 55 era of triumph, were subject to that attack of the parodist which awaits most conspicuous novelties. The Rebuilding, imitating the diction and prosody of The Curse of Kehama, is one of the best poems in Rejected Addresses. Among favorites for the parodist were Kubla Khan and that oldtime deUght of youthful elocution- ists, Casabianca. For further results of this aftermath of the Oriental taste, one may examine the pages edited by Jerrold and Leonard, Hamilton, and Henry Morley. CHAPTER V The East and the West In this chapter we shall consider some of the common themes of English Oriental verse which are concerned with the relations of the East to England or other western lands. The subjects are so numerous that only some of the more prominent or the more significant, for one reason or another, can be mentioned. Our poetry records many objects which came into England from the East as a matter of course, not under stimulus of any special Oriental taste. The catalogue of these would be a long one, and doubtless a dry one, of commercial and prosaic value rather than poetic. Here belong the drugs and spices, including coffee, various kinds of tea, cinnamon, nutmegs; articles of dress; house- hold pets such as the canary bird — if we credit that to the Orient — and the parrot; the animals of the menagerie;, jewels; gold acquired in Eastern residence, and even stocks in Eastern commercial ventures; and the mummy of public or private collection. This couplet in Young is a fair sample of much of the verse which presents this material: "Cold Russia costly furs from far, Hot China sends her painted jar. "*^ "Chunee", London elephant of the early Nineteenth Century, is immortalized in Rejected Addresses^^ and in Hood's Address to Mr. Cross, of Exeter Change. Hood's Ode to the Cameleopard is one of the best humorous Oriental poems of the period. Cawtho/•^?, -^j^ The Antiquarians, pictures a dispute over a coin, in which on enthusiast gives his view thus : " ' It came, ' says he, 'or I will be whipt. From Memphis in the Lower Egypt'." 35. Imperium Pelagi: Strain I. 36. See Playhouse Musings. 56 Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 57 Young writes of an imaginary zealous book-collector: " So high the generous ardor of the man For Romans, Greeks, and Orientals ran. "^^ Cowper has occasion to note that linen is imported from India; and from the same country comes the cane for his sofa. A passage of higher imaginative quality than those just given is found in PoUok's sombre Course of Time. In Book VII, his vision of the wonders of the resurrection day includes this some- what startling conception : "The Memphian mummy, that from age to age, Descending, bought and sold a thousand times, In hall of curious antiquary stowed, Wrapped in mysterious weeds, the wondrous theme Of many an erring tale, shook off its rags; And the brown son of Egypt stood beside The European, his last purchaser." Some of the trees of England and some of the flowers are either of Oriental origin or have Eastern associations recognized by the poets. The laurel is a "daughter of the East"; Langhorne in the Fables of Flora tells the reader of the Bactrian origin of the crown imperial. There is not much evidence in the verse of our i>€riod of the presence of real Oriental persons of public note in England. Fol- lowing the method used in such prose as The Citizen of the World, this or that poet introduces a fictitious gentleman from the East reporting his observations to the home-land. Probably Moore's fictitious letter From Abdallah, in London, to Mohassan, in Ispa- han^^ is one of the best pieces of this type. Among the more obscure real figures are the negro boxer in Moore, and the ro|>e- dancer "Mahomet", "said to be a Turk", in Samuel Johnson. Southey addresses an ode to a visiting dignitary from Russia, and if we include the Pelew Islands in the Orient, Bowles' poem Abba Thule's Lament for His Son Prince Le Boo may be mentioned. We are told that the Cashmerian heroine and the hero of Shelley's unpublished Zeinab and Kathema arrive in London during the story. Moore has a poem on a "beautiful East-Indian", and Lovibond writes a series of love-lyrics, of little poetic merit, to 37. Love of Fame: Satire II. 38. In The Twopenny Post Bag; Letter VI. 68 University of Kansas Humanistic Strldies "an Asiatic lady" in England — a lady who causes some distur- bance in the mind of an English woman friend of the poet. The gypsy in England is a theme in poetry both romantic and realistic, appearing in "Christopher North", Crabbe, Words- worth, The Gypsy's Malison of Lamb, The Gypsy's Dirge of Walter Scott, and in many other poets and poems. Sometimes a pictur- esque figure about the camp-fire at night, at other times the gj'psy is a sly and tattered trickster among the young people of an Eng- lish village, or a vagrant brought before the local representative of English law. There are many examples of the theme, " the Englishman home from the Orient". Various are the gifts they bring back from the East. One returns with ill health, one with memories of cap- tivity, many, of course, in poems of the middle ages, with the battle scars of the Crusades. A character in Praed's Arrivals at a Watering-Place is "always talking of Bengal". Crabbe's realistic picture of provincial English society presents several gentlemen returned from the Orient. One was a Captain who "rich from India came", bringing pearls, diamonds, costly silks and other treasures, which his will left to a feminine relative who loved to hear them praised.^^ In another passage in Crabbe"*" appears a "sick tall figure" of a man who has returned from India with wealth gained and health and spirits destroyed; who moves rest- lessly from i)lace to place in his native land without gaining happi- ness. It will be remembered that in The Fatal Curiosity it is the hoard of gold and jewels Young Wilmot brings from the East which is the immediate cause of the tragedy. The Oriental taste in England is shown in many ways in the verse of the period. Horses or other domestic pets are named "Sultan" or "Sultana"; decorations in the drawing-room and fanciful structures in garden or park are built in Oriental manner. In Threnodia Augustalis, Goldsmith described a place on the Thames where novelty "From China borrows aid to deck the scene." There are various other references to similar matters; the fence irregular as the metrical form of the Pindaric ode, the sumraerhouse — kiosk, pagoda, or of fashion ' Gothic or Chinese '. In one of the balls 3Q. The Parish Register: Burials. 40. The Borough; Letter IX. Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 59 Praed describes, several characters are dressed in Oriental costume, and in Peacock's prose farce, The Dilettanti, at the opening of Act I, Scene 4, " Miss Comfit, as a Sultana, advances to the front of the stage", and Tactic enters "as a Turk". In humorous spirit Moore 'Turkifies' current politics or politicians in England; or pictures Grimaldi grimacing before the Mandarins in China.*^ In deeper manner, the Oriental taste is revealed with reference to the literature of the East, and the English literature modeled thereon. Orientalism throughout our period was not an accident or an unconscious result. Much comment is made upon the cult in prose criticism — from which a few notes may be taken — and in the verse itself. We are told that Collins wrote his Eclogues when seventeen years old, after reading the description of Persia in Salmon's Modern History. In later years he spoke disdainfully of the pieces, called them his "Irish Eclogues", and affirmed that "they had not in them one spark of orientalism ".^^ An early critic, however. Dr. Langhorne, speaks as follows of the second eclogue: " All the advantages that any species of poetry can derive from the novelty of the subject and scenery, this eclogue possesses. The route of a camel-driver is a scene that scarce could exist in the imagination of an European, and of its attendant distress he could have no idea. "^^ Nearly a century later Mangan wrote pseudo- Oriental translations because "Hafiz was more acceptable to editors than Mangan".'** Between Collins and Mangan there is sufficient and varied evidence of the English taste for Orientalized verse. John Scott, himself an Oriental poet, gives this view in his poem On the Ingenious Mr. Jones's Elegant Translations: "The Asian Muse, a stranger fair! Becomes at length Britannia's care; And Hafiz' lays, and Sadi's strains. Resound along our Thames's plains. They sing not all of streams and bowers. Or banquet scenes, or social hours; Nor all of Beauty's blooming charms, Or War's rude fields, or feats of arms; But Freedom's lofty notes sincere. 41. See The Twopenny Post Bag. Letter II, and The Fudoe Fatnilu in Paris, Letter IX. 42. Page 10 of the edition of Collins cited in the Appendix. 43. Ihid., p. 131. 44. Miles, vol. Ill, p. 456. 60 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies And Virtue's moral lore severe. But ah ! they sing for us no more ! The scarcely-tasted pleasure's o'er! For he, the bard whose tuneful art Can best their vary'd themes impart — For he, alas! the task declines; And Taste, at loss irreparable, repines. Churchill, not so much moved by Gothicism, sentimentalism, or Orientalism, as many of his contemporaries, does not give so favorable an account in the opening lines of The Farewell: "Farewell to Europe, and at once farewell To all the follies which in Europe dwell; To Eastern India now, a richer clime. Richer, alas ! in everything but rhyme, The Muses steer their course; and, fond of change. At large, in other worlds, desire to range; Resolved, at least, since they the fool must play. To do it in a different place, and way. " Englishmen did not need to wait till Tennyson's day to read verses on Recollections of the Arabian Nights. The passage on this subject in Wordsworth's Prelude is familiar. In Silford Hall Crabbe tells his readers that before Sir Walter wrote there were " . . . . fictions wild that please the boy. Which men, too, read, condemn, reject, enjoy. *' Of the library he is describing in the same poem, he says : "Arabian Nights, and Persian Tales were there, One volume each, and both the worse for wear. " He returns to this theme in Master William: "Arabian Nights, and Persian Tales, he read. And his pure mind with brilliant wonders fed. The long romances, wild Adventures fired His stirring thoughts: he felt like Boy inspired. The cruel fight, the constant love, the art Of vile magicians, thrilled his inmost heart. " Southey apparently has the English Oriental verse in mind when he writes in The Retrospect, in a spirit of reaction, perhaps — Osborne: Oriental Dictiofi and Theme 61 "Oh, while well pleased the lettered traveller roams Among old temples, palaces, and domes; Strays with the Arab o'er the wreck of time, Where erst Palmyra's towers arose sublime; Or marks the lazy Turk's lethargic pride. And Grecian slavery on llyssus' side, — Oh, be it mine, aloof from public strife. To mark the changes of domestic life. The altered scenes where once I bore a part, Where every change of fortune strikes the heart I" It is curious to note how many times Wordsworth in The Prelude uses an Oriental standard to estimate the value of native English delights. Thus he says, that there was a time in his youth when all the glories of Eastern history or fiction "fell short, far short, Of what my fond simplicity believed And thought of London. " In his boyhood, the dramatic performances in the country barn pleased him more than Genii in a "dazzling cavern of romance". The natural surroundings of his early days were "more exquisitely fair" than the magnificent gardens — Avhich he describes in true, luxuriant Oriental style — shaped for the delight of the Tartarian dynasty. At Rydal Mount he records that the English mountain spring furnished water which might have been envied by Persian kings. It almost seems that Wordsworth, having determined to devote his imagination to simple and native life, fought against the Oriental taste of the day, thereby revealing its power perhaps. When we turn to the Oriental element in western life outside of England, we find probably a less varied account than that we have just surveyed; but one rich in interest. Cooper's Ver-Vert is an amusing record of an East Indian parrot among the nuns of France. In Grainger's Sugar-Cane and a score of other poems the character and life of the negro in the West Indies or in the United States are pictured. We have referred before to the Parthian Prince who moves amid Roman scenes, in the days of Nero, in Miss Baillie's The Martyr. There is a brief and quite different allusion to Eastern visitors in Italy in Rogers' account of life at Venice. "Who flocked not thither", the poet asks, — 62 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies "To celebrate her Nuptials with the Sea? To wear the mask, and mingle in the crowd With Greek, Armenian, Persian. "^^ A volume could doubtless be written on the English poetic treatment of the Moors in Spain. This is a frequent theme in our period, and is found in drama, lyric, and narrative. The Alhambra, the wars between Moors and Spaniards, including the achieve- ments of the Cid, the loves between man of one race and maiden of the other, the Moorish dance and song, the relation of the Mohammedans in Spain to those in Africa, are among the specific subjects. In most poets such themes suggested a romantic inter- pretation; and in such a poetess as Mrs. Hemans they were among the resources of the sentimental muse. Some of the diction of Oriental derivation appearing in the verse of our period, reached England through Spain. The Englishman of our period was a traveller, either in fancy or in the flesh; for purposes of pleasure, culture, business or religion. In Rhymes on the Road, Moore names Egypt, Carolina, and China, as regions where his fellow countrymen might be found, and generalizes thus: "Go where we may — rest where we will, Eternal London haunts us still. " It is not strange that English verse should contain many refer- ences to Englishmen in the Orient. The group is a motley one, including sailor and soldier, painter and priest, bishop and society belle. Of the Oriental poets themselves, several visited one part or an- other of the Orient. Before our period began, Mrs. Montagu pro- duced Verses Written in the Chiosk of the British Palace, at Pera, Overlooking the City of Constantinople. Jones subscribed several of his poems as written in India, and in Plassey-Plain he made amusing reference to his wife's ignorance of the native language. Byron in the East is too familiar a subject to require notice; Heber is mentioned elsewhere in this paper. "L. E. L. ", living all her life in London, "had always cherished dreams of Africa", and had the dubious satisfaction of dying there.''® But it was only 45. Italy; XIII. St. Mark's Place. 46. Miles, vol. VII, p. 108. Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 68 in imagination that Burns, White, Montgomery, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, and the great majority of English poets, ever visited the Orient. In two interesting pieces of vers de societe^'' Hood writes of young women on the eve of their departure for India. John Logan writes of a woman whose lover "to Indian climes had roved". The Oriental travels of the hero of Alastor are of more serious im- portance in English poetry. Perhaps the best example presenting sailors in the East, aside from translations, is found in The Ship- ivrerJc. Paul Whitehead, in A71 Occasional Song (spoken by a stage sergeant) follows the victorious English soldier from Cape Breton to "Guardelupe" and Senegal. Praed refers to a judge in Bengal, and a character who is "rich in Canton". In Surly Hall this poet expresses approval of the painter Hamilton, "Whether his sportive canvass shows Arabia's sands or Zembla's snows. " John Scott, in his Essay on Painting, places English artists, real or imaginary, in Jamaica, by the rocks of Ulitea, and by "Nile's vast flood on Egypt's level." White of Selborne discussed the hiberna- tion of swallows in English nuid, but John Cunningham's bird of the air is "Winged for Memphis or the Nile. "^^ Still more fanciful is Lovibond's account of the flight of the festival spirit, weary of Europe, into the Orient; in The Tears of Old May- Day. In the earlier part of our period there are in English verse a score, perhaps a hundred, references to the unknown sources of the Nile. Such reference was among the conventional items in passages on the great river. It is interesting, therefore, to note more than one later allusion to Bruce, as the discoverer of these sources. In Crabbe's Adventures of Richard,*^ the stay-at-home George inquires of his much-traveled brother Richard, "Say, hast thou, Bruce-like, knelt upon the bed Where the young Nile uplifts bis branchy head.''" 47. Lines to a Lady on Her Departure for India, aiul I'm Going to Bombay. 48. In Ode XXXIII: To the Swallow. 49. Tales of (he Hall; Book IV. 64 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies And it is the same dry, stern realist who writes in Clubs and Social Meetings : " When Bruce, that dauntless traveller, thought he stood On Nile's first rise, the fountain of the flood, And drank exulting in the sacred spring, The critics told him it was no such thing; That springs unnumbered round the country ran, But none could show him where the first began. "^^ Far more romantic, and with as much genuine insight into human nature, is Mrs. Heman's fanciful record of The Traveller at the Source of the Nile. Captain Cook is another English hero whose journeys into far Eastern — or Southern — regions are rather frequently recorded in verse. Frere is one poet who mentions him, and in his second Epistle John Scott has a passage of eight lines, beginning "Such, hapless Cook! amid the southern main. Rose thy Taheite's peaks and flowery plain. " Both Nelson and Casabianca at the battle of the Nile are subjects of poetic praise. The account of the early Protestant missionary efforts of Eng- land is found chiefly in prose; but enters verse here and there. Something of the poetic quality that literature has associated with the Jesuit fathers in the wilds of America is to be credited to this or that servant of Anglicanism or Dissent. In Grahame's Sabbath we have a general picture of an imaginary missionary in the islands of the South; Praed's Greek poem translated into English under the title Hindostan is a tribute to the work of Thomas Fanshawe Middleton, Bishop of Calcutta. Heber left his own records of the East in prose and verse. Among the poems on the man or his work are Mrs. Hemans' To the Memory of Heber, and Southey's Ode on the Portrait of Bishop Heber. The first of these two pieces is religious and reverential in spirit, scarcely Oriental; the second contains a few such lines as, and, "The Malabar, the Moor, and the Cingalese," "Ram boweth down, Creeshna and Seeva stoop; The Arabian Moon must wane to wax no more. " 50. The Borough; Letter X. Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 66 It is not appropriate to our purpose to consider the verse of Protestant missions in general, or of Catholic, — as in Bowles' Mis- sionary, with its resonant Latin line, " Eternam pacem dona, Domine.^' James Montgomery is perhaps the poet of any note who gives this subject most attention. His Greenland is a missionary poem; his Cry from South Africa is an evangelical poem, and the mission- ary for whom the Farewell was written may, for aught the reader knows, have been bound for the Orient. Montgomery's Daisy in India is a sincere and simple poem on exile and home memories in the East, and is concerned with the Baptist missionary. Dr. William Carey. Patriotism is perhaps associated with religion. If that is true, we may well note here Walter Scott's prologue to The Family Legend, which tells us that the wild tales of "romantic Caledon" stir the heart of the exiled Scotchman, "Wliether on India's burning coasts he toil. Or till Acadia's winter-fettered soil." England's dead who rest in the Seven Seas make a great com- pany. England's dead in the Orient are for the most part unre- corded in English verse, but here and there a group or an individual is memorialized by the poet — and for the poet an imaginary character may create pathos as well as a real character. Words- worth's Liberty is addressed to a woman friend who died, after the piece was written, "on her way from Shalapore to Bombay, deeply lamented by all who knew her". John Wilson's Widow is scarcely an Oriental poem, but the husband for whom the woman mourns perished in the East: — " For the bayonet is red with gore, And he, the beautiful and brave, Now sleeps in Egypt's sand. " Among the numerous poems of Mrs.Hemans on death, the funeral, and the grave, is one inspired by these lines of "Christopher North " — The Burial in the Desert. This poem is far more Oriental- ized than the one which suggested it, and contains the recurring line, "In the shadow of the Pyramid. " Though not in verse, Macaulay's Latin epitaphs on servants of 66 University of Kajtsas Humanistic Studies England who died in India may be mentioned, as, in a sense, "poetic efforts". Our present account of the English in the Orient is scant indeed in comparison with the actual historical activities. But if all of life were described in poetry, or all of English prose transformed into verse, the special function of poetry itself would probably be unfulfilled. Before it becomes a subject for poetry, says Words- worth in the famous Preface, science must become "familiar", and its relations contemplated as "manifestly and palpably material to us as enjoying and suffering beings". Jones did not attempt to versify any large portion of his knowledge of the Orient. Sir James Mackintosh in his Discourse Read at the Opening of the Literary Society of Bombay, (November 26, 1804), said of Sir William: "He was among the distinguished persons who adorned one of the brightest periods of English literature". Per- haps " English scholarship " might have been better. The speaker then proceeded to propose a program of study for the Englishman in India, including botany, zoology, mineralogy and pohtical economy. The address closed with these words: "On a future occasion I may have the honour to lay before you my thoughts on the principal objects of inciniry into the geography, ancient and modern, the languages, the literature, the necessary and elegant arts, the religion, the authentic history and the antiquities of In- dia", etc. However it may be with English science and scholar- ship, it is safe to say that English poetry has not yet completed this program of 1804. The English are not the only people of western Europe to appear in the Orient in English poetry. If we include the translations of Camoens, Tasso, and Ariosto made during our period, we have a host of individuals, historical or fictitious, and of epic groups, from Spain, Italy, France, and northern Europe. They are occupied in sailing about Africa, to visit and conquer India; in various Asiatic or East-European travels for pleasure or military adventure; in warring with the assembled hosts of the Saracens to rescue "// graft Sepolcr<)'\ with mention of which the Gerusa- lemme Liberata opens and closes. If these works are not products of English imagination, they belong to English poetry, in a liberal view, in verse and diction. Camoens and Vasco da Gama both Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 67 appear in English lyric poetry, the former in The Last Song of Camoens, by Bowles; the latter (along with Albuquerk and others) in Mickle's Almada Hill. To the themes of epic breadth, we may add that of the Napoleonic armies in Russia. The relations of Venice to the Orient are barely suggested in the opening line of a familiar Wordsworthian sonnet: — "Once did She hold the gorgeous east in fee. " So far as commercial relations between Venice and the Eastern Mediterranean region are concerned, perhaps no more Oriental passage could be found than this from Rogers' Italy: "Who met not the Venetian.' — now in Cairo; Ere yet the Califa came, listening to hear Its bells approaching from the Red-Sea coast; Now on the Euxine, on the Sea of Azoph, In converse with the Persian, with the Russ, The Tartar; on his lowly deck receiving Pearls from the Gulf of Ormus, gems from Bagdad, Eyes brighter yet, that shed the light of love, From Georgia, from Circassia. Wandering round. When in the rich bazaar he saw displayed. Treasures from unknown climes, away he went, And, travelling slowly upward, drew ere-long From the well-head, supplying all below; Making the Imperial City of the East, Herself, his tributary. "^^ In Faust, Goethe symbolized, by the marriage of Faust with Helen, the union of Gothic genius with the classical Greek. Though we have in English poetry one book of a long narrative poem dedicated to the " Genius of Afric",^^ there is perhaps no poem or passage which transcends the usual contrast between the East and the West by any thought or imagery of mystic harmony between the two. A suggestion in this direction, however, may be found, without too fanciful interpretation, in The Bridal of Triermain. In the third canto there is a dream of fair maidens in processional — maidens of Asia, Africa, Europe, and America. For each region there is some appropriate imagery and diction. A comparison of Scott and Blake seems strange, but in this assembling of the continents for the high purposes of poetry, there seems something 51. Italy; Part I, XI. 52. Grainger's Sugar-Cane; Book IV. 68 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies akin to the method of Blake in his geographic symboHsm. First come the "Four Maids whom Afric bore", singing in the Moorish tongue of the ruins of Carthage, the Siroc of Sahara, and the spell of Dahomay. Then follow maidens of "dark-red dye", bearing palmetto baskets, and singing of the perished glory of Peru. Next enter the maidens whose faces have been tinted by the "suns of Candahar", whose Eastern pomp is aided by hennah and sumah, who are clad in the costumes of a sensuous land. Finally, appear, each representative of her native land, the daughters of France, Spain, Germany, and "merry England", — the last dressed "like ancient British Druidess". So harmonize for once, in a poet's fancy, the Celtic, Occidental, Germanic, and Oriental tones of the Romantic Movement. CHAPTER VI. The Orient Itself Our poets sometimes consider "The Orient" or "The East" as a unit, without definite boundaries. Again, Asia or Africa is often presented as a unit, in a single thought or image. Sometimes Oriental reference is made in very vague manner, without any specific geographical term or terms. Yet in the body of verse as a whole, the reader is not left without abundant, if scarcely coherent, details in the poetical map of the East. This map reaches from Sarmatia and Zembla on the north — with lines extended to the Pole — to the Cape of Good Hope and New Zealand on the south ; from northeast to southwest it reaches (according to the definition for this study) from Kamchatka to Senegal and the Canary Islands. It embraces a hundred countries, almost innumerable "coasts" and islands; seas, lakes, and interiors remote from ordinary travel — from Caffraria to the Desert of Gobi. The portions drawn in clearest design are of course the more familiar sections — Arabia, India, Egypt, the Sahara, Turkey, etc. But in one passage or another this or that poet sketches in, at least in outline or in name, Sumatra, Tahiti, Siam, Madagascar, Tartary, and many another region. During our period China and Japan are relatively neglected. ^^ In the entire region about the Eastern Mediterranean the poets often follow the traditions of Biblical or classical literature; yet much of this region is modernized, given a fresh and more strictly Oriental value. The Palestine of the Crusades, the Egypt of Bruce and Nelson, are not Biblical. The isles of Greece as seen by Byron and, earlier, by the sailors of The Shipivreck, are not quite 53. China seems more frequently mentioned than Japan. Boyse has the follow- ing Lines in The Triumphs of Nature. He is speaking of a pond in "the magnificent gardens at Stowe. in Buckinghamshire". " In which, of form Chinese, a structure lies, Where all her wild grotesques display surprise. Within Japan her glittering treasure yields. And ships of amber sail on golden fields. " There are of course many other references dealing more directly with China and with Japan, but they are usually rather brief. 69 70 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies those of Homer or Pindar; the Greece that bows beneath the Turk is not the Greece of Thucydides. If might be of some interest, but it would be a long task, to trace out the geography, history, the social and the natural life, of each country as English verse presents it. Many sections are usually mentioned in simple and repeated formulas, suggesting our study of conventional phrases in Chapter III. Circassia is often associated with feminine beauty ; Siberia with cold and wild- ness, though one poet describes its slow-moving caravans. The witches and the reindeer are frequent items for Lapland. Literary Russia hardly appears; or the Russia of serfs and bureaucracy. The poetic Russia of the period is that of Catherine or Peter, of cold and bears, of the Napoleonic invasion, of the conflict with the Turk, or the Russia known through its political relations with England. This statement, however, omits the work of Sir John Bowring, late in our period.^* The climate of the Orient, in the large sense adopted for this study, of course has little unity. To consider merely temperature, the poets give much attention to extreme cold and extreme heat, often by way of antithesis. 'From Zembla's cold to Afric's heat' is a typical phrase form. In the more southerly sections, the Caucasian Mountains or perhaps Atlas serve as symbols of cold. The emphasis, on the whole, is apparently on the heat. Such words as hot, torrid, burning, scorching, sunburnt, are frequent in descriptions of various parts of Asia and of Africa. In The Fatal Curiosity we read of the "eternal sultry summer" of India, and one poet writes of the "eternal dog-star" of Africa. The East in general is "the land of the sun". Associated in part Mith this emphasis on heat are the ideas of disease and of fertility. "Fever- ish" is not a rare word; pestilence as well as drouth are often men- tioned. It was a "land of births", writes James Montgomery of a Southern region; and in a score of poets we read of the prolific life in various parts of the South or the East — of the multitudes of strange creatures that haunt the jungles, creep along the banks of the Nile, or fly above the coral-islands. In topographical features, there is frequent reference, probably not always appropriate, to "groves" and to "plains"; with the 54. In prose, a translation of Karamzint 's Poor Lisa appearfd in London about 180,5 (7). A review of the French translation of his Russia is found in the Miscella- neous Essays of Archibald Alison. Ofihortie: Orietital Diction and Theme 71 addition of many valleys and occasional "glens". The Gulf of Ornius, the Black Sea, and tlie Caspian Sea are often named, The great rivers of the East i)roj)er and of Africa are introduced in hundreds of passages — the Euphrates and the Tigris, the Ganges, the Nile, the Niger and the (lamliia, the Danube and the Volga. The mountains which recei\e most attention are the Himalayas, the Caucasian, Atlas, and the Mountains of the Moon. Of all the types of Eastern scenery, perhaps none is more fasci- nating to the imagination of the poets than the desert. It is some- times Arabian, sometimes the Sahara, sometimes simply the generic desert. It is a region of "sand-spouts " and "sand-waves "'; of drouth and staggering sunshine; of the jjelican and the camel; of weary caravan, of mocking mirage and restful oasis; of the "red wing of the fierce Monsoon ",^^ and again and again of death. Mrs. Hemans writes separate poems on its Flower, its Caravan, and its Burial. James Montgomery describes the mirage in these lines — jiraising a chieftain hero of his story: "Nor less benign his influence than fresh showers Upon the fainting wilderness, where bands Of pilgrims, bound for Mecca, with their camels, Iscure poem: "The hungry traveller in the dreary waste From the slain camel shares a rich repast : While parched with thirst, he hails the plenteous well. Found in the stomach's deep capacious cell. " - - The elephant in London was briefly noticed in Chapter V. In his native regions he is presented in a variety of ways. Hood's young lady who is going to Bombay remarks that "elephants are horses there". In Miss Baillie's The Bride there are two references to the human body trampled under an elephant's feet, as well as a vigorous description of the clearing of a path through the forest by an elephant's supple trunk. One of the most original images is found in Montgomery, with reference to the dead body of the great beast: — " Bees in the ample hollow of his skull Piled their wax-citadels and stored their honey. "^"^ For the sake of comparison of passages on the same theme, these two quotations may be given, the first from Montgomery, the second from Milman: "The enormous elephant obeyed their will. And, tamed to cruelty with direst skill. Roared for the battle, when he felt the goad. And his proud lord his sinewy neck bestrode, Through crashing ranks resistless havoc bore. And writhed his trunk, and bathed his tusks in gore. "''^ " As in the Oriental wars where meet Sultan and Omrah, under his broad tower Moves stately the huge Elephant, a shaft Haply casts down his friendly rider, wont To lead him to the tank, whose children shared With him their feast of fruits : awhile he droops Affectionate his loose and moaning trunk; Then in his grief and vengeance bursts, and bears In his feet's trampling rout and disarray To either army, ranks give way, and troops Scatter, while, swaying on his heaving back His tottering tower, he shakes the sandy plain. "^* 62. Cambridgo: The Scribleriad; Book I. 63. The Pelican Island; Canto VI. The whole pas.sago is interesting. 64. The World before the Flood; Canto VII. G5. Samor, Lord of the Bright City, Book XI. Oshorne: Oriental Diction and Theme 75 The last selection is from a poem of Saxon England, the "Bright City" of the title being Gloucester. Anthropological details are not to be expected in this period, even if they could be given with poetic result. For the most part the poets confine themselves to color and to general characteristics of hair and eyes. One does not read of 'little yellow people', though Walter Scott writes of the hue of "golden glow" caused by the "suns of Candahar".^^ But such terms as sable, sooty, black, swart, swarthy, and dark-skinned are in frequent use. Mac- auley gives us the phrase, "Syria's dark-browed daughters"." The idea of the special beauty of the Oriental women, as well as of the houris and peris is not rarely introduced. Lloyd has a four- line passage on the feet of the Chinese ladies, ill adapted for pedestrianism,'*'* but Moore, in The Veiled Prophet, refers more courteously to "the small, half-shut glances of Kathay". Among social groups most often notice