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 leading incidents of the Romance was an afterthought Even if Hamilton's volumes were readily accessible, which they are not, few mere English readers would care to go through his diffuse translation, which is rendered more unreadable by the magnificent poetry being printed without a break, often for two or more pages together. But the Epitome included in this volume will perhaps satisfy the curiosity of readers generally regarding, a work of which assuredly a complete English translation will never be attempted.

The Shorter Arabian Poems, translated by Dr. Carlyle, and entitled, ** Specimens of Arabian Poetry"—first published in 1796, and again in 1810 — are confessedly paraphrases in English verse rather than translations. The selections, together with the translator's anecdotal notices of some of the authors, furnish, nevertheless, a concise history of Arabian literature during the most flourishing period of the Muslim empire.

But this volume must possess an interest and value far beyond what might otherwise possibly attach to it, in containing the famous Burda Poems of K'ab and El-Busiri, which are here presented for the first time in English, by Mr. J. W. Redhouse, whose high reputation for scholarship will be a sufficient guarantee to the English reader that the translations are as accurate as it is possible to render such enigmatical compositions into our language.

It may perhaps be thought somewhat strange that a mere English scholar—^for my knowledge of