Page:Bush Life of Mohammed.djvu/13



The present work lays claim to no higher character than that of a compilation. This indeed must necessarily be the character of any work attempted, at this day, upon the same subject. All the accessible facts in the life and fortunes of the Arabian prophet have long since been given to the world. New theories and speculations, moral and philosophical, founded upon these facts, and many of them richly deserving attention, are frequently propounded to the reflecting, but they add little or nothing to the amount of our positive information. All therefore that can now be expected is such a selection and arrangement and investment of the leading particulars of the Impostor's history, as shall convey to the English reader, in a correct and concentrated form, those details which are otherwise diffused through a great number of rare books, and couched in several different languages. Such a work, discreetly prepared, would supply, if we mistake not, a very considerable desideratum in our language—one which is beginning to be more sensibly felt than ever, and which the spirit of the age loudly requires to have supplied. How