Page:Poems, Consisting Chiefly of Translations from the Asiatick Languages.djvu/19

 by Mesibi, a poet of great repute at Constantinople, who lived in the reign of Soliman the Second, or the Lawgiver; it is not unlike the Vigil of Venus, which has been ascribed to Catullus; the measure of it is nearly the fame with that of the Latin poem; and it has, like (hat, a lively burden at the end of every stanza: the works of Mesibi are preserved in the archives of the Royal Society.

It will be needless, I hope, to apologize for the Pastoral, and the poem upon Chefs, which were done as early as at the age of sixteen or seventeen years, and were saved from the fire, in preference to a great many others, because they seemed more correctly versified than the rest.

It must not be supposed, from my zeal for the literature of Asia, that I mean to place it in competition with the beautiful productions of the Greeks and Romans; for I am convinced, that, whatever changes we make in our opinions, we always return