Page:Poems, Consisting Chiefly of Translations from the Asiatick Languages.djvu/20

xiv to the writings of the ancients, as to the standard of true taste.

If the novelty of the following poems should recommend them to the favour of the reader, it may, probably, be agreeable to him to know, that there are many others of equal or superior merit, which have never appeared in any language of Europe; and I am persuaded that a writer, acquainted with the originals, might imitate them very happily in his native tongue, and that the publick would not be displeased to see the genuine compositions of Arabia and Persia in an English dress. The heroick poem of Ferdusi might be versified as easily as the Iliad, and I see no reason why the delivery of Persia by Cyrus should not be a subject as interesting to us, as the anger of Achilles, or the wandering of Ulysses. The Odes of Hafez, and of Mesihi, would suit our lyrick measures as well as those ascribed to Anacreon; and the seven Arabick elegies, that were hung up in the temple of Mecca, and of which there are