Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 097.djvu/449

Rh canonised Charles, "which a palpable hallucination warrants, the security which a word out of season ratifies. And take my word for this, reader, and say a fool told you, if you please, that he who hath not a dram of folly in his mixture, hath pounds of much worse matter in his composition." Goldy was no fool, though; but his nature found it occasionally dulce desipere, and not always in loco.

The "Life of Mahomet," like the preceding, seemed to require explanation, since it confessedly could add no new fact to those already known concerning the Arabian prophet. The author tells us it forms part of a projected series of writings illustrative of the domination of the Arabs in Spain—most of the particulars being drawn from Spanish sources, with the addition of assistance from the elaborate work by Dr. Weil, and other recent authorities; his object in constructing it being, to digest into an easy, perspicuous, and flowing narrative (wherein so few can compete with him) the admitted facts concerning Mahomet, together with the leading legends and traditions connected with his creed, and a summary of the creed itself. The pretensions of this memoir are, therefore, small, as regards historical weight. It is deficient, moreover, in the matter of contemporary history, so essential to a due understanding of Mahomet's political and religious stand-point. The criticism on Mahomet's personal character is of that moderate and judicious kind which the author's antecedents might have warranted us to expect—neither condemning the prophet as an impudent impostor, juggler, and sensualist, nor exalting him to the honours of hero-worship. Mahomet is neither taxed with heartless selfishness, and ruinous imbecility, nor eulogised for "total freedom from cant," "deadly earnestness," and "annihilation of self." He is portrayed as an enthusiast originally acting under a species of mental delusion, deeply imbued with a conviction of his being a divine agent for religious reform, but who, after his flight to Medina, became subject to worldly passions and worldly schemes—yet throughout his career, in a great degree, the creature of impulse and excitement, and very much at the mercy of circumstances. With equal impartiality Mr. Irving discusses the lives and actions of his successors.

But New Monthly space and patience will no farther go, and leave us only room, in anticipation of his promised life of Washington, to bid that great man's namesake a pleasant and respectful au revoir.