ne
our own civilization of to-day, are in a general way the same forces
which were at play during the heyday of Persian literary production. We
owe to the Hellenic spirit, which at various times has found its way
into our midst, our love for the beautiful in art and in literature. We
owe to the Semitic, which has been inbreathed into us by religious forms
and beliefs, the tone of our better life, the moral level to which we
aspire. The same two forces were at work in Persia. Even while that
country was purely Iranian, it was always open to Semitic influences.
The welding together of the two civilizations is the true signature of
Persian history. The likeness which is so evident between the religion
of the Avesta, the sacred book of the pre-Mohammedan Persians, and the
religion of the Old and New Testaments, makes it in a sense easy for us
to understand these followers of Zoroaster. Persian poetry, with its
love of life and this-worldliness, with its wealth of imagery and its
appeal to that which is human in all men, is much more readily
comprehended by us than is the poetry of all the rest of the Orient.
And, therefore, Goethe, Platen, Rueckert, von Schack, Fitzgerald, and
Arnold have been able to re-sing their masterpieces so as to delight and
instruct our own days--of which thing neither India nor Arabia can
boast.

Tales of chivalry have always delighted the Persian ear. A certain
inherent gayety of heart, a philosophy which was not so sternly vigorous
as was that of the Semite, lent color to his imagination. It guided the
hands of the skilful workmen in the palaces of Susa and Persepolis, and
fixed the brightly colored tiles upon their walls. It led the deftly
working fingers of their scribes and painters to illuminate their
manuscripts so gorgeously as to strike us with wonder at the assemblage
of hues and the boldness of designs. Their Zoroaster was never deified.
They could think of his own doings and of the deeds of the mighty men of
valor who lived before and after him with very little to hinder the free
play of their fancy. And so this fancy roamed up and down the whole
course of Persian history: taking a long look into the vista of the
past, trying even to lift the veil which hides from mortal sight the
beginnings of all things; intertwining fact with fiction, building its
mansions on earth, and its castles in the air.

The greatest of all Eastern national epics is the work of a Persian. The
"Shah Nameh," o