ersazione_ best translates it,) but is applied to a series of short
narratives, or rather anecdotes, told alternately in verse and rhymed
prose, with all the brilliance of rhetoric, the richness of
alliteration, antithesis, and imitative sound, and the endless
grammatical subtilties of which the Arabic language is capable. The work
of Hariri is considered the unapproachable model of this style of
narrative throughout all the East. Rueckert called his translation "The
Metamorphoses of Abou-Seyd of Serudj,"--the name of the hero of the
story. In this work he has shown the capacity of one language to
reproduce the very spirit of another with which it has the least
affinity. Like the original, the translation can never be surpassed: it
is unique in literature.

As the acrobat who has mastered every branch of his art, from the
spidery contortions of the India-rubber man to the double somersault and
the flying trapeze, is to the well-developed individual of ordinary
muscular habits, so is the language of Rueckert in this work to the
language of all other German authors. It is one perpetual gymnastic show
of grammar, rhythm, and fancy. Moods, tenses, antecedents, appositions,
whirl and flash around you, to the sound of some strange, barbaric
music. Closer and more rapidly they link, chassez, and "cross hands,"
until, when you anticipate a hopeless tangle, some bold, bright word
leaps unexpectedly into the throng, and resolves it to instant harmony.
One's breath is taken away, and his brain made dizzy, by any half-dozen
of the "Metamorphoses." In this respect the translation has become a
representative work. The Arabic title, misunderstood, has given birth
to a German word. Daring and difficult rhymes are now frequently termed
_Makamen_ in German literary society.

Rueckert's studies were not confined to the Arabic and Persian languages;
he also devoted many years to the Sanskrit. In 1828 appeared his
translation of "Nal and Damayanti," and some years later, "Hamasa, or
the oldest Arabian Poetry," and "Amrilkais, Poet and King." In addition
to these translations, he published, between the years 1835 and 1840,
the following original poems, or collections of poems, on Oriental
themes,--"Legends of the Morning-Land" (2 vols.), "Rustem and Sohrab,"
and "Brahminical Stories." These poems are so bathed in the atmosphere
of his studies, that it is very difficult to say which are his own
independent conceptions, and which the suggesti