Djami, who died in 1492, was one of the most prolific of Persian writers. Ilis life was spent at Herat, where, in the ball of the great mosque, he taught the people the precepts of virtue and religion. Ile left behind him forty works, theologi cal, poetical, and mystical. Seven of his principal poems were united under the title of "'1'1m Seven Stars of the llis history of mysticism, entitled " The Breath of Man," is his greatest prose work. Among the later Persian poems arc the Schehinscheh-Nameh, a continua tion of the Book of Kimrs,:ncl the Oeorge. Nanteh, an account of the conquest of India by the British. The Persian is the only .Mallometan literature contain ing dramatic poetry. Its dramas stri kingly resemble the old French myste ries. Of the collections of tales, legends, and fairy-stories, the most celebrated are the Anwari .saheili, or "Lights of the Canopy," and the Behiiri duuisch, or "Spring of Wisdom." The historical works in the Persian language are very numerous and valuable. They embrace the history of the Mohammedan races, from Mongolia to Barbary. The princi pal works are the Chronicle of Wassaf, history of the successors of Genghis Khan, which appeared in 1333; rho "Marrow of the Chronicles," by Khaswini, in 1370, and the Rausel Essafa, a great universal history, of which modern historians have made good use. It was written by 31ir ehon(1, about the year 1450. In the de partments of ethies, rhetoric, theology, and medicine, the Persian scholars are only second to the Arabic. They also excelled in tr:IIISIM1011, and have repro duced in Persian, nearly the entire lit erature of India.
Literature.—The Italian lan guage assumed a regular and finished at the court of Roger 1., Ring of Sicily, in the twelfth century. Several poets arose, who, borrowing the forms of verse from the Provencal tronbadours, gave the people songs in their native language in place of the melodies of the "Moors and Arabians. The Italian soon became the court langnage of Italy, nod Malespina's History of Florence, which was written in the year 1280, is SearlT.ly inferior, in elegance and purity of style to any Italian prose works which have since been produced. The first genuine poet. of Italy, however, was her greatest, and ono of the greatest of all time Dante commenced his great poem of tho " Divina Commedia." in the year 1304, just before his exile from Florence, and completed it during his many years of wandering from one court of Italy to another. Out of the rude and imperfect materials within his reach, he constructed an epic which places his name beside that of him whom he humbly called his mas ter—Virgil. Taking the religions faith of Ins time as the material, he conducts the reader through the sad and terrible circles of Bell, the twilight region of Purgatory, and the fair mount of Para dise, showing him all forms of torture and punishment for the vile, all varieties of supreme happiness for the pure and good. The poem takes a fierce and gloomy character from the wrongs and persecutions which the poet endured in his life. Dante died in 1321, at which time Pe traTch, who was born in 1304, ha,1 commenced those studies which led to the restoration of classic literature to Italy. As an enthusiastic admirer of antiquity, he imparted to his contemporaries that passion for the study of the Greek and Roman authors which preserved many of their masterpieces at a moment when they were about to be lost to the world. 1lis songs and sonnets, most of which were inspired by his unfortunate love for Laura de Stle, give hint a worthy place after Dante, in Italian literature. He
died in 1374. Contemporary with Pe trarch was the great master of Italian prose—Boccaccio, who was horn in 1313. Ile early devoted his life to literature. and in 1341, assisted at the celebrated examination of Petrarch, previous to his coronation in the capitol. His principal work is the Decamerone, a collection of one hundred tales, which, notwithstand ing the impurities with which they are disfigured, are models of narration, and exhibit the most varied powers of ima gination and invention. Boccaccio is cotridered as the inventor of romances of love—a branch of literature which was wholly unknown to antiquity.
For a century following the death of BUCCaCCIO, the literature of Italy shows no great name, though several scholars dis tinguished themselves by their attain ments and the all which they rendered to the cause of classic literature. The most noted of these were John of Ravenna; Lionardo Aretino, who wrote a history of Florence in Latin ; Poggio Bracciolini, most voluminous writer, who enjoyed the patronage of Costa. de' 51edici, at Flo rence; Francesco Fileflo and Lorenzo Walla, both men of great erudition, whose labors contributed to bring on a new era of Italian literature. Lorenzo called the Magnificent, towards the close of the fifteenth century, gave the first im pulse to the cultivation of the Italian tongue, which had been lost sight of in the rage for imitating Latin poets. Besides being the author of many elegant. songs and sonnets, his court was the home of all the authors of that period. Among these were Politiano, who wrote Orfeo, a fable formed on the myth of Orpheus, which was performed at the court of Mantua., in 1483 ; Luigi Pulci, the author of Mor ganle Maggiore, and Boiardo, author of the Orlando Innamorato. Both the last named poems are chivalrous romances, written in the oltava-rima, and full of a quaint humor, which before that time had only appeared in the prose of Boccaccio. But the master of the gay and sparkling poetic narrative was Ariosto, mrlr was born in 1474, and first appeared as a I au thor about the year 1500. Five years later he commenced his Orlando Furioso, which was not completed till 1516. This is a romantic poem in forty-six cantos, celebrating the adventures of Roland, the nephew of Charlemagne. It is one of the classics of Italy, and has been translated into all modern languages. After the death of Ariosto in 1533, no literary work of any prominence appeared until Tor quato Tasso published his Jerusalem De livered, in 1581. Alamanni, Trissino and Bernardo Taos° flourished in the interval and produced labored poems, which arc no longer read. The subject of Tasso's poem is the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre from the Moslems, by the Crusaders, under Godfrey of Bouillon. The wrongs and persecutions heaped upon Tasso clouded his mind and shortened his days; lie died in Rome, in 1595, on the day before that appointed for his coronation. Three other Italian authors of the sixteenth century are worthy of mention : Cardinal Bembo, the most finished scholar of his day, and author of a history of Venice ; Nicole Machiavelli, whose name has become sy nonymous with all that is sinister and un scrupulous in polities, from his treatise entitled " The Prince," for which, after his death, an anathema was pronounced against him ; and Pietro Aretino, one of the most infamous and dissolute men of his time. Machiavelli wrote an admira ble History of Florence, which is still is standard work.