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newspaper and magazine articles which survey briefly and without detail the whole field of literature. These, though often valuable and suggestive, are of necessity quite inadequate. The only serious attempt yet made at the systematic study of any branch of this literature is that made more than half a century ago by Baron von Hammer-Purgstall in his well- known 'History of the Ottoman Poetic Art.' • But the monu- mental work so called hardly answers to its name; it is less a history of Ottoman poetry than a dictionary of Ottoman poets. There exist in Turkish a number of works called Tezkires, that is, 'Memoirs of the Poets,' which give the lives of poets who flourished at certain periods, together with specimens of their work. Von Hammer's great book is not much more than a translation of these Tezkires, with the entries arranged in approximate chronological order. He makes but little attempt to trace the development of the poetry, to point out the various forces by which it has been affected, or to distinguish the relative positions of even the greatest poets, whether as regards the merit of their actual achievement, the nature of their indebtedness to their predecessors, or the measure of the influence they exerted over their contemporaries and successors.
The work therefore can scarcely be correctly described as a History. None the less, notwithstanding numerous errors, many of them almost inevitable in a first attempt, it is of the greatest value as a book of reference. If evidence of the critical faculty be somewhat to seek, we find on the other hand almost every detail that can be gleaned from the Tez- kires and other Turkish authorities. Every poet, every versifier, of whom Von Hammer could find any mention, however slight, is entered in his pages. Thus although the last of
' 'Geschichte dcr Osmanischcn Dichtkunst,' liy Hammer-Purgstall, 4 vols., Pcsth, 1836-8.
