Usually The Hero “Sickens
In Consequence Of The Heroine’S Absence, And Continues To The Hour Of His
Death In The Utmost Grief And Anxiety.” He Rarely Kills Himself, But
Sometimes, When In Love With A Pretty Infidel, He Drinks Wine And He
Burns The Koran.
The “hated rival” is not a formidable person; but there
are for good reasons great jealousy of female friends, and not a little
fear of the beloved’s kinsmen.
Such are the material sentiments; the
spiritual part is a thread of mysticism, upon which all the pearls of
adventure and incident are strung.
[FN#25] It is curious that these pastoral races, which supply poetry
with namby-pamby Colinades, figure as the great tragedians of history.
The Scythians, the Huns, the Arabs, and the Tartars were all shepherds.
They first armed themselves with clubs to defend their flocks from wild
beasts. Then they learned warfare, and improved means of destruction by
petty quarrels about pastures; and, finally, united by the commanding
genius of some skin-clad Caesar or Napoleon, they fell like avalanches
upon those valleys of the world—Mesopotamia, India, and Egypt—whose
enervate races offered them at once temptations to attack, and
certainty of success.
[FN#26] Even amongst the Indians, as a race the least chivalrous of
men, there is an oath which binds two persons of different sex in the
tie of friendship, by making them brother and sister to each other.
[FN#27] Richardson derives our “knight” from Nikht ([Arabic]), a tilter
with spears, and “Caitiff” from Khattaf, ([Arabic]) a snatcher or ravisher.
[FN#28] I am not ignorant that the greater part of “Antar” is of modern and
disputed origin.
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