ABSTRACT
LITERATURE, when deserving of that name, is the mirror of national life. It is history without bias, without special pleading. It lays bare national feelings. It reflects national virtues. It describes those little trifling incidents and traits which are more telling than all the studied portraits of friends and foes. It shows the strength of faith, the spell of superstition, the force of prejudice, the warmth of friendship, the fierceness of hate; in fine, all that we need to know about an individual or a race. Poetry and fiction are well-known sources of information; perhaps they are purer sources of information than history written to support a cause, to exalt a hero, or to damn an opponent. Sir Charles Lyall—whose recent death scholarship bitterly mourns—has shown the importance of Arab poetry in this respect. His paper on Arabian Poetry is a piece of rare Scholarship. His edition of the Mufaddhilliyat—a monument of tireless industry and research—is a store-house from which the historian of Islam will draw incalculable help and light and receive sure and useful guidance. But if unquestioned is the place of poetry as a source of information, no less unquestioned is the place of fiction in that sphere.
