PREFACE (Extraits)

It is not to be expected that all the transcendant excellencies and miraculous beauties discovered in the Koran by its commentators and others should immediately unveil themselves to our cold and unsympathizing gaze; beauties there are, many and great; ideas highly poetical are clothed in rich and appropriate language, which not unfrequently rises to a sublimity far beyond the reach of any translation; but it is unfortunately the case that many of those graces which present themselves to the admiration of the finished scholar are but so many stumbling-blocks in the way of the beginner; the marvellous conciseness which adds so greatly to the force and energy of its expressions cannot fail to perplex him, while the frequent use of the ellipse leaves in his mind a feeling of vagueness not altogether out of character in a work of its oracular and soi-distant prophetic nature.