HAJJI BABA IN ENGLAND.*

[Quarterly Review, January, 1829.]

AN old acquaintance of ours, as remarkable for the grotesque queerness of his physiognomy, as for the kindness and gentleness of his disposition, was asked by a friend, where he had been? He replied he had been seeing the lion, which was at that time an object of curiosity-(we are not sure whether it was Nero or Cato-): “ And what,” rejoined the querist, "did the lion think of you?" The jest passed as a good one; and yet under it lies something that is serious and true.

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When a civilized people have gazed, at their leisure, upon one of those uninstructed productions of rude nature whom they term barbarians, the next object of natural curiosity is, to learn what opinion the barbarian has formed of the new state of society into which he is introduced-what the lion thinks of his visitors. Will the simple, unsophisticated being, we ask ourselves, be more inclined to reverence us, who direct the thunder and lightning by our command of electricity-control the course of the winds by our steamengines turn night into day by our gas-erect the most stupendous edifices by our machinery-soar into mid-air like eagles-at pleasure dive into the earth like moles?— or, to take us as individuals, and despise the effeminate child of social policy, whom the community have deprived of half his rights-who dares not avenge a blow without having recourse to a constable-who, like a pampered jade, cannot go but thirty miles a day without a halt or endure hunger, were it only for twenty-four hours, without suffering and complaint-whose life is undignified by trophies acquired

*The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan in England. 2 vols. By J. MORIER, Esq. The Kuzzilbash; a Tale of Khorasan. 3 vols. By JAMES BAILLIE FRASER, Esq.

in the chase or the battle-and whose death is not graced by a few preliminary tortures, applied to the most sensitive parts, in order to ascertain his decided superiority to ordinary mortals? We are equally desirous to know what the swarthy stranger may think of our social institutions, of our complicated system of justice in comparison with the dictum of the chief, sitting in the gate of the village, or the award of the elders of the tribe, assembled around the council fire; and even, in a lower and lighter point of view, what he thinks of our habits and forms of ordinary life,—that artificial and conventional ceremonial, which so broadly distinguishes different ranks from each other, and binds together so closely those who belong to the same grade.

In general, when we have an opportunity of inquiring, we find the rude stranger has arrived at some conclusion totally unexpected by his European host. For instance, when Lee Boo, that most interesting and amiable specimen of the child of nature, was carried to see a man rise in a balloon, his only remark was, he wondered any one should take so much trouble in a country where it was so easy to call a hackney-coach. Lee Boo had supped full with wonders; a coach was to him as great a marvel as a balloon; he had lost all usual marks for comparing difficult and easy, and if Prince Hussein's flying tapestry, or Astolpho's hippogryph, had been shown, he would have judged of them by the ordinary rules of convenience, and preferred a snug corner in a well-hung chariot.

From the amusing results arising out of such contrasts, it has occurred to many authors, at different periods, that an agreeable and striking mode of inquiry into the intrinsic value and rationality of social institutions might be conducted by writing critical remarks upon them, in the assumed character of the native of a primitive country. Lucian has placed some such observations in the mouth of his Scythian philosopher, Toxaris. In modern times, the Turkish Spy, though the subject of his letters did not embrace manners or morals, had considerable celebrity. The interest of the famous political romance of Gulliver turns on the same sort of contrivance. But, perhaps, the earliest example of the precise species of composition which we mean, exists in the Memoranda imputed to the Indian Kings, and published in the Spectator. At a later period,

Hajji Baba, as the reader probably well knows, is a roguish boy, the son of a barber of Ispahan, who becomes the attendant upon a merchant, is made prisoner by a band of Turcomans, with whom he is forced to become an associate, although, as in the case of Gil Blas, a private feeling of cowardice greatly aids the moral sense in rendering the profession disgusting to him. After having the signal glory of conducting the tribe to a successful enterprise on his native city, he escapes from the Turcomans to be plundered by his own countrymen-is reduced to be a water-carriera seller of tobacco, and at length a swindler. He emerges from this condition to become the pupil of the Persian physician-royal. From this situation he rises to the kindred dignity of an immediate attendant on the chief executioner, and, of course, a man of great consequence in a state where various gradations of violence, from a simple drubbing to the exercise of the sabre or bowstring, form the pervading principle of motion. In this last character a scene is introduced (the death of the unhappy Zeenab), tending to show that, though the author has chiefly used the lighter tints of human life, its darker shadows are also at his command. The consequences of this tragedy deprive Hajji of his post, and he is reduced to take sanctuary. He changes his manners, lays aside the military profession, and assumes airs of devotion becomes a respectable character, somewhat allied to Sir Pandarus of Troy-but is once more involved in ruin by the superstitious and intolerant zeal of a Mollah to whom he had attached himself. After such a series of adventures, he escapes to Constantinople, where he sets up as a seller of tubes for tobacco-pipes. Here, in the assumed character of a wealthy merchant of high Arabian extraction, he marries a wealthy Turkish widow; but, being detected as an impostor, is obliged to resign his prize. Finally, Hajji Baba obtains the protection of the grand vizier, and of the Shah himself in particular, by the great assiduity he displays in acquiring some knowledge of the European character, which the contest between the French and English, for obtaining superior influence at the court of Ispahan, had rendered an interesting subject of consideration in the councils of Persia. At length the celebrated mission of Mirzah Firouz the same, we presume, with the well-known Abou Taleb, Persian envoy at the court of he late king in the

years 1809 and 1810-determines the fate of Hajji Baba, who receives directions to attend it in the character of secretary. Here the original account of his adventures, published in 1824, closed, with a promise that, if they appeared to wish it, the public should be informed, in due season, of Hajji's adventures while in the train of the Persian ambassador to St. James's.

The author has no reason to complain of that want of attention which will sometimes silence the most pertinacious of story-tellers,-yea, even the regular bore of the clubhouse, whose numbers he has thinned. Hajji Baba met with a universal good reception. The novelty of the style, which was at once perceived to be genuine Oriental, by such internal evidence as establishes the value of real old China-the gay and glowing descriptions of Eastern state and pageantry, the character of the poetry occasionally introduced-secured a merited welcome for the Persian picaroon. As a picture of Oriental manners, the work had, indeed, a severe trial to sustain by a comparison with the then recent romance of Anastasius. But the public found appetite for both; and indeed they differ as comedy and tragedy, the deep passion and gloomy interest of Mr. Hope's work being of a kind entirely different from the light and lively turn of our friend Hajji's adventures. The latter, with his morals sitting easy about him, a rogue indeed, but not a malicious one, with as much wit and cunning as enable him to dupe others, and as much vanity as to afford them perpetual means of retaliation; a sparrow-hawk, who, while he floats through the air in quest of the smaller game, is himself perpetually exposed to be pounced on by some stronger bird of prey, interests and amuses us, while neither deserving nor expecting serious regard or esteem;-and like Will Vizard of the hill, "the knave is our very good friend."

The rapid and various changes of individual fortune, which, in any other scene and country, might be thought improbable, are proper to, or rather inseparable from, the vicissitudes of a government at once barbaric and despotic, where an individual, especially if possessing talents, may rise and sink as often as a tennis-ball, and be subjected to the extraordinary variety of hazards in one life, which the other undergoes in the course of one game. But, were VOL. II.-6

further apology necessary for the eccentricity of some of the events, than the caprice of an arbitrary monarch, and the convulsions of a waning empire, we have only to compare the reverses represented as experienced by this barber of Ispahan, with the mighty changes which we ourselves have been witness to, affecting thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers. The mighty and overwhelming sway which seemed neither to have limits in elevation nor extent -that power, the existence and terror of which led to the collision of European politics in the court of Ispahanwhere is it now, or what vestiges remain of its influence? We might as well ask where are the columns of sand which at night whirl over the broad desert, in number and size sufficient to be the death and grave of armies, and in the morning, sunk with the breath which raised them, are only encumbering the steps of the pilgrim, as hillocks of unregarded dust.

The terrible hurricane of moral passions which had vent in the French Revolution, and the protracted tempest of war which ensued, have, like the storms of nature, led to good effects; and of these not the least remarkable has been the connecting in intercourse of feeling and sentiments, of nations not only remote from each other in point of space, but so divided by opinions as to render it heretofore impossible that the less enlightened, wedded as they were to their own prejudices, should have derived the slightest improvement, either in arts, government, or religion, from the precept or example of their more cultivated allies. The idea of a certain literary influence being exercised by the English press at the court of Ispahan, would, twenty years ago, have sounded as absurd as to have affirmed that Prester John had studied Sir John Mandeville's Travels, or that the report of the guns fired in St. James's Park, was heard on the terrace of Persepolis. And yet such an influence to a certain extent now exists, since it appears, from the following admirable epistle, that the Persian court were interested in and touched by the satirical account of their manners in Mr. Morier's novel, and felt that pettish sort of displeasure which, like the irritation of a blister, precedes sanative effects. We refer to a letter addressed bona fide to the author of Hajji Baba, by a Persian minister of state.