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Excerpt from The History of the Saracens: Comprising the Lives of Mohammed and His Successors, to the Death of Abdalmelik, the Eleventh Caliph
Arabic authors, especially manuscripts, not hitherto published in any European language; and for that purpose resided a long time at Oxford, to be near the Bodleian library, where those manuscripts were reposited. It is in 2 vols. 8vo. The first of which was published in 1708; the second, in 1718 and both were soon after republished. A third edition was printed, in the same size, at Cambridge, in 1757; to which is prefixed, An Account of the Arabians or Saracens, of the Life of Mohammed, and the Mohammedan Religion, by a learned hand that is, by the learned Dr. Long, master of Pembroke hall, in Cambridge.
While at Oxford, preparing this work, he sent a letter to his daughter, part of which is worth transcribing, as charac teristic both of him and his labours. My condition here is this: one of the most useful and necessary authors I have is written in such a wretched hand, that the very reading of it is perfect deciphering. I am forced sometimes to take three or four lines together, and then pull them all to pieces to find where the words begin and end for oftentimes it is so written, that. A word is divided as if the former part of it was the end of the foregoing word, and the latter part the beginning of another; besides innumerable other difficulties known only to those that understand the language. Add to this the pai of abridging, comparing authors, selecting proper materials and the like, which in a remote and copious language, abound ing with difficulties sometimes insuperable, make it equivalent at least to the performing of six times so much in Greek and Latin. So that if I continue in the same course in which Iam engaged at present, that is, from the time I rise in the morn ing till I can see no longer at night, I cannot pretend once to entertain the least thought of seeing home till Michaelmas. Were it not that there is some satisfaction in answering the end of my profession, some in making new discoveries, and some in the hopes of obliging my country with the history of the greatest empire the world ever yet saw, I would sooner do almost anything than submit to the drudgery.
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