Enthusiastically devoted to his extensive designs, and guided by the most consummate art, he pretended to divine communications, related a thousand ridiculous and incredible adventures; and though he constantly refused a prodigy to the importunities of his countrymen, laid claim to several frivolous miracles, and a few thinly scattered prophecies.  One of his most artful devices was the delivering the system of his religion, not in one entire code, but in detached essays.  This enabled him more than once to new mould the very genius of his religion, without glaringly subjecting himself to the charge of inconsistency.  From these fragments, soon after his death, was compiled the celebrated Alcoran.  The style of this volume is generally turgid, heavy, monotonous.  It is disfigured with childish tales and impossible adventures.  But it is frequently figurative, frequently poetical, sometimes sublime.  And amidst all its defects, it will remain the greatest of all monuments of uncultivated and illiterate genius.

[Footnote A:  “Abuleda, Chron. p. 27.  Boulainvilliers, Vie de Mahomet, b. ii. p. 175.  This latter writer exhibits the singular phenomenon of the native of a Christian country, unreasonably prejudiced in favour of the Arabian impostor.  That he did not live, however, to finish his curious performance, is the misfortune of the republic of letters.” ]

“The plan was carefully reserved by Mahomet for the mature age of forty years.  Thus digested however, and communicated with the nicest art and the most fervid eloquence, he had the mortification to find his converts, at the end of three years, amount to no more than forty persons.  But the ardour of this hero was invincible, and his success was finally adequate to his wishes.  Previous to the famous aera of his flight from Mecca, he had taught his followers, that they had no defence against the persecution of their enemies, but invincible patience.  But the opposition he encountered obliged him to change his maxims.  He now inculcated the duty of extirpating the enemies of God, and held forth the powerful allurements of conquest and plunder.  With these he united the theological dogma of predestination, and the infallible promise of paradise to such as met their fate in the field of war.  By these methods he trained an intrepid and continually increasing army, inflamed with enthusiasm, and greedy of death.  He prepared them for the most arduous undertakings, by continual attacks upon travelling caravans and scattered villages:  a pursuit, which, though perfectly consonant with the institutions of his ancestors, painted him to the civilized nations of Europe in the obnoxious character of a robber.  By degrees however, he proceeded to the greatest enterprizes; and compelled the whole peninsula of Arabia to confess his authority as a prince, and his mission as a prophet.  He died, like the Grecian Philip, in the moment, when having brought his native country to co-operate