childhood, especially the "charming idyl" of the nurse Halîma as given by Ibn Ishâc, with the most ancient models of the Moulûd Sharîf, we find the same spirit and style pervading both, the later being merely a development of the older. And this again points back to the still earlier rhapsodies made use of by the Biographers. "I doubt not," says Sprenger, "that Ibn Ishâc's narrative has been derived from the earliest (Moslem) Gospels of the Infancy." 

Such works unveil the early tendency of the Moslems to glorify their Prophet, compiled as they are on Shafy's maxim "In the exaltation of Mahomet to exaggerate is lawful." This principle is conspicuous in the culminating legend of the "Heavenly journey,"—the grand proof to the credulous believer of the Prophet's mission. It originated at the same period as the other legends,¹ possibly a little later; and it can be traced up, in almost identical expressions through distinct traditionary channels, to three of the pupils of Anas the servant of Mahomet; we have it, therefore, in almost the very words in which a contemporary of the Prophet used to recite the story. 

To while away the time by repeating tales has always been a favourite recreation in the East; and to this practice Sprenger attributes the episodic form of many passages in the life of Mahomet. The habit survives in the professional story-tellers who in our own day recite romances like that of Antar; and they do so with a histrionic power for which, compared with that of European actors, Sprenger avows his preference. These romances are committed to memory, and, as occasion requires, repeated in a shorter or longer form; but, however varied and in different shape, when the expressions are compared with the original model, there is found a substantial agreement to prevail.