Life of Abdul Hamid

ISBN: 9781330973134 出版年：2016 页码：382 Sir Edwin Pears Forgotten Books

For, in a world where cruel deeds abound,The merely damned are legion; with such soulsIs not each hollow and cranny of Tophet crammed?Thou with the brightest of Hell's aureolesDost shine supreme, incomparably crowned,Immortally, beyond all mortals, damned.Thus wrote Mr. William Watson in a sonnet apologising to the late Sultan for having once called him simply Abdul the Damned.A word of apology on my part may, perhaps, be expected for having included this sorry creature, Abdul Hamid, among the Makers of the Nineteenth Century. It will be seen by those who read this volume, written by one who has spent most of the working years of his life among the Turks, who saw and made others see what was good in them, and who has always lifted up his voice against the cowardly oppression of their rulers, that, far from gaining as a personality from intimate knowledge, Abdul Hamid loses even the little credit he had with those who judged him from afar as, at any rate, an astute and able ruler. All this is true enough, and yet as an influence on the political thought and action of Europe in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, as one who has handed down that evil influence to the Europe of this century, Abdul Hamid may justly lay claim to be included among those who have helped in large measure to make or mar the world into which we were born.