more accurate inquiry will suggest, that,
instead of visiting the courts, the camps, the temples, of the East, the
two journeys of Mahomet into Syria were confined to the fairs of Bostra
and Damascus; that he was only thirteen years of age when he accompanied
the caravan of his uncle; and that his duty compelled him to return as
soon as he had disposed of the merchandise of Cadijah. In these hasty
and superficial excursions, the eye of genius might discern some objects
invisible to his grosser companions; some seeds of knowledge might be
cast upon a fruitful soil; but his ignorance of the Syriac language
must have checked his curiosity; and I cannot perceive, in the life
or writings of Mahomet, that his prospect was far extended beyond the
limits of the Arabian world. From every region of that solitary world,
the pilgrims of Mecca were annually assembled, by the calls of devotion
and commerce: in the free concourse of multitudes, a simple citizen, in
his native tongue, might study the political state and character of the
tribes, the theory and practice of the Jews and Christians. Some
useful strangers might be tempted, or forced, to implore the rights of
hospitality; and the enemies of Mahomet have named the Jew, the Persian,
and the Syrian monk, whom they accuse of lending their secret aid to the
composition of the Koran. [72] Conversation enriches the understanding,
but solitude is the school of genius; and the uniformity of a work
denotes the hand of a single artist. From his earliest youth Mahomet
was addicted to religious contemplation; each year, during the month of
Ramadan, he withdrew from the world, and from the arms of Cadijah: in
the cave of Hera, three miles from Mecca, [73] he consulted the spirit
of fraud or enthusiasm, whose abode is not in the heavens, but in
the mind of the prophet. The faith which, under the name of Islam, he
preached to his family and nation, is compounded of an eternal truth,
and a necessary fiction, That there is only one God, and that Mahomet is
the apostle of God.

[Footnote 69: Abulfeda, in Vit. c. lxv. lxvi. Gagnier, Vie de
Mahomet, tom. iii. p. 272-289. The best traditions of the person
and conversation of the prophet are derived from Ayesha, Ali, and Abu
Horaira, (Gagnier, tom. ii. p. 267. Ockley's Hist. of the Saracens, vol.
ii. p. 149,) surnamed the Father of a Cat, who died in the year 59 of
the Hegira. * Note: Compare, likewise, the new Life of Mahomet (Mohammed
der proph