Wisdom Vault — onlinknow.co.za

India House, none at the Bib- liotheque Nationale of Paris. We know but of one in England: No. 140 of the Ouseley MSS. at the Bodleian, written at Shirdz, a.o. 1460. This contains but 158 Rubdiydt. One in the Asiatic Society^s Library at Calcutta (of whidi we have a Copy), contains (and yet incomplete) 516, though swelled to that by all kinds of Repetition and Corruption.

So on Hammer speaks of his Copy as containing about 200, while Dr. Sprenger catalogues the Lucknow MS. at double that number.* The Scribes, too, of the Oxford and Calcutta MSS. seem to do their Work under a sort of Protest; each be- ginning with a Tetrastich (whether genuine or not), taken out of its alphabetical order; the * ''Since this paper was written" (adds the Reviewer in a note), "we have met with a Copy of a very rare Edi- tion, printed at Calcutta in 1836.

This contains 438 Te- trastichs, with an Appendix containing 54 others not found in some MSS.** [38] THE ASTRONOMBR-POST OF PERSIA Qifcrd with one of Apology; the Calcutta with of Expostulation, supposed (sajrs a Notice to the MS.) to have arisen fix>m a Dream, in which Omar^s mother asked about his future &te.

It may be rendered thus: — ^Oh Thou who hurrCH m Heart Jbr those who bum **In HeB, whose fires thyse^ shall Jeed in turn; ^How long be cryingj ^ Mercy on them^ GodP ^ WJuf, who art Thou to teachy and He to leamf^ The Bodleian Quatrain pleads Pantheism by way of Justification. ^U^I myself upon a looser Creed ^Have loosely strung the Jewel qfGood deed^ ^Let this one thing Jbr my Atonement plead: ^TTuxt One Jbr Two I never did mis-readJ^ The Reviewer,* to whom I owe the Particulars of Omar^s life, concludes his Review by corn- *Phyfe88or CowelL [39] H OMAR KHAYYAM paring him with Lucretius, both as to natural Temper and Grenius, and as acted upon by the Circumstances in which he lived.

Both indeed ^ were men of subtle, strong, and cultivated In- tellect, fine Imagination, and Hearts passionate •c for Truth and Justice; who justly revolted fix>m S their Countay'8 false Religion, and fake, or foolish. Devotion to it; but who feU short of replacing what they subverted by such better Hcpe as others, with no better Revelation to guide them, had yet made a Law to themselves.

Lucretius, indeed, with such material as Epicu- rus furnished, satisfied himself with the theory of a vast machine fortuitously constructed, and acting by a Law that implied no Legislator; and so composing himself into a Stoical rather « than Epicurean severity of Attitude, sat down to contemplate the mechanical Drama of the Universe which he was part Actor in; himself and all about him (as in his own sublime de- [40] THE ASTRONOMER-POET OF PERSIA scription of the Roman Theatre) discoloured with the lurid reflex of the Curtain suspended between the Spectator and the Sun.

Omar, more desperate, or more careless of any so com- plicated System as resulted in nothing but hope- leas Necessity, flung his own Genius and I^am- ing with a bitter or humorous jest into the general Ruin which their insu£Bcient glimpses only served to reveal; and, pretending sensual pleasure as the serious purpose of Life, only diverted himself with speculative problems of Deity, Destiny, Matter and Spirit, Good and Evil, and other such questions, easier to start than to run down, and the pursuit of which becomes a very weary sport at last!

With regard * to the present Translation. The original RubdiyAt (as, missing an Arabic Gut- tural, these TetragticJu are more musically called) are independent Stanzas, consisting each of four Lines of equal, though varied. Prosody; some- [41] i OMAR KHAYYAM times aU rhyming, but oftener (as here imi- tated) the third line a blank.

Somewhat as in the Greek Alcaic, where the penultimate line seems to lift and suspend the Wave that fisdls over in the last. As usual with such kind of Oriental Verse, the Rubdiyit follow one another according to Alphabetic Rhyme — a stxange sue- cession of Grave and Gray.

Those here selected are strung into something of an Eclogue, with perhaps a less than equal proportion of the ^^Drink and make-meny,^ which (genuine or not) recurs over-firequently in the Original. Either way, the Result is sad enough: saddest perhaps when most ostentatiously merry: more. apt to move Sorrow than Anger toward the old Tentmaker, who, after vainly endeavouring to unshackle his Steps from Destiny, and to catch some authentic Glimpse of To-Moasow, fell back upon To-day (which has outlasted so many To-morrows!) as the only Ground he had [48] ^ THE ASTRONOMBR-POBT OF PERSIA got to stand upon, however momentarily slip- ping from under his Feet. (fbom the third edition) While the second Edition of this version of Omar was preparing, Monsieur Nicolas, French Consul at Resht, published a veiy careful and very good Edition of the Text, from a litho- graph copy at Teheran, comprising 464 Rubti- ydt, with translation and notes of his own.