one of Expostulation, supposed (says a Notice prefixed to the MS.)
to have arisen from a Dream, in which Omar's mother asked about his

future fate. It may be rendered thus:--
"O Thou who burn'st in Heart for those who burn

In Hell, whose fires thyself shall feed in turn,
How long be crying, 'Mercy on them, God!'

Why, who art Thou to teach, and He to learn?"
The Bodleian Quatrain pleads Pantheism by way of Justification.

"If I myself upon a looser Creed
Have loosely strung the Jewel of Good deed,

Let this one thing for my Atonement plead:
That One for Two I never did misread."

<5>"Since this paper was written" (adds the Reviewer in a note), "we
have met with a Copy of a very rare Edition, printed at Calcutta in

1836. This contains 438 Tetrastichs, with an Appendix containing 54
others not found in some MSS."

The Reviewer,<6> to whom I owe the Particulars of Omar's Life,
concludes his Review by comparing him with Lucretius, both as to

natural Temper and Genius, and as acted upon by the Circumstances in
which he lived. Both indeed were men of subtle, strong, and

cultivated Intellect, fine Imagination, and Hearts passionate" target="_blank" title="a.易动情的；易怒的">passionate for
Truth and Justice; who justly revolted from their Country's false

Religion, and false, or foolish, Devotion to it; but who fell short of
replacing what they subverted by such better Hope as others, with no

better Revelation to guide them, had yet made a Law to themselves.
Lucretius indeed, with such material as Epicurus 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
description of the Roman Theater) discolored with the lurid reflex of

the Curtain suspended between the Spectator and the Sun. Omar, more
desperate, or more careless of any so complicated System as resulted

in nothing but hopeless Necessity, flung his own Genius and Learning
with a bitter or humorous jest into the general Ruin which their

insufficient 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!
<6>Professor Cowell.

With regard to the present Translation. The original Rubaiyat (as,
missing an Arabic Guttural, these Tetrastichs are more musically

called) are independent Stanzas, consisting each of four Lines of
equal, though varied, Prosody; sometimes all rhyming, but oftener (as

here imitated) the third line a blank. Somewhat as in the Greek
Alcaic, where the penultimate line seems to lift and suspend the Wave

that falls over in the last. As usual with such kind of Oriental
Verse, the Rubaiyat follow one another according to Alphabetic

Rhyme--a strange succession of Grave and Gay. Those here selected are
strung into something of an Eclogue, with perhaps a less than equal

proportion of the "Drink and make-merry," which (genuine or not)
recurs over-frequently 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

endeavoring to unshackle his Steps from Destiny, and to catch some
authentic Glimpse of TO-MORROW, fell back upon TO-DAY (which has

outlasted so many To-morrows!) as the only Ground he had got to stand
upon, however momentarily slipping from under his Feet.

[From the Third Edition.]
While the second Edition of this version of Omar was preparing,

Monsieur Nicolas, French Consul at Resht, published a very careful and
very good Edition of the Text, from a lithograph copy at Teheran,

comprising 464 Rubaiyat, with translation and notes of his own.
Mons. Nicolas, whose Edition has reminded me of several things, and

instructed me in others, does not consider Omar to be the material
Epicurean that I have literally taken him for, but a Mystic, shadowing

the Deity under the figure of Wine, Wine-bearer, &c., as Hafiz is
supposed to do; in short, a Sufi Poet like Hafiz and the rest.

I cannot see reason to alter my opinion, formed as it was more than a
dozen years ago when Omar was first shown me by one to whom I am

indebted for all I know of Oriental, and very much of other,
literature. He admired Omar's Genius so much, that he would gladly

have adopted any such Interpretation of his meaning as Mons. Nicolas'
if he could.<7> That he could not, appears by his Paper in the

Calcutta Review already so largely quoted; in which he argues from the
Poems themselves, as well as from what records remain of the Poet's

Life.
<7> Perhaps would have edited the Poems himself some years ago. He

may now as little approve of my Version on one side, as of Mons.
Nicolas' Theory on the other.

And if more were needed to disprove Mons. Nicolas' Theory, there is
the Biographical Notice which he himself has drawn up in direct

contradiction to the Interpretation of the Poems given in his Notes.
(See pp. 13-14 of his Preface.) Indeed I hardly knew poor Omar was so

far gone till his Apologist informed me. For here we see that,
whatever were the Wine that Hafiz drank and sang, the veritable Juice

of the Grape it was which Omar used, not only when carousing with his
friends, but (says Mons. Nicolas) in order to excite himself to that

pitch of Devotion which others reached by cries and "hurlemens." And
yet, whenever Wine, Wine-bearer, &c., occur in the Text--which is

often enough--Mons. Nicolas carefully annotates "Dieu," "La Divinite,"
&c.: so carefully indeed that one is tempted to think that he was

indoctrinated by the Sufi with whom he read the Poems. (Note to Rub.
ii. p. 8.) A Persian would naturally wish to vindicate a

distinguished Countryman; and a Sufi to enroll him in his own sect,
which already comprises all the chief Poets of Persia.

What historical Authority has Mons. Nicolas to show that Omar gave
himself up "avec passion a l'etude de la philosophie des Soufis"?

(Preface, p. xiii.) The Doctrines of Pantheism, Materialism,
Necessity, &c., were not peculiar to the Sufi; nor to Lucretius before

them; nor to Epicurus before him; probably the very original
Irreligion of Thinking men from the first; and very likely to be the

spontaneous growth of a Philosopher living in an Age of social and
political barbarism, under shadow of one of the Two and Seventy

Religions supposed to divide the world. Von Hammer (according to
Sprenger's Oriental Catalogue) speaks of Omar as "a Free-thinker, and

a great opponent of Sufism;" perhaps because, while holding much of
their Doctrine, he would not pretend to any inconsistentseverity of

morals. Sir W. Ouseley has written a note to something of the same
effect on the fly-leaf of the Bodleian MS. And in two Rubaiyat of

Mons. Nicolas' own Edition Suf and Sufi are both disparagingly named.
No doubt many of these Quatrains seem unaccountable unless mystically

interpreted; but many more as unaccountable unless literally. Were
the Wine spiritual, for instance, how wash the Body with it when dead?

Why make cups of the dead clay to be filled with--"La Divinite," by
some succeeding Mystic? Mons. Nicolas himself is puzzled by some

"bizarres" and "trop Orientales" allusions and images--"d'une
sensualite quelquefois revoltante" indeed--which "les convenances" do

not permit him to translate; but still which the reader cannot but
refer to "La Divinite."<8> No doubt also many of the Quatrains in the

Teheran, as in the Calcutta, Copies, are spurious; such Rubaiyat being
the common form of Epigram in Persia. But this, at best, tells as

much one way as another; nay, the Sufi, who may be considered the
Scholar and Man of Letters in Persia, would be far more likely than

the careless Epicure to interpolate what favours his own view of the
Poet. I observed that very few of the more mystical Quatrains are in

the Bodleian MS., which must be one of the oldest, as dated at Shiraz,
A.H. 865, A.D. 1460. And this, I think, especially distinguishes Omar

(I cannot help calling him by his--no, not Christian--familiar name)
from all other Persian Poets: That, whereas with them the Poet is lost