perhaps the most marked feature of the Ruba'i,—the interlinking of the four lines by the repetition in the fourth line of the rhyme of the first and second. Mr. Swinburne's modification of this metre, in which the rhyme is carried on from one quatrain to the next, is not applicable to poems like Omar's, each of which is isolated in sense from the context. Alexandrines would of course correspond, more nearly than decasyllables, with Rubá'í lines in number of syllables, and they have been extensively used by Bodenstedt and other German translators of Ruba'is, but whatever may be the case in German, they are apt to read very heavily in English, even when constructed by skilful verse-makers, and an inferior workman can hardly hope to manage them with anything like success. The shorter length of the decasyllable line is not altogether a disadvantage to the translator. Owing to the large number of monosyllables in English, it is generally adequate to hold the contents of a Persian line a syllable or two longer; and a line erring, if at all, on the side of brevity, has at any rate the advantage of obliging the translator to eschew modern diffuseness, and of making him try to copy the "classical parsimony," the archaic terseness and condensation of the original.

The poet Cowper has a remark on translation from Latin which is eminently true also of translation from Persian. He says, "That is epigrammatic and witty in Latin which would be perfectly insipid in English. If a Latin poem is neat, elegant, and musical, it is enough, but English readers are not so easily satisfied."

Much of Omar's matter, when literally translated, seems very trite and commonplace, many of the "conceits," of which he is so fond, very frigid, and even his peculiar grotesque humour often loses its savour in an English replica. The translator is often tempted to elevate a too grovelling sentiment, to "sharpen a point" here and there, to trick out a commonplace with some borrowed modern embellishment. But this temptation is one to be resisted as far as possible. According to the Hadís, "the business of a messenger is simply to deliver his message," and he must not shrink from displaying the naked truth. A translator who writes in verse must of course claim the liberty of altering the form of the expression over and over again, but the substituted expressions ought to be in keeping with the author's style, and on the same plane of sentiment as his. It is beyond the province of a translator to attempt the task of painting the lily. But it is easier to lay down correct principles of translation than to observe them unswervingly in one's practice.

IV.

As regards subject-matter, Omar's quatrains may be classed under the following six heads :—

:

I. Complaints of "the wheel of heaven," or fate, of the world's injustice, of the loss of friends, of man's limited faculties and destinies.

II. Satires on the hypocrisy of the "unco' guid," the impiety of the pious, the ignorance of the learned, and the untowardness of his own generation.

III. Love-poems on the sorrows of separation and the joys of reunion with the beloved, earthly or spiritual.

IV. Poems in praise of spring, gardens, and flowers. V. Irreligious and antinomian utterances, charging the sins of the creature to the account of the Creator, scoffing at the Prophet's Paradise and Hell, singing the praises of wine and pleasure-preaching ad nauseam, "Eat and drink (especially drink), for to-morrow ye die."

VI. Addresses to the Deity, now in the ordinary language of devotion, bewailing sins and imploring pardon, now in mystical phraseology, craving deliverance from "self," and union with the "Truth," or Deity, as conceived by the Mystics.

The "complaints" may obviously be connected with the known facts of the poet's life, by supposing them to have been prompted by the persecution to which he was subjected on account of his opinions. His remarks on the Houris and other sacred subjects raised such a feeling against him that at one time his life was in danger, and the wonder is that he escaped at all in a city like Nishapúr, where the odium theologicum raged so fiercely as to occasion a sanguinary civil war. In the year 489 A.H., as we learn from Ibn al Athir,' the orthodox banded themselves together under the leadership of Abul Kasim and Muhammad, the chiefs of the Hanefites and the Shafeites, in order to exterminate the Kerrámians or Anthropomorphist heretics, and succeeded in putting many of them to death, and in destroying all their establishments. It may be also that after the death of his patron

1 See Defrémery, "Recherches sur le Règne de Barkiárok,” p. 51.

Nizám ul Mulk, Omar lost his stipend and was reduced

to poverty.

The satires probably owed their origin to the same cause. Rien ne soulage comme la rhétorique.

The love-poems are samples of a class of compositions much commoner in later poets than in Omar. Most of them probably bear a mystical meaning, for I doubt if Omar was a person very susceptible of the tender passion. He speaks with appreciation of "tulip cheeks and cypress forms," but apparently recognises no attractions of a higher order in his fair friends.

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The poems in praise of scenery, again, offer a strong contrast to modern treatment of the same theme. The only aspects of Nature noticed by Omar are such as affect the senses agreeably-the bright flowers, the song of the nightingale, the grassy bank of the stream, and the shady gardens associated in his mind with his convivial parties. The geographer translated by Sir W. Ouseley says of Nishapúr, "The city is watered by a subterranean canal, which is conveyed to the fields and gardens, and there is a considerable stream that waters the city and the villages about it-this stream is named Saka. In all the province of Khorásan there is not any city larger than Nishapúr, nor any blessed with a more pure and temperate air."

But it is in the antinomian quatrains and in the pious aspirations that the most remarkable and characteristic features of Omar's poetry are exhibited. The glaring contrast between these two classes of his poetry has led his readers to take very opposite views of him, according

as they looked at one or the other side of the shield. European critics, like his contemporaries, mostly consider him an infidel and a voluptuary "of like mind with Sardanapalus." On the other hand, the Sufis have contrived to affix mystical and devotional meanings even to his most Epicurean quatrains, and this method of interpretation is nowadays as universally accepted in Persia and India as the mystical interpretation of the Canticles is in Europe. But neither of these views can be accepted in its entirety. Even if the Sufi symbolism had been definitely formulated as early as Omar's time, which is very doubtful, common sense would forbid us to force a devotional meaning on the palpably Epicurean quatrains; and, on the other hand, unless we are prepared to throw over the authority of all the MSS., including the most ancient ones, we must reckon with the obviously mystical and devotional quatrains. essential contradiction in the tone and temper of these two sections of Omar's poetry cannot be glossed over, but imperatively calls for explanation.

The

His poems were obviously not all written at one period of his life, but from time to time, just as circumstance and mood suggested, and under the influence of the thoughts, passions, and desires which happened to be uppermost at the moment. It may be that the irreligious and Epicurean quatrains were written in youth, and the devotional only in his riper years. But this hypothesis seems to be disproved by Sharastáni's account of him, which is quite silent as to any such conversion or change of sentiment on his part, and also by the fact that he