than his own when stript of the Mysticism and formal Compliment to Islamism which Omar would not hide under. Their Poets, including Háfiz, who are (with the exception of Firdúsi) the most considerable in Persia, borrowed largely, indeed, of Omar’s material, but turning it to a mystical Use more convenient to Themselves and the People they address’d; a People quite as quick of Doubt as of Belief; quite as keen of the Bodily Senses as of the Intellectual; and delighting in a cloudy Element compounded of all, in which they could float luxuriously between Heaven and Earth, and this World and the Next, on the wings of a poetical expression, that could be recited indifferently whether at the Mosque or the Tavern. Omar was too honest of Heart as well as of Head for this. Having failed (however mistakenly) of finding any Providence but Destiny, and any World but This, he set about making the most of it; preferring rather to sooth the Soul through the Senses into Acquiescence with Things as they were, than to perplex it with vain mortifications after what they might be. It has been seen that his Worldly Desires, however, were not exorbitant; and he very likely takes a humorous pleasure in exaggerating them above that Intellect in whose exercise he must have found great pleasure, though not in a Theological direction. However this may be, his Worldly Pleasures are what they profess to be without any Pretence at divine Allegory: his Wine is the veritable Juice of the Grape: his Tavern, where it was to be had: his Sáki, the Flesh and Blood that poured it out for him: all which, and where the Roses were in Bloom, was all he profess’d to want of this World or to expect of Paradise.

The Mathematic Faculty, too, which regulated his Fancy, and condensed his Verse to a Quality and Quantity unknown in Persian, perhaps in Oriental, Poetry, help’d by its very virtue perhaps to render him less popular with his countrymen. If the Greeks were Children in Gossip, what does Persian Literature imply but a Second Childishness of Garrulity? And certainly if no ungeometric Greek was to enter Plato’s School of Philosophy, no so unchastised a Persian should enter on the Race of Persian Verse, with its “fatal Faculty” of running on long after Thought is winded! But Omar was not only the single Mathematician of his Country’s Poets; he was also of that older Time and stouter Temper, before the native Soul of Persia was quite broke by a foreign Creed as well as foreign Conquest. Like his great Predecessor Firdúsi, who was as little of a Mystic; who scorned to use even a Word of the very language in which the New Faith came clothed; and who was suspected, not of Omar’s Irreligion indeed, but of secretly clinging to the ancient Fire-Religion of Zerdusht, of which so many of the Kings he sang were worshippers.

For whatever Reason, however, Omar, as before said, has never been popular in his own Country, and therefore has been but charily transmitted abroad. The MSS. of his Poems, mutilated beyond the average Casualties of Oriental Transcription, are so rare in the East as scarce to have reacht Westward at all, in spite of all that Arms and Science have brought us. There is none at the India House, none at the Bibliothèque Impériale of Paris. We know but of one in England; No. 140 of the Ouseley MSS. at the Bodleian, written at Shiraz, A.D. 1460. This contains but 158 Rubáiyát. One in the Asiatic Society’s Library of Calcutta (of which we have a Copy) contains (and yet incomplete) 516, though swelled to that by all kinds of Repetition and Corruption. So Von 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 beginning with a Tetrastich (whether genuine or not) taken out of its alphabetical order; the Oxford with one of Apology; the Calcutta with one of Execration too stupid for Omar’s, even had Omar been stupid enough to execrate himself.

The Reviewer, who translates the foregoing Particulars of Omar’s Life, and some of his Verse into Prose, concludes by comparing him with Lucretius, both in natural Temper and Genius, and as acted upon by the Circumstances in which he lived. Both indeed men of subtle Intellect and high Imaginations, instructed in Learning beyond their day, and of Hearts passionate for Truth and Justice; who justly revolted from their Country’s false Religion, and false, or foolish, Devotion to it; but who yet fell short of replacing what they subverted by any such better Hope as others, upon whom no better Faith had dawned, had yet made a Law to themselves. Lucretius, indeed, with such material as Epicurus furnished, consoled himself with the construction of a Machine that needed no Constructor, and acting by a Law that implied no Lawgiver; and so composing Himself into a Stoical rather than Epicurean severity of Attitude, sat down to contemplate the mechanical drama of the Universe of which he was part actor; himself and all about him (as in his own sublime Description of the Roman Theatre), coloured with the lurid reflex of the Curtain