No More Learning

"At Naishapur thus lived and died Omar Khayyam, 'busied,' adds the
Vizier, 'in winning knowledge of every kind, and especially in
Astronomy, wherein he attained to a very high pre-eminence. Under the
Sultanate of Malik Shah, he came to Merv, and obtained great praise
for his proficiency in science, and the Sultan showered favors upon
him. '

"When the Malik Shah determined to reform the calendar, Omar was one
of the eight learned men employed to do it; the result was the Jalali
era (so called from Jalal-ud-din, one of the king's names)--'a
computation of time,' says Gibbon, 'which surpasses the Julian, and
approaches the accuracy of the Gregorian style. ' He is also the
author of some astronomical tables, entitled 'Ziji-Malikshahi,' and
the French have lately republished and translated an Arabic Treatise
of his on Algebra.

"His Takhallus or poetical name (Khayyam) signifies a Tent-maker, and
he is said to have at one time exercised that trade, perhaps before
Nizam-ul-Mulk's generosity raised him to independence. Many Persian
poets similarly derive their names from their occupations; thus we
have Attar, 'a druggist,' Assar, 'an oil presser,' etc. [2] Omar
himself alludes to his name in the following whimsical lines:--

"'Khayyam, who stitched the tents of science,
Has fallen in grief's furnace and been suddenly burned;
The shears of Fate have cut the tent ropes of his life,
And the broker of Hope has sold him for nothing! '

"We have only one more anecdote to give of his Life, and that relates
to the close; it is told in the anonymous preface which is sometimes
prefixed to his poems; it has been printed in the Persian in the
Appendix to Hyde's Veterum Persarum Religio, p. 499; and D'Herbelot
alludes to it in his Bibliotheque, under Khiam. [3]--

"'It is written in the chronicles of the ancients that this King of
the Wise, Omar Khayyam, died at Naishapur in the year of the Hegira,
517 (A. D. 1123); in science he was unrivaled,--the very paragon of his
age. Khwajah Nizami of Samarcand, who was one of his pupils, relates
the following story: "I often used to hold conversations with my
teacher, Omar Khayyam, in a garden; and one day he said to me,
'My tomb shall be in a spot where the north wind may scatter roses
over it. ' I wondered at the words he spake, but I knew that his were
no idle words. [4] Years after, when I chanced to revisit Naishapur, I
went to his final resting-place, and lo!
it was just outside a garden,
and trees laden with fruit stretched their boughs over the garden
wall, and dropped their flowers upon his tomb, so that the stone was
hidden under them. "'"

Thus far--without fear of Trespass--from the Calcutta Review. The
writer of it, on reading in India this story of Omar's Grave, was
reminded, he says, of Cicero's Account of finding Archimedes' Tomb at
Syracuse, buried in grass and weeds. I think Thorwaldsen desired to
have roses grow over him; a wish religiously fulfilled for him to the
present day, I believe. However, to return to Omar.

Though the Sultan "shower'd Favors upon him," Omar's Epicurean
Audacity of Thought and Speech caused him to be regarded askance in
his own Time and Country. He is said to have been especially hated
and dreaded by the Sufis, whose Practise he ridiculed, and whose Faith
amounts to little more than his own, when stript of the Mysticism and
formal recognition of Islamism under which Omar would not hide. Their
Poets, including Hafiz, who are (with the exception of Firdausi) 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 addressed; a People quite as quick of
Doubt as of Belief; as keen of Bodily sense as of Intellectual; and
delighting in a cloudy composition of both, in which they could float
luxuriously between Heaven and Earth, and this World and the Next, on
the wings of a poetical expression, that might serve indifferently for
either. Omar was too honest of Heart as well 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 soothe the Soul through the Senses into
Acquiescence with Things as he saw them, than to perplex it with vain
disquietude after what they might be. It has been seen, however, that
his Worldly Ambition was not exorbitant; and he very likely takes a
humorous or perverse pleasure in exalting the gratification of Sense
above that of the Intellect, in which he must have taken great
delight, although it failed to answer the Questions in which he, in
common with all men, was most vitally interested.

For whatever Reason, however, Omar as before said, has never been
popular in his own Country, and therefore has been but scantily
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 the
acquisitions of Arms and Science. There is no copy at the India
House, none at the Bibliotheque Nationale of Paris. We know but of
one in England: No.