No More Learning

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. 140 of the Ouseley MSS. at the Bodleian, written
at Shiraz, A. D. 1460. This contains but 158 Rubaiyat. One in the
Asiatic Society's Library at 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. [5] 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 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. "

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 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!

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!