No More Learning

[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. 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?