VOL. XXIX.

No. 1.

In the latter half of the eleventh century and the first quarter of the twelfth there lived in Persia the astronomer-poet Omar, who bore the additional name of Khayyam, or the tent-maker. His scientific work remains not wholly obscure, we are told, but for the most part indistinguishable in the foundations upon which later astronomers have built. His poetry retains its individuality, and gives joy to scholars by reason of its varying form and quantity in rival manuscripts and editions. It was written in Rubaiyát, the Persian equivalent for quatrains, and four or five hundred of these stanzas, genuine or spurious, have escaped the tooth of time and may be read now, whether in their original tongue or by versions in French, German, English, and doubtless other western languages.

It was left for Mr. Edward Fitzgerald, an English poet who put his strength into masculine versions of foreign poetry-notably in the case of the "Agamemnon" of Æschylus - to domesticate these Rubaiyát in English literature, a dozen years ago, by rendering a hundred and one of them into quatrains of marvelous fineness of workmanship. He published his version with an entertaining introduction and helpful notes, and after three editions had been issued the work was reprinted in America. It has thus taken its place as a part of the intellectual furnishing of many minds. In Mr. Fitzgerald's handling the separate Rubaiyát were molded into a poem which has a flexible form, while each quatrain has an integrity undisturbed by separation from the rest.

There are hints given by the translator that in the exercise of his selective judgment he aimed to give expression to Omar's philosophy in a better proportion than appears in the original Rubaiyát. At all events, it is quite possible from these hundred and one quatrains

to construct a tolerably consistent scheme of philosophy touching the elemental problems of human life and destiny. Like every great poem, it offers the reader the choice of catching in it minnows or whales; and even to the most thoughtful there is the possibility of a widely diverse interpretation. Mr. Fitzgerald quotes a writer in the "Calcutta Review" who draws an interesting parallel between Omar and Lucretius, and, mingling his own reflections with those of the reviewer, sums up the matter thus:

"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 yet 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 so vast a 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 the 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!"

For all that, Mr. Fitzgerald's own version affords quite sufficient excuse for any one to read into Omar's Rubaiyát an interpretation which would make a mask where Mr. Fitzgerald sees a face, and a face where he sees a mask. Indeed, one may safely question his own or his neighbor's western way of reading an Oriental poem, and accept the possibility that they are all merely using an antique coin as an instrument of exchange.

Be this as it may, our purpose here is not to seek an authoritative rendering into the

terms of modern thought of this ancient parable, that would suppose a final answer to the Sphinx's riddle, but to call attention to a very notable work, happily entitled an accompaniment to the Rubaiyát. As Mr. Fitzgerald used the material which he found in the Persian poet's stanzas for the construction of a noble English poem, and thereby offered both an interpretation of the Rubaiyát and a new propounding of the enigma of human life and destiny, so Mr. Elihu Vedder has reproduced Mr. Fitzgerald's quatrains in a series of designs, mainly of a decorative character, which restate the problem in line and shade with such variations as spring from the introduction of another personal equation. An American artist has joined the Persian poet and the English translator, and the result is a

trio which presents the original strain in a richer, profounder harmony.

The form in which the Rubaiyát are now presented is the artist's throughout, with as little mechanical aid as was possible. The original designs here engraved include the text in the half-cursive, half-formal characters which an artist would employ in order to adjust the relation of text to decoration. In the book the space assigned has been undisturbed, but the lettering has been replaced by careful hand-work in bold reproduction of the best type-forms. Excellent as this is, one wishes that the artist's own hand had traced the characters, even at the risk of some slight obscurity; there would have been a trifle more unification of text and design. The drawings thus amended have been reproduced by the albertype process, which is, in effect, a photographic fac-simile in a single color. The original designs in some cases had two tints, and there is, therefore, an occasional flatness in the reproductions when compared with the originals. While, as always happens in any mechanical process, some of the spiritual quality of the original work has evaporated, the loss is slighter than could have occurred in any translation where the activity of another mind found expression. In an engraving there may indeed be gain; there can be no gain in a strictly mechanical process, but there are degrees of loss, and, short of a study of the original designs, the reproduction is quite as satisfactory as one could well ask.

We have said that the form is the artist's throughout, and it is a pleasure to see how minutely he has carried out his conception, leaving absolutely nothing to the printer but to take impressions of the prints furnished him by the artist, and nothing to the binder but to bind the leaves strongly together; for the artist has supplied cover, title-page, printer's device, and even lining-paper, and he has made all these apparently formal or conventional parts of the book instinct with the life of the book itself. Thus the swirl which appears on the cover is a deep note sounding at the very entrance of the book. It represents the moment and the instant of life, the gradual concentration of the elements, the pause as the movement is reversed, and then the ever-widening dispersion again into the primitive elements. Throughout the book this swirl recurs now and again; it is the bass in the harmony. The potter's jar which forms the homely incident, so to speak, of the poem, is here, also, its full proportions interrupted by the vine-leaf, as in the poem the vine constantly runs athwart human life. Stars, too, there are, of differing magnitude, set in cloudy