Edward Fit:Gerald'a llubliipit of Omar Kayytim, with their Original Posian
Sources. Collated from his own MSS., and literally translated by Edward H. Heron-Allen. (Bernard Quaritch, 7s. 6d.)—In his preface Mr. Heron-Allen gives an interesting account of the difficulties of tracing and collating the various MSS. and printed copies of this poem. This is how he sums up the result of his work. Forty-nine quatrains are faithful para- phrases of single quatrains of Omar's. "Forty-four are traceable
to more than one quatrain Two are inspired by quatrains found by FitzGerald only in Nicolas's text. Two are quatrains reflecting the whole spirit of the original poem. Two are trace- able exclusively to the influence of the Mantik ut-tair (Parlia- ment of Birds) of Fend ud din Attar. Two quatrains primarily inspired by Omar were influenced by the odes of Hafiz. And three, which were suppressed by FitzGerald himself are not attributable to any lines in the original texts." It has been said that the quatrain (xix.)—
- I sometimes think that never blows so red The Rose as where some buried exsar bled ; That every Hyacinth the garden wears plupt in her Lap from some once lovely Head," was FitzGerald's own, but it is really one of those renderings that closely follow the Persian. This is the literal translation :— 'Everywhere that there has been a rase or a tulip bed, It has come from the redness of the blood of a king ;— Every violet shoot that grows from the earth Is a mole that was once upon the cheek of a beauty."
The literal version of that highly poetical quatrain beginning "A Book of Verses underneath the Bough" (xii.) is amusingly prosaic. "If a loaf of wheaten bread be forthcoming, A gourd of wine and a thigh-bone of mutton
and the presence of the beloved one, the joys of paradise were insured. An author should be the judge of the final form his work is to take, and though it is interesting to see the suppressed quatrains in the appendix to this book, we cannot but feel that FitzGerald was right in leaving them out of his last edition, as they are hardly up to the high level of the others. This book is well bound, and the printing and paper are excellent.
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