phantasms of the world. Yet how wide is the difference between the fierce Lucilius (quoties Lucilius ardet') and the genial Horace, who 'Admissus circum præcordia ludit;' between the stern declaimer with his rhetorical indignation, and the kindly poet with his human sympathies, which soften all the rough teaching of his knowledge of life. Can we not trace a somewhat similar course in the highest instance of all Shakspeare? It is, we believe, a remark of Schlegel's, that Shakspeare's genius grew harder with years; he passes on from the warm and glowing world of 'As You Like It' and Twelfth Night,' to the colder region of Lear,' 'Coriolanus,' and 'Timon'- plays which, with all their splendor of poetry and thought, are yet deeply tinged with a subjective gloom. chiefly follow the very faithful translation published by Professor Eastwick; but the occasional verses we have ventured to render into prose, unless his verse (as is sometimes the case) is peculiarly terse and elegant, so as to be no mean equivalent for the original. The 'Gulistan,' as we said, consists 6. Decrepitude and old age; In none of these chapters have we any labored disquisitions on the nature or grounds of morality; Sadi's philosophy (like that of Horace's father) always teaches by example — not the dead general formula, but the living man. When we open the book, we step at once into life and action, far away from the disputations and logic of the schools into the street and the bazaar; we are no longer talking of abstractions and shadows; we are face to face with living agents-we are jostled in the crowd. Behind Sadi's book rises in perspective Sadi's own long life of adventure and travel; and it is this which gives to it its freshness and reality. The old man, as he writes, ecalls the past scenes in which he himself has felt and acted; every desert journey, every night adven In a lower degree it is the same with Sadi. The 'Gulistan' in every page bears the impress of a mind which had long looked with a keen insight into life, and read its characters with an experienced eye. The picture is tinged with a somewhat sombre coloring; the hue of youthful hope is gone, for gray hairs have come -to quote an Eastern poet, 'the messengers which bid cease to hope.' Yet this sombre hue is not unrelieved gloom, for the poet's warm heart is still alive, to soften the angry satire with genial humor; nor has the poet's eye forgot its power, but its selfcreated 'light which never was on land or sea' still glows with something of its ancient glory even on these sterner realities, 'And colors Life's dark cloud with orient ture, every caravanserai's guests have rays.' We now turn to the volume itself to support our remarks by extracts. Where these are in prose, we shall and MAUD's projecting a marriage between their 'Is it an echo of something In some Arabian Night ?' added some figure to the long succession of images which his memory calls up from the past. His childhood and its quiet home, his studious youth, his restless manhood and settled age, are summoned in turn to the sessions of sweet silent thought,' and each brings its store of memorials. We cannot refrain from quoting from the 'Bostan' And thou too knowest little the worth of life, Who canst fling it away in sweet pleasure.' Nor can the lines have a fitter accompa niment than the following parallel from the 'Gulistan,' (ii. 7:) 'I REMEMBER that in the time of my childhood I was devout and in the habit of keeping vigils, and eager to practise mortification and austerities. One night I sat in attendance on my father, and did not close my eyes the whole night, and I held the precious KORAN in my lap while the people around me slept. I said to my father, 'Not one of these lifts up his head to perform a prayer; they are so fast asleep that you would say they were dead.' 'Life of thy father,' he replied, 'it were better if thou too wert asleep, rather than thou shouldst be backbiting others.' STANZA. 'THE braggart sees only his own self, For he draws close the veil of conceit before him; If they but gave him an eye to see God, He would see no one weaker than himself.' Or this from the sixth chapter: 'ONE day, in the ignorance and folly of youth, I raised my voice against my mother. Cut to the heart, she sat down in a corner, and, weeping, exclaimed: Perhaps thou hast forgotten thine infancy that thou treatest me with this rudeness!'' Sadi ever seems to turn with a peculiar zest to the various scenes which he had witnessed in his days of travel; the figures of old companions in the caravanserai rise up before his mind's eye, and bygone hours of social intercourse are recalled in the silence of thought. Thus how vividly does such an incident as this from the second chap. ter depict the dangers and hardships of the caravans, while the sturdy robustness of the derwish stands out like the Antæus beggar in Elia's essay. 'A MAN on foot, with bare head and bare feet, came from Kufah with the caravan proceeding to Hijaz, and accompanied us. I looked at him, and saw that he was wholly unprovided with the supplies requisite for the journey. Nevertheless he went on merrily, and said: VERSES. 'I RIDE not on a camel, but am free from load and trammel, To no subjects am I lord, and I fear no monarch's word: I think not of the morrow, nor recall the bygone sorrow, Thus I breathe exempt from strife, and thus moves on my tranquil life.' 'One who rode on a camel said to him, 'O derwish, whither art thou going? turn back, or thou wilt perish from the hardships of the way.' He did not listen, but entered the desert and proceeded on. reached the palm-trees of Mahmud, fate overtook the rich man and he died. The When we derwish approached his pillow and said: 'I have survived these hardships, and thou hast perished on the back of thy dromedary.' COUPLET. 'A WATCHER Wept the livelong night beside a sick man's bed; When it dawned, the sick was well, and the mourner, he was dead!' Sadi delights in such antitheses as these - those unexpected contradictions of life, which mock the calculations of prudence, and so often force on us the conviction that life has an element of 'time and chance' which we cannot eliminate; that in spite of all our forecasting, 'the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong.' Another story from the third chapter gives a different phase of these contradictions of life, and will remind the reader of the scene in 'Robinson Crusoe,' where he finds the doubloons on board the wreck. 'I ONCE met an Arab amid a circle of jewellers at Basrah, who was relating the following story: Once on a time I had lost my way in the desert, and not a particle of food was left, and I had made up my mind to perish, when suddenly I found a purse full of pearls. Never shall I forget my joy and ecstasy when I thought that they were parched wheat; nor again the bitterness and despair, when I found that they were only pearls.'' From the second chapter we extract the following very interesting glimpse of his own derwish life, for Sadi himself was a wandering derwish; and in the picture adjoining his tomb, Colonel Franklin found him represented as wearing a derwish's khirkah, or long blue * with a pilgrim's staff in his gown, hand. 'I ONCE, in the principal mosque of Baalbek, addressed a few words, by way of exhortation, to a cold congregation, whose hearts were dead, and who had not found the way from the material to the spiritual world. I saw that my speech made no impression on them, and that my fire took no effect on their green wood. I grew weary of instructing brutes, and holding up a mirror in the district of the blind; still the door of utterance continued open, and the chain of my discourse kept lengthening, as I dwelt on that text of the Koran, 'We are nearer to him than the vein of his neck.'† I had brought my discourse to this point, when I exclaimed: VERSES. 'THE Beloved is closer than I to myself; Yet strange to say, I am still far off. What shall I do, and to whom shall I tell it? He lies on my bosom, and still I am parted from Him.' 'I was drunken with the wine of this discourse, and the remainder of the cup was yet in my hand, when a traveller passed by the edge of the assembly, and the last round of the cup which I handed went to his soul. He gave such a shout that the others also in sympathy joined in the excite ment, and the most apathetic shared his enthusiasm. 'Glory to GoD!' I exclaimed, 'those afar off who have knowledge of HIM The outer mark of a Derwish is a patched garment and shaven head, but his essential qualities are a living heart and mortified passions.'-Gulist. ii. 47. + Koran, ch. 1. v. 15. enter into His presence, while those near at hand, who have no vision, are kept aloof!' VERSES. 'Ir the hearer comprehendeth not what is spoken, Look not for vigor of genius in the speaker. Wide be the field of the willing attention, That the orator may strike over it the ball of eloquence.'* Sadi's narratives often wear such an air of life and reality, that they almost involuntarily stamp their essence into a proverb; in Persia many of them have become 'household words.' How completely the following is a proverb disguised: 'ONCE a king of Persia had a very precious stone set in a ring. On a certain occasion he went out with some of his favorite courtiers to the Musella of Shiraz to amuse himself, and he bade them suspend the ring over the dome of Azad, that the ring might be his who could send an arrow through it. It chanced that four hundred professed archers of the royal train took their aim, but all missed. But a stripling at play on the terrace roof of a monastery was shooting his arrows at random; and lo! the morning breeze carried his shaft through the circle of the ring. They bestowed the ring upon him, and loaded him with numberless gifts; and the boy forthwith burned his bow and arrows. They asked him: 'Why did you do so?' He answered: "That my first glory might remain unchanged.' VERSES. 'Ir may sometimes chance that the clearheaded sage Shall offer mistaken counsel: And at times peradventure the untaught stripling By mistake may hit the target with his shaft.' Nor is the next story inferior with its barb of keen worldly wisdom at its close. In the plates of the first volume of Sir W. Ouseley's 'Travels in Persia,' there is a curious representation of the scene, copied from a Persian мs. in his collection. 'A CERTAIN man had become a master in the art of wrestling; he knew three hundred *Alluding to the game of Chugan, like the Golf in Scotland, but played on horseback. and sixty first-rate sleights in this art, and every day he wrestled with a different throw. But a corner of his heart conceived a liking for the beauty of one of his pupils, and he taught him three hundred and fiftynine of his sleights, all he knew save one, the teaching of which he continually deferred. In short, the youth was perfect in skill and strength, and none could stand up against him, until at length he boasted before the Sultan, 'My master's superiority is but from his superior years, and my reverence for all he has taught me; else in strength I am nowise his inferior, and in skill I am fully his equal.' This want of respect displeased the king, and he bade them wrestle together. A vast arena was selected, and the great nobles and ministers of the king attended. The youth entered like a furious elephant, with a shock that had his adversary been a mountain of iron would have uptorn it from its base. The master perceived that the youth was his superior in strength. So he fastened on him with that curious grip which he had kept concealed, and the youth knew not how to foil it. The master lifted him with both hands from the ground, and raised him above his head and dashed him to the earth. A shout of applause arose from the multitude. The king bade them bestow a robe of honor and reward on the master, and heaped reproaches on the youth, saying: 'Thou hast presumed to encounter him who taught thee, and thou hast failed.' He answered: 'Sire, my master overcame me not by strength or power, but a small point was left in the art of wrestling, which he withheld from me; and by this trifle hath he today gotten the victory over me.' The master said: 'I kept it for such a day as this; for the sages have said: Give not to thy friend such power, that, if he one day become thy foe, he will prevail over thee.' Hast thou not heard what once was said by one who had suffered wrong from a pupil of his own? We trace in the above story, what in truth is so common in all the practical moral writings of the East, that deep sense of the need of caution and suspicion which long ages of irresponsible despotism have branded into the very heart of the people. It was indeed no casual equivocation through which, 'by degrees, the name Frank, which may originally have indicated merely a national, came to indicate a moral, distinction as well;'* the personal freeman stood out from among a degenerate race by an independence of character and proud scorn of deceit; it is not in the East, amid a world of slaves, that the chivalrous generosity implied in Frank takes root. Tyranny and oppression run down from rank to rank; concealment and suspicion darken and chill every heart, and the finer feelings are stifled by their influence. It is strange to note how all Persian poets feel bound, on every plausible occasion, to convey indirect exhortations to the governors against tyranny and extortion towards those beneath them; and if we view these passages in the light of the poet's present, how deeply affecting is their significance. The everreiterated praises of Nushirwan the Just will come home to us with a new meaning and power, if we think of the living viziers and pachas whom the poet would have branded by name had he dared. We have one or two curious stories in the 'Gulistan' which exemplify the mode of admininistering justice in the East, and show that the 'law's delays' are not found only in the highest states of civilization. on suspicion of being spies, and were both imprisoned, and the door closed up with mud. After two weeks it was discovered that they were innocent. They opened the door, and found the strong man dead, but the weak man safe and alive. They were still wondering thereat, when a wise man said: The opposite of this would have been strange; for this man was a great eater, and could not bear the want of food, and so perished. But the other was in the habit of controlling himself; he endured, as was his wont, and was saved.' STANZA. 'WHEN to eat little is one's natural wont, If hardship cross us, we easily bear it : But if we pamper ourselves in our hour of ease, When want comes, we of hardship die.' We have many stories to illustrate the vanity of worldly grandeur, the nothingness of earthly prosperity, even at its highest estate; and thoughts like these must indeed have often forced themselves on Sadi's mind when he saw the devastations of Asia by the scourge of the Mogul invasions. 'ONE of the Arabian kings was sick in his old age, and the hope of surviving was cut off. Suddenly a horseman entered the portal, and brought good tidings, saying: 'By the auspicious fortune of my lord we have taken such a castle, and the enemies are made prisoners, and the troops and peasantry in that quarter are entirely reduced to obedience.' When the king heard this speech he heaved a cold sigh, and said: "These joyful tidings are not for me, but for my enemies, that is, the heirs of my crown.' VERSES. 'In this hope, alas! hath precious life been passed, That what was in my heart might enter in at my gate; My long-bound hope hath come - yet what profit withal, Since hope is none that life passed can return! On me hath fallen Death, the enemy of de sire, And you, O my friends! must at last pass from me. All my days have passed in folly, I have failed, and do you by me take warning!' The old legendary splendors of Persia are ransacked to bear a similar testimony, in the inscription over the portico of King Feridun's * palace. 'THE world, O brother! abides with none, Set thy heart on the world's MAKER - let that suffice thee. Rest not thy pillow and support on this world's domain, For many a one such as thee hath she fostered and slain. When the pure soul prepares to depart, What is death on a throne, or death on the bare ground?' He reads also a like warning, 'written in letters of gold, upon Kai-Khusraw's crown.' 'WHAT generations of mankind shall tread, What ages roll above my buried head, For hand from hand to me descends the crown, And hand from hand to others shall go down!' t We have the following wild story about the great Mahmud of Ghazni, the conqueror of India, and the iconoclast hero of the temple of Somnath : 'ONE of the kings of Khurasan saw, in a dream, Sultan Mahmud Sabuktagin, a hundred years after his death, when all his body had dissolved and become dust, save his eyes, which, as heretofore, moved in their sockets and looked about them. All the sages were at a loss to interpret it, except a derwish, who made his obeisance, and said: 'He is still looking about him, because his kingdom is in the possession of others.' VERSES. 'MANY are the heroes whom they have buried under the ground, *To this ancient hero of Persian romance, the The hand of death hath struck the drum of discoveries of comparative philology have lately departure, Eyes of mine, ye must bid adieu to my head; Palm of my hand, wrist, and arm, Ye too must bid farewell to each other. added a new and deeper interest. He has been identified with the Traitana of the Veda, and forms one great link between the ancient Persian and Hindu mythologies. We have given these fine lines in a friend's translation. |