the days of Omar it was by far the most important city of Khorasan. The
poet, like his father before him, held a court office under the Vizir of
his day. It was from the stipend which he thus enjoyed that he secured
leisure for mathematical and literary work. His father had been a
khayyam, or tent-maker, and his gifted son doubtless inherited the
handicraft as well as the name; but his position at Court released him
from the drudgery of manual labor. He was thus also brought in contact
with the luxurious side of life, and became acquainted with those scenes
of pleasure which he recalls only to add poignancy to the sorrow with
which he contemplates the yesterday of life. Omar's astronomical
researches were continued for many years, and his algebra has been
translated into French: but his greatest claim to renown is based upon
his immortal Quatrains, which will always live as the best expression of
a phase of mind constantly recurring in the history of civilization,
from the days of Anaxagoras to those of Darwin and Spencer.

E.W.

OMAR KHAYYAM
By John Hay

_Address delivered December 8, 1897, at the Dinner of the Omar Khayyam
Club, London_.

I can never forget my emotions when I first saw Fitzgerald's
translations of the Quatrains. Keats, in his sublime ode on Chapman's
Homer, has described the sensation once for all:

"Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken."

The exquisite beauty, the faultless form, the singular grace of those
amazing stanzas were not more wonderful than the depth and breadth of
their profound philosophy, their knowledge of life, their dauntless
courage, their serene facing of the ultimate problems of life and death.
Of course the doubt did not spare me, which has assailed many as
ignorant as I was of the literature of the East, whether it was the poet
or the translator to whom was due this splendid result. Was it, in fact,
a reproduction of an antique song, or a mystification of a great modern,
careless of fame and scornful of his time? Could it be possible that in
the eleventh century, so far away as Khorasan, so accomplished a man of
letters lived, with such distinction, such breadth, such insight, such
calm disillusions, such cheerful and jocund despair? Was this
"Weltschmerz," which we thought a malady of our day, endemic in Persia
in 1100? My doubt only lasted until I came upon a literal translation of
the Rubaiyat, and I saw that not the