y on side by side with all the splendours and
barbarities of absolute autocracy and summary jurisdiction. It throws a
new or unaccustomed light on those days. Not even yet--not even in
Bloomsbury, where the poets meet--have we in England anything quite like
it; whereas when Baghdad and Damascus were the theatres of these
poetical and hair-splitting competitions our ancestors had but just got
the woad off.

III.--MEN OF LETTERS

Those of us who know Baghdad only through the _Arabian Nights_ and the
ingenious productions of Mr. Oscar Asche, were not prepared for such a
complete foreshadowing of the literary life and the literary temperament
as Ibn Khallikan gives us.

Here, for example, is a poem by a book-lover--or manuscript-lover, to
be more exact--written by Ibn Faris Ar-Razi, the philologer, who died
before the Norman Conquest, which a later Occidental can cheerfully
accept and could not much improve upon: _They asked me how I was. I
answered: "Well, some things succeed and some fail; when my heart is
filled with cares I say: 'One day perhaps they may be dispelled.' A cat
is my companion; books, the friends of my heart; and a lamp, my beloved
consort."_ That is modern enough! Something of this kind, which is an
earlier version of Omar Khayyam's famous recipe for earthly bliss, has
often been attempted since by our own poets; but nothing better.
Favourite books, a lighted lamp, a faithful cat, and the library were
paradise enow. It is odd, by the way, that Omar Khayyam himself,
although his dates qualify him, is not found in this work. But to make
tents, even with leanings towards astronomy, was no high road to Ibn
Khallikan's sympathies. Had Omar explained the _Koran_ or had views on
the suffixes of words, all would have been well.

While on the subject of sufficient paradises let me quote some verses by
Ibn Sukkara Al-Hashimi, a famous Baghdad poet of the tenth century:
_The winter set in, and I provided myself with seven things necessary
when the rain prevents us from pursuing our usual occupations. These
things are: A shelter, a purse, a stove, a cup of wine preceded by a bit
of meat, a tender maid, and a cloak._

Ibn Khallikan does not let it stop there, but fishes up from his memory
a derivative, by Ibn Al-Taawizi, running thus: _When seven things are
collected together in the drinking-room, it is not reasonable to stay
away. These are: Roast meat, a melon, honey, a young girl, wax-lights, a
singer to de