into favour. Relations are like scorpions
or even more noxious._ Asked which was the worse of his two recurring
maladies, gout or colic, he replied: "When the gout attacks me I feel as
if I were between the jaws of a lion devouring me, mouthful by mouthful;
when the colic visits me, I would willingly exchange it for the gout."

Poetry in those days ran in families. The family which had the greatest
skill in the art was that of Hassan Ibn Abi Hafsa, for it produced six
persons, in succession, all of them poets. These were: Said, his father
Abd Ar-Rahman, his father Hassan, his father Thabit, his father
Al-Mundir, and his father Hizam. Abd Ar-Rahman began very young. It is
related that having been stung by a wasp, he went crying to his father,
who asked what was the matter. He replied: "I have been stung by a
flying thing, dressed, as it were, in a double cloak of striped cloth."

"By Allah!" exclaimed the delighted father, recognizing a chip of the
old block, "thou hast there pronounced a verse."

The family of Abi Hafsa came next to that of Hassan in poetical gifts.
The reason was, according to one statement, that they could "all touch
the point of their nose with their tongue, and this denotes a talent for
speaking with elegance and precision." "God knows," Ibn Khallikan adds,
"how far that may be true!"

It was Marwan Ibn Abi Hafsa, of this family, who made such a mistake (in
a poet depending on the beneficence of the exalted) as to commit himself
to the sweeping statement, in his elegy on the death of Maan, the Emir,
that patronage had died with him. "It is said," Ibn Khallikan relates,
"that Marwan, after composing this elegy, could never gain anything by
his verses, for, as often as he celebrated the praises of a khalif or of
any other person less elevated in rank, he to whom the poem was
addressed would say to him: 'Did you not say, in your famous elegy:
_Whither should we go, since Maan is dead? Presents have ceased and are
not to be replaced?_' So the person he meant to praise would not give
him anything nor even listen to his poem."

But once--having the persistency of the needy--Abi Hafsa scored. The
story goes that, entering into the presence of the khalif Al-Mahdi with
a number of other poets, he recited to him a panegyric.

"Who art thou?" said the khalif.

"Thy humble poet, Marwan, the son of Abi Hafsa."

"Art thou," said the khalif with great presence of mind, remembering the
poet's useful indisc