strainer."_ (It seems, however, from Ibn Khallikan's
anxious dubiety on the matter, that this poem, after all, may have been
written, like the Iliad, by another poet of the same name. God only
knows.)

Another Anacreontic, this time by Ibn Zuhr: _Whilst the fair ones lay
reclining, their cheek pillowed on the arm, a hostile inroad of the dawn
took us by surprise. I had passed the night in filling up their cups and
drinking what they had left; till inebriation overcame me, and my lot
was theirs also. The wine well knows how to avenge a wrong; I turned the
goblet up, and that liquor turned me down._

The poetry of love comprises, alas! also the poetry of despair. Here is
an example by Ibn As-Sarraj, the grammarian: _I compared her beauty with
her conduct, and found that her charms did not counterbalance her
perfidy. She swore to me never to be false, but 'twas as if she had
sworn never to be true. By Allah! I shall never speak to her again,
even though she resembled in beauty the full moon, or the sun, or
Al-Muktafi!_

The inclusion of the khalif Al-Muktafi seems to have been an
afterthought, added when the poet first saw him. Struck by his
comeliness, he recited the poem to some companions and inserted his name
at the end. The sequel is amusing and very characteristic. "Some time
after, the katib Abu Abd Allah Muhammad Ibn Ismail Ibn Zenji repeated
the verses to Abu 'l-Abbas Ibn Al-Furat, saying that they were composed
by Ibn Al-Motazz, and Abu 'l-Abbas communicated them to the vizier
Al-Kasim Ibn Obaid Allah. The latter then went to the khalif and recited
the verses to him, adding that they were by Obaid Allah Ibn Abd Allah
Ibn Tahir, to whom Al-Muktafi immediately ordered a present of one
thousand dinars.

"'How very strange,' said Ibi Zenji, 'that Ibn As-Sarraj should compose
verses which were to procure a donation to Obaid Allah Ibn Abd Allah Ibn
Tahir!'"

Abu Bakr Ibn Aiyash, the Traditionist and scholar, discovered a remedy
for lovers which is too simple, I fear, to commend itself to less
philosophic Occidentals affected by the pains of longing. "I was
suffering," he says, "from an anxious desire of meeting one whom I
loved, when I called to mind the verse of Zu 'r-Rumma's: _Perhaps a flow
of tears will give me ease from pain; perhaps it may cure a heart whose
sole companion is sad thoughts._ On this I withdrew to a private place
and wept, by which means my sufferings were calmed."

XIX.--TO DISARM CRITI