ie el 
Of Ferdoosee. 5 
him a gold deenar for every verse which he 
should write, but Ferdoosee declined receiving 
any reward till the whole should be finished. 
At length, after the unremitted toil of 
thirty years, and in the seventieth year of his 
age, Ferdoosee brought toa conclusion his 
immortal poem, and presented it to the Sultan. 
But envy and malice had been too successfully 
employed in depreciating the value of his 
labours, and the monarch was induced to 
bestow upon him a reward very inadequate 
to his deserts.. According to another, and, 
perhaps, a more probable account, the Vizier, 
who was his personal enemy, changed the 
promised sum of gold deenars, into silver 
ones. Ferdoosee was in the bath when the 
money was brought tohim. The high mind- 
ed poet could not brook the insult. He 
divided the paltry present between the boy 
who bore it, the servant of the bath, and a 
vender of sherbets, and, retiring to his clo- 
The Moon’s mild radiance thy soft looks disclose, 
Thy blooming cheeks might shame the virgin rose, 
Thine eyes’ dark glanee the cuirass pierces tliro’, 
To which Ferdoosee immediately replied, 
Like Poshun’s javelin in the fight with Goo. 
To add to their mortification, the poets were obliged to confess their 
ignorance of thestory to which he alluded, und which he narrated to 
them at length, F 
. 
