102 



Mr. Arthur Branson on two 



As to the quatrains the authors of which I was from clerical 

 or other errors unable to discover, I left them untouched 

 among the poems of the honoured 'Omar, without any of my 

 notes ; but it is easy for an intelligent and candid man 

 who has had an intimate acquaintance with the produc- 

 tions of his Honour to decide at once whether or not they 

 are his admirable poems. The following are a few qua- 

 trains which appear to me to bear the impress ef the mint 

 of 'Omar." 



Of this as of the other MSS. we cannot at present give 

 any thing like a particular account. It contains 56.3 qua- 

 trains before we come to the anecdote and comment which 

 we have copied : following the above note are 31 further 

 quatrains. 



J. H. Arthur Branson, 



February, 1864. 



[Note by the Editor.] The private reprint by Major 

 Bell mentioned by Mr. Branson consists of fifty copies 

 and appeared at Madras towards the end of 1862. It 

 contains, first, " Rubaiyat of 'Omar Khayyam, the astro- 

 nomer-poet of Persia, translated into English verse" (Lon- 

 don, Quaritch 1859). The translator, Mr. Edward Fitz- 

 gerald, already renowned for his version of six of Calderon's 

 dramas^ a), has here, we venture to say, for the first time 

 produced an English metrical version of an Eastern poet 

 worthy at the same time of the poet himself and of the litera- 

 ture to which that poet has been introduced. Here again 

 we find the same purity and vigour of language which have 

 been admiringly dwelt on by Archbishop Trench when deal- 

 ing with Mr. Fitzgerald's Calderon ; and the tiresome effect 

 produced by the arrangement of the Persian original, in 

 which the quatrains follow one another without regard to 



(a) London 1853. See as to these Archbishop Trench in his life's a 

 Droam, Sr. London 1856, pp. 120, 121. 



