CAMELOT FANTASIES

<1>Some of Omar's Rubaiyat warn us of the danger of Greatness, the
   instability of Fortune, and while advocating Charity to all Men,
   recommending us to be too intimate with none. Attar makes Nizam-ul-
  Mulk use the very words of his friend Omar [Rub. xxviii.], "When
   Nizam-ul-Mulk was in the Agony (of Death) he said, 'Oh God! I am
   passing away in the hand of the wind.'"

"Omar Khayyam also came to the Vizier to claim his share; but not to
 ask for title or office. 'The greatest boon you can confer on me,' he
 said, 'is to let me live in a corner under the shadow of your fortune,
 to spread wide the advantages of Science, and pray for your long life
 and prosperity.'  The Vizier tells us, that when he found Omar was
really sincere in his refusal, he pressed him no further, but granted
 him a yearly pension of 1200 mithkals of gold from the treasury of
 Naishapur.

"At Naishapur thus lived and died Omar Khayyam, 'busied,' adds the
 Vizier, 'in winning knowledge of every kind, and especially in
 Astronomy, wherein he attained to a very high pre-eminence. Under the
 Sultanate of Malik Shah, he came to Merv, and obtained great praise
 for his proficiency in science, and the Sultan showered favors upon
 him.'

"When the Malik Shah determined to reform the calendar, Omar was one
 of the eight learned men employed to do it; the result was the Jalali
 era (so called from Jalal-ud-din, one of the king's names)--'a
 computation of time,' says Gibbon, 'which surpasses the Julian, and
 approaches the accuracy of the Gregorian style.'  He is also the
 author of some astronomical tables, entitled 'Ziji-Malikshahi,' and
 the French have lately republished and translated an Arabic Treatise
 of his on Algebra.

"His Takhallus or poetical name (Khayyam) signifies a Tent-maker, and
 he is said to have at one time exercised that trade, perhaps before
 Nizam-ul-Mulk's generosity raised him to independence. Many Persian
 poets similarly derive their names from their occupations; thus we
 have Attar, 'a druggist,' Assar, 'an oil presser,' etc.<2>  Omar
himself alludes to his name in the following whimsical lines:--

"'Khayyam, who stitched the tents of science,
    Has fallen in grief's furnace and been suddenly burned;
    The shears of Fate have cut the tent ropes of his life,
    And the broker of Hope has sold him for nothing!'