[20] Is such a thing as an emerald made worse than it was if
        it is not praised?—­Marcus Aurelius.

          If glass be used to decorate a crown,
          While gems are taken to bedeck a foot,
          ’Tis not that any fault lies in the gem,
          But in the want of knowledge of the setter.

        —­Panchatantra, a famous Indian book of Fables.

Firdausi, the Homer of Persia (eleventh century), has the following remarks in his scathing satire on the sultan Mahmud, of Ghazni (Atkinson’s rendering): 

  Alas! from vice can goodness ever spring? 
  Is mercy hoped for in a tyrant king? 
  Can water wash the Ethiopian white? 
  Can we remove the darkness from the night? 
  The tree to which a bitter fruit is given
  Would still be bitter in the bowers of heaven;
  And a bad heart keeps on its vicious course,
  Or, if it changes, changes for the worse;
  Whilst streams of milk where Eden’s flow’rets blow
  Acquire more honied sweetness as they flow.

The striking words of the Great Teacher, “How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God!” find an interesting analogue in this passage by Saadi:  “There is a saying of the Prophet, ’To the poor death is a state of rest.’  The ass that carries the lightest burden travels easiest.  In like manner, the good man who bears the burden of poverty will enter the gate of death lightly loaded, while he who lives in affluence, with ease and comfort, will, doubtless, on that very account find death very terrible.  And in any view, the captive who is released from confinement is happier than the noble who is taken prisoner.”

A singular anecdote is told of another celebrated Persian poet, which may serve as a kind of commentary on this last-cited passage:  Faridu ’d-Din ’Attar, who died in the year 1229, when over a hundred years old, was considered the most perfect Sufi[21] philosopher of the time in which he lived.  His father was an eminent druggist in Nishapur, and for a time Faridu ’d-Din followed the same profession, and his shop was the delight of all who passed by it, from the neatness of its arrangements and the fragrant odours of drugs and essences.  ’Attar, which means druggist, or perfumer, Faridu ’d-Din adopted for his poetical title.  One day, while sitting at his door with a friend, an aged dervish drew near, and, after looking anxiously and closely into the well-furnished shop, he sighed heavily and shed tears, as he reflected on the transitory nature of all earthly things.  ’Attar, mistaking the sentiment uppermost in the mind of the venerable devotee, ordered him to be gone, to which he meekly rejoined:  “Yes, I have nothing to prevent me from leaving thy door, or, indeed, from quitting this world at once, as my sole possession is this threadbare garment.  But O ’Attar, I grieve for thee:  for how canst thou ever bring thyself