guide to the conduct of life rather than an exquisitely-presented summary of the thoughts of an Eastern pessimist.  FitzGerald’s poem is an unbroken lament.  Burton, a more robust soul than the Woodbridge eremite, also has his misgivings.  He passes in review the great religious teachers, and systems and comes to the conclusion that men make gods and Gods after their own likeness and that conscience is a geographical accident; but if, like FitzGerald, he is puzzled when he ponders the great questions of life and afterlife, he finds comfort in the fact that probity and charity are their own reward, that we have no need to be anxious about the future, seeing that, in the words of Pope, “He can’t be wrong, whose life is in the right.”  He insists that self-cultivation, with due regard for others, is the sole and sufficient object of human life, and he regards the affections and the “divine gift of Pity” as man’s highest enjoyments.  As in FitzGerald’s poem there is talk of the False Dawn or Wolf’s Tail, “Thee and Me,” Pot and Potter, and here and there are couplets which are simply FitzGerald’s quatrains paraphrased[FN#334]—­as, for example, the one in which Heaven and Hell are declared to be mere tools of “the Wily Fetisheer."[FN#335] Like Omar Khayyam, Haji Abdu loses patience with the “dizzied faiths” and their disputatious exponents; like Omar Khayyam too, Haji Abdu is not averse from Jamshid’s bowl, but he is far less vinous than the old Persian.

Two of the couplets flash with auroral splendour, and of all the vast amount of metrical work that Burton accomplished, these are the only lines that can be pronounced imperishable.  Once only—­and only momentarily—­did the seraph of the sanctuary touch his lips with the live coal.

   “Do what thy manhood bids thee do, from none but self expect
       applause;
    He noblest lives and noblest dies who makes and keeps his
       self-made laws.”

and

   “All other life is living death, a world where none but
       phantoms dwell
    A breath, a wind, a sound, a voice, a tinkling of the
       camel-bell.”

We are also bidden to be noble, genuine and charitable.

“To seek the true, to glad the heart, such is of life the Higher Law.”

Neglecting the four really brilliant lines, the principal attraction of The Kasidah is its redolence of the saffron, immeasurable desert.  We snuff at every turn its invigorating air; and the tinkle of the camel’s bell is its sole and perpetual music.

At first Burton made some attempt to create the impression that there was actually a Haji Abdu, and that the verses were merely a translation.  Indeed, he quotes him, at the end of his Supplemental Nights, vol. ii., and elsewhere, as an independent author.  Later, however, the mask which deceived nobody was removed.  Not only was The Kasidah written in emulation of FitzGerald’s Omar, but Burton made no secret that such was the case.  To further