Chapter 4

"Thou wast day and night occupied in idle talk, and I in attending to the needful: one moment thou wast taken up with the fresh blandishment of the Rose, and the next busy in admiring the blossoming spring. Wast thou not aware that every summer has its fall and every road an end?"[15]

[13] The name of a musical instrument.

[14] The fancied love of the nightingale for the rose is a favourite theme of Persian poets.

[15] Cf. the fable of Anianus: After laughing all summer at her toil, the Grasshopper came in winter to borrow part of the Ant's store of food. "Tell me," said the Ant, "what you did in the summer?" "I sang," replied the Grasshopper. "Indeed," rejoined the Ant. "Then you may dance and keep yourself warm during the winter."

These are a few more of Saádí's aphorisms:

Riches are for the comfort of life, and not life for the accumulation of riches.[16]

[16] Auvaiyár, the celebrated Indian poetess, in her _Nalvali_, says:

Hark! ye who vainly toil and wealth Amass--O sinful men, the soul Will leave its nest; where then will be The buried treasure that you lose?

The eye of the avaricious man cannot be satisfied with wealth, any more than a well can be filled with dew.

A wicked rich man is a clod of earth gilded.

The liberal man who eats and bestows is better than the religious man who fasts and hoards.

Publish not men's secret faults, for by disgracing them you make yourself of no repute.

He who gives advice to a self-conceited man stands himself in need of counsel from another.

The vicious cannot endure the sight of the virtuous, in the same manner as the curs of the market howl at a hunting-dog, but dare not approach him.

When a mean wretch cannot vie with any man in virtue, out of his wickedness he begins to slander him. The abject, envious wretch will slander the virtuous man when absent, but when brought face to face his loquacious tongue becomes dumb.

O thou, who hast satisfied thy hunger, to thee a barley loaf is beneath notice;--that seems loveliness to me which in thy sight appears deformity.

The ringlets of fair maids are chains for the feet of reason, and snares for the bird of wisdom.

When you have anything to communicate that will distress the heart of the person whom it concerns, be silent, in order that he may hear it from some one else. O nightingale, bring thou the glad tidings of the spring, and leave bad news to the owl!

It often happens that the imprudent is honoured and the wise despised. The alchemist died of poverty and distress, while the blockhead found a treasure under a ruin.

Covetousness sews up the eyes of cunning, and brings both bird and fish into the net.

Although, in the estimation of the wise, silence is commendable, yet at a proper season speech is preferable.[17]

[17] "Comprehensive talkers are apt to be tiresome when we are not athirst for information; but, to be quite fair, we must admit that superior reticence is a good deal due to the lack of matter. Speech is often barren, but silence does not necessarily brood over a full nest. Your still fowl, blinking at you without remark, may all the while be sitting on one addled nest-egg; and when it takes to cackling will have nothing to announce but that addled delusion."--George Eliot's _Felix Holt_.

Two things indicate an obscure understanding: to be silent when we should converse, and to speak when we should be silent.

Put not yourself so much in the power of your friend that, if he should become your enemy, he may be able to injure you.

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Our English poet Young has this observation in his _Night Thoughts_:

Thought, in the mine, may come forth gold or dross; When coined in word, we know its real worth.

He had been thus anticipated by Saádí: "To what shall be likened the tongue in a man's mouth? It is the key of the treasury of wisdom. When the door is shut, who can discover whether he deals in jewels or small-wares?"

The poet Thomson, in his _Seasons_, has these lines, which have long been hackneyed:

Loveliness Needs not the aid of foreign ornament, But is when unadorned adorned the most.

Saádí had anticipated him also: "The face of the beloved," he says, "requireth not the art of the tire-woman. The finger of a beautiful woman and the tip of her ear are handsome without an ear-jewel or a turquoise ring." But Saádí, in his turn, was forestalled by the Arabian poet-hero Antar, in his famous _Mu'allaka_, or prize-poem, which is at least thirteen hundred years old, where he says: "Many a consort of a fair one, whose beauty required no ornaments, have I laid prostrate on the field."

Yet one Persian poet, at least, namely, Nakhshabí, held a different opinion: "Beauty," he says, "adorned with ornaments, portends disastrous events to our hearts. An amiable form, ornamented with diamonds and gold, is like a melodious voice accompanied by the rabáb." Again, he says: "Ornaments are the universal ravishers of hearts, and an upper garment for the shoulder is like a cluster of gems. If dress, however," he concedes, "may have been at any time the assistant of beauty, beauty is always the animator of dress." It is remarkable that homely-featured women dress more gaudily than their handsome sisters generally, thus unconsciously bringing their lack of beauty (not to put too fine a point on it) into greater prominence.

In common with other moralists, Saádí reiterates the maxim that learning and virtue, precept and practice, should ever go hand in hand. "Two persons," says he, "took trouble in vain: he who acquired wealth without using it, and he who taught wisdom without practising it." Again: "He who has acquired knowledge and does not practise it, is like unto him that ploughed but did not sow." And again: "How much soever you may study science, when you do not act wisely, you are ignorant. The beast that they load with books is not profoundly wise and learned: what knoweth his empty skull whether he carrieth fire-wood or books?" And yet again: "A learned man without temperance is like a blind man carrying a lamp: he showeth the way to others, but does not guide himself."

Ingratitude is denounced by all moralists as the lowest of vices. Thus Saádí says: "Man is beyond dispute the most excellent of created beings, and the vilest animal is the dog; but the sages agree that a grateful dog is better than an ungrateful man. A dog never forgets a morsel, though you pelt him a hundred times with stones. But if you cherish a mean wretch for an age, he will fight with you for a mere trifle." In language still more forcible does a Hindú poet denounce this basest of vices: "To cut off the teats of a cow;[18] to occasion a pregnant woman to miscarry; to injure a Bráhman--are sins of the most aggravated nature; but more atrocious than these is ingratitude."

[18] The cow is sacred among the Hindús.

The sentiment so tersely expressed in the Chinese proverb, "He who never reveals a secret keeps it best," is thus finely amplified by Saádí: "The matter which you wish to preserve as a secret impart not to every one, although he may be worthy of confidence; for no one will be so true to your secret as yourself. It is safer to be silent than to reveal a secret to any one, and tell him not to mention it. O wise man! stop the water at the spring-head, for when it is in full stream you cannot arrest it."[19]

[19] Thus also Jámí, in his _Baháristán_ (Second "Garden"): "With regard to a secret divulged and one kept concealed, there is in use an excellent proverb, that the one is an arrow still in our possession, and the other is an arrow sent from the bow." And another Persian poet, whose name I have not ascertained, eloquently exclaims: "O my heart! if thou desirest ease in this life, keep thy secrets undisclosed, like the modest rose-bud. Take warning from that lovely flower, which, by expanding its hitherto hidden beauties when in full bloom, gives its leaves and its happiness to the winds."

The imperative duty of active benevolence is thus inculcated: "Bestow thy gold and thy wealth while they are thine; for when thou art gone they will be no longer in thy power. Distribute thy treasure readily to-day, for to-morrow the key may be no longer in thy hand. Exert thyself to cast a covering over the poor, that God's own veil may be a covering to thee."

In the following passage the man of learning and virtue is contrasted with the stupid and ignorant blockhead:

"If a wise man, falling into company with mean people, does not get credit for his discourse, be not surprised, for the sound of the harp cannot overpower the noise of the drum, and the fragrance of ambergris is overcome by fetid garlic. The ignorant fellow was proud of his loud voice, because he had impudently confounded the man of understanding. If a jewel falls in the mud it is still the same precious stone,[20] and if dust flies up to the sky it retains its original baseness. A capacity without education is deplorable, and education without capacity is thrown away. Sugar obtains not its value from the cane, but from its innate quality. Musk has fragrance of itself, and not from being called a perfume by the druggist. The wise man is like the druggist's chest, silent, but full of virtues; while the blockhead resembles the warrior's drum, noisy, but an empty prattler. A wise man in the company of those who are ignorant has been compared by the sages to a beautiful girl in the company of blind men, and to the Kurán in the house of an infidel."--The old proverb that "an evil bird has an evil egg" finds expression by Saádí thus: "No one whose origin is bad ever catches the reflection of the good." Again, he says: "How can we make a good sword out of bad iron? A worthless person cannot by education become a person of any worth." And yet again: "Evil habits which have taken root in one's nature will only be got rid of at the hour of death."

[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.

Firdausí, the Homer of Persia (eleventh century), has the following remarks in his scathing satire on the sultan Mahmúd, of Ghazní (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 Saádí: "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: Faridú 'd-Dín 'Attár, who died in the year 1229, when over a hundred years old, was considered the most perfect Súfí[21] philosopher of the time in which he lived. His father was an eminent druggist in Nishapúr, and for a time Faridú 'd-Dín 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. 'Attár, which means druggist, or perfumer, Faridú 'd-Dín 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. 'Attár, 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 'Attár, I grieve for thee: for how canst thou ever bring thyself to think of death--to leave all these goods behind thee?" 'Attár replied that he hoped and believed that he should die as contentedly as any dervish; upon which the aged devotee, saying, "We shall see," placed his wooden bowl upon the ground, laid his head upon it, and, calling on the name of God, immediately resigned his soul. Deeply impressed with this incident, 'Attár at once gave up his shop, and devoted himself to the study of Súfí philosophy.[22]

[21] The Súfís are the mystics of Islám, and their poetry, while often externally anacreontic--bacchanalian and erotic--possesses an esoteric, spiritual signification: the sensual world is employed to symbolise that which is to be apprehended only by the _inward_ sense. Most of the great poets of Persia, Afghanistán, and Turkey are generally understood to have been Súfís.

[22] Sir Gore Ouseley's _Biographical Notices of Persian Poets_.

The death of Cardinal Mazarin furnishes another remarkable illustration of Saádí's sentiment. A day or two before he died, the cardinal caused his servant to carry him into his magnificent art gallery, where, gazing upon his collection of pictures and sculpture, he cried in anguish, "And must I leave all these?" Dr. Johnson may have had Mazarin's words in mind when he said to Garrick, while being shown over the famous actor's splendid mansion: "Ah, Davie, Davie, these are the things that make a death-bed terrible!"

Few passages of Shakspeare are more admired than these lines:

And this our life, exempt from public haunts, Finds _tongues in trees_, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything.[23]

[23] Cf. these lines, from Herrick's "Hesperides":

But you are _lovely leaves_, where we May read, how soon things have Their end, tho' ne'er so brave; And after they have shown their pride, Like you, a while, they glide Into the grave.

Saádí had thus expressed the same sentiment before him: "The foliage of a newly-clothed tree, to the eye of a discerning man, displays a whole volume of the wondrous works of the Creator." Another Persian poet, Jámí, in his beautiful mystical poem of _Yúsuf wa Zulaykhá_, says: "Every leaf is a tongue uttering praises, like one who keepeth crying, 'In the name of God.'"[24] And the Afghan poet Abdu 'r-Rahman says: "Every tree, every shrub, stands ready to bend before him; every herb and blade of grass is a tongue to mutter his praises." And Horace Smith, that most pleasing but unpretentious writer, both of verse and prose, has thus finely amplified the idea of "tongues in trees":

Your voiceless lips, O Flowers, are living preachers, Each cup a pulpit, every leaf a book, Supplying to my fancy numerous teachers, From loneliest nook.

'Neath cloistered boughs, each floral bell that swingeth, And tolls its perfume on the passing air, Makes Sabbath in the fields, and ever ringeth A call to prayer;--

Not to the domes where crumbling arch and column Attest the feebleness of mortal hand, But to that fane, most catholic and solemn, Which God hath planned:

To that cathedral, boundless as our wonder, Whose quenchless lamps the sun and moon supply; Its choir, the winds and waves, its organ, thunder, Its dome, the sky.

There, amid solitude and shade, I wander Through the green aisles, and, stretched upon the sod, Awed by the silence, reverently ponder The ways of God.

[24] "In the name of God" is part of the formula employed by pious Muslims in their acts of worship, and on entering upon any enterprise of danger or uncertainty--_bi'smi'llahi ar-rahman ar-rahimi_, "In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate!" These words are usually placed at the beginning of Muhammedan books, secular as well as religions; and they form part of the Muslim Confession of Faith, used in the last extremity: "In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate! There is no strength nor any power save in God, the High, the Mighty. To God we belong, and verily to him we return!"

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When Saádí composed his _Gulistán_, in 1278, he was between eighty and ninety years of age, with his great mind still vigorous as ever; and he lived many years after, beloved and revered by the poor, whose necessities he relieved, and honoured and esteemed by the noble and the learned, who frequently visited the venerable solitary, to gather and treasure up the pearls of wisdom which dropped from his eloquent tongue. Like other poets of lofty genius, he possessed a firm assurance of the immortality of his fame. "A rose," says he, "may continue to bloom for five or six days, but this Rose-Garden will flourish for ever"; and again: "These verses and recitals of mine will endure after every particle of my dust has been dispersed." Six centuries have passed away since the gifted sage penned his _Gulistán_, and his fame has not only continued in his own land and throughout the East generally, but has spread into all European countries, and across the Atlantic, where long after the days of Saádí "still stood the forests primeval."

ORIENTAL WIT AND HUMOUR.

Sport that wrinkled Care derides, And Laughter shaking both his sides.--_L' Allegro_.

I

MAN A LAUGHING ANIMAL--ANTIQUITY OF POPULAR JESTS--"NIGHT AND DAY"--THE PLAIN-FEATURED BRIDE--THE HOUSE OF CONDOLENCE--THE BLIND MAN'S WIFE--TWO WITTY PERSIAN LADIES--WOMAN'S COUNSEL--THE TURKISH JESTER: IN THE PULPIT; THE CAULDRON; THE BEGGAR; THE DRUNKEN GOVERNOR; THE ROBBER; THE HOT BROTH--MUSLIM PREACHERS AND MUSLIM MISERS.

Certain philosophers have described man as a cooking animal, others as a tool-making animal, others, again, as a laughing animal. No creature save man, say the advocates of the last definition, seems to have any "sense of humour." However this may be, there can be little doubt that man in all ages of which we have any knowledge has possessed that faculty which perceives ridiculous incongruities in the relative positions of certain objects, and in the actions and sayings of individuals, which we term the "sense of the ludicrous." It is not to be supposed that a dog or a cat--albeit intelligent creatures, in their own ways--would see anything funny or laughable in a man whose sole attire consisted in a general's hat and sash and a pair of spurs! Yet _that_ should be enough to "make even a cat laugh"! Certainly laughter is peculiar to our species; and gravity is as certainly not always a token of profound wisdom; for

The gravest beast's an ass; The gravest bird's an owl; The gravest fish's an oyster; And the gravest man's a _fool_.

Many of the great sages of antiquity were also great humorists, and laughed long and heartily at a good jest. And, indeed, as the Sage of Chelsea affirms, "no man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether, irreclaimably bad. How much lies in laughter!--the cipher key wherewith we decipher the whole man!... The man who cannot laugh is not only fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils, but his whole life is already a treason and a stratagem." Let us, then, laugh at what is laughable while we are yet clothed in "this muddy vesture of decay," for, as delightful Elia asks, "Can a ghost laugh? Can he shake his gaunt sides if we be merry with him?"

It is a remarkable fact that a considerable proportion of the familiar jests of almost any country, which are by its natives fondly believed to be "racy of the soil," are in reality common to other peoples widely differing in language and customs. Not a few of these jests had their origin ages upon ages since--in Greece, in Persia, in India. Yet they must have set out upon their travels westward at a comparatively early period, for they have been long domiciled in almost every country of Europe. Nevertheless, as we ourselves possess a goodly number of droll witticisms, repartees, and jests, which are most undoubtedly and beyond cavil our own--such as many of those which are ascribed to Sam Foote, Harry Erskine, Douglas Jerrold, and Sydney Smith; though they have been credited with some that are as old as the jests of Hierokles--so there exist in what may be termed the lower strata of Oriental fiction, humorous and witty stories, characteristic of the different peoples amongst whom they originated, which, for the most part, have not yet been appropriated by the European compilers of books of facetiæ, and a selection of such jests--choice specimens of Oriental Wit and Humour--gleaned from a great variety of sources, will, I trust, amuse readers in general, and lovers of funny anecdotes in particular.

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