Thus, what a mighty growth of rank vegetation has followed the discovery by Swinburne of Fitzgerald’s paraphrase of the “Rubaiyat” of Omar Khayyám! Swinburne’s “find” in Quaritch’s shop was, perhaps, the most important event that ever took place there. From a commercial point of view the transaction was naught, for the neglected verses were rescued by the poet from the “All these at twopence” box of the expert in old editions. Nor was there anything at all sensational in the circumstance of one poet lighting upon the undiscovered genius of a brother bard. One can understand Swinburne’s keen delight and sympathetic appreciation, but what of the rising flood of slushy adulation which has followed on the part of men who are without literary discrimination or poetic insight? The names of eminent members of the Press appear in the lists of those assembled to do honour to the memory of the Persian voluptuary. This is a pity, I think. To be in harmony with their object, these celebrations should be orgies, and as long as they are conducted on any other lines they should be left to the professors of a vapid dilettantism. Omar Khayyám had a fine sense of humour, and, scanning mundane affairs from his retreat in Paradise, he must sometimes shake with laughter as he regards the class of admirers who assemble and meet together, drinking to his memory, sending roses to be planted on his grave, and ruffling it for a night in the character of irresponsible roisterers. There is a touch of the comic about the situation that just redeems it; otherwise, it were pitiful. What on earth does old Omar make in that galley? The dominant note of the diners is that of a stifling modernity. The purveyors of literary gossip are here, with the prurient and the anæmic, and the few normal persons who are present are here from a mere desire to gratify their curiosity or their gregariousness. All are in the attire decreed by social convention for functions of the sort. Many of them wear spectacles. When the hour strikes, and the operation of the Licensing Act compels them to bring their feast to an end, they “taxi” off to their suburban villas, where they pay rates and elect Borough Councillors. Here they are “waited up for” by their faithful wives, middle-aged and highly respectable matrons, to whom, with more or less lucidity, they relate all they have been doing and saying in honour of a lusty human animal of primeval instincts, who, had he any “say” in the matter, would eloquently resent the familiarity which is being taken with his name by persons with whom he could never have had anything in common.