«His Takhallus or poetical name (Khayyam) signifies a Tentmaker, 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.[5] 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!› «We have only one more anecdote to give of his life, and that relates to the close; it is told in the anonymous preface which is sometimes prefixed to his poems; it has been printed in the Persian in the appendix to Hyde's ‹Veterum Persarum Religio,› p. 499; and D'Herbelot alludes to it in his _Bibliothèque_, under _Khiam_:[6]-- «‹It is written in the chronicles of the ancients that this King of the Wise, Omar Khayyam, died at Naishapur in the year of the Hegira 517 (A.D. 1123); in science he was unrivalled,--the very paragon of his age. Khwajah Nizami of Samarcand, who was one of his pupils, relates the following story: «I often used to hold conversations with my teacher Omar Khayyam, in a garden; and one day he said to me, ‹My tomb shall be in a spot where the north wind may scatter roses over it.› I wondered at the words he spake, but I knew that his were no idle words.[7] Years after, when I chanced to revisit Naishapur, I went to his final resting-place, and lo! it was just outside a garden, and trees laden with fruit stretched their boughs over the garden wall, and dropped their flowers upon his tomb, so that the stone was hidden under them.»›» Thus far--without fear of trespass--from the «Calcutta Review.» The writer of it, on reading in India this story of Omar's grave, was reminded, he says, of Cicero's account of finding Archimedes' tomb at Syracuse, buried in grass and weeds. I think Thorwaldsen desired to have roses grow over him; a wish religiously fulfilled for him to the present day, I believe. However, to return to Omar.