As iron to David grew pliant as wax,
So to me were made patent his tricks and his tracks,
And I knew that 'twas he who was pulling the string
When the Idol its arm in the Temple did swing.

When the Brahmin beheld me, most deep was his shame,
For 'tis shame to be caught at so shabby a game.
He fled from before me, but I did pursue
And into a well him head-foremost I threw,
For I knew that, if he should effect his escape,
I should find myself soon in some perilous scrape,
And that he would most gladly use poison or steel
Lest I his nefarious deed should reveal.

You too, should you chance to discover such trick,
Make away with the trickster: don't spare him! Be quick!
For, if you should suffer the scoundrel to live,
Be sure that to you he no quarter will give,
And that though on your threshold his head should be bowed
He will cut off your head, if the chance be allowed.
Then track not the charlatan's tortuous way,
Or else, having tracked him, smite swiftly and slay!

So I finished the rogue, notwithstanding his wails,
With stones; for dead men, as you know, tell no tales.”

When Sa'dí is described (as he often is) as essentially an ethical poet, it must be borne in mind that, correct as this Sa'dí as an “ethical” teacher. view in a certain sense undoubtedly is, his ethics are somewhat different from the theories com­monly professed in Western Europe. The moral of the very first story in the Gulistán is that “an expedient falsehood is preferable to a mischievous truth.” The fourth story is an elaborate attempt to show that the best education is powerless to amend inherited criminal tendencies. The eighth counsels princes to destroy without mercy those who are afraid of them, because “when the cat is cornered, it will scratch out the eyes of the leopard.” The ninth emphasises the disagreeable truth that a man's worst foes are often the heirs to his estate. The fourteenth is a defence of a soldier who deserted at a critical moment because his pay was in arrears. The fifteenth is delightfully and typically Persian. A certain minister, being dismissed from office, joined the ranks of the dervishes. After a while the King wished to reinstate him in office, but he firmly declined the honour. “But,” said the King, “I need one competent and wise to direct the affairs of the State.” “Then,” retorted the ex-minister, “you will not get him, for the proof of his possessing these qualities is that he will refuse to surrender himself to such employment.” The next story labours this point still further: “Wise men,” says Sa'dí, “have said that one ought to be much on one's guard against the fickle nature of kings, who will at one time take offence at a salutation, and at another bestow honours in return for abuse.” And, to make a long story short, how very sensible and how very unethical is the following (Book i, Story 22):—

“It is related of a certain tormentor of men that he struck on the head with a stone a certain pious man. The dervish dared not avenge himself [at the time], but kept the stone by him till such time as the King, being angered against his assailant, imprisoned him in a dungeon. Thereupon the dervish came and smote him on the head with the stone. ‘Who art thou,’ cried the other, ‘and why dost thou strike me with this stone?’ ‘I am that same man,’ replied the dervish, ‘on whose head thou didst, at such-and-such a date, strike this same stone.’ ‘Where wert thou all this time?’ inquired the other. ‘I was afraid of thy position,’ answered the dervish, ‘but now, seeing thee in this durance, I seized my oppor­tunity; for it has been said:—

“When Fortune favours the tyrant vile,
The wise will forego their desire a while.
If your claws are not sharp, then turn away
From a fearsome foe and a fruitless fray.
'Tis the silver wrist that the pain will feel
If it seeks to restrain the arm of steel.
Wait rather till Fortune blunts his claws:
Then pluck out his brains amidst friends' applause!”’”

Indeed, the real charm of Sa'dí and the secret of his popu­larity lies not in his consistency but in his catholicity; in his works is matter for every taste, the highest and the lowest,

Catholicity of Sa'dí. the most refined and the most coarse, and from his pages sentiments may be culled worthy on the one hand of Eckhardt or Thomas à Kempis, or on the other of Cæsar Borgia and Heliogabalus. His writings are a microcosm of the East, alike in its best and its most ignoble aspects, and it is not without good reason that, wherever the Persian language is studied, they are, and have been for six centuries and a half, the first books placed in the learner's hands.

Hitherto I have spoken almost exclusively of Sa'dí's most celebrated and most popular works, the Gulistán and the Bústán,

Sa'dí's works. but besides these his Kulliyyát, or Collected Works, comprise Arabic and Persian qaṣídas, threnodies (maráthí), poems partly in Persian and partly in Arabic (mulamma'át), poems of the kind called tarjí'-band, ghazals, or odes, arranged in four groups, viz., early poems (ghazaliyyát-i-qadíma ), ṭayyibát (fine odes), badáyi' (cunning odes), and khawátím (“signet-rings” or, as we might say, “gems”), besides quatrains, fragments, isolated verses, obscene poems (hazaliyyát), and some prose treatises, including three mock-homilies of incredible coarseness (khabíthát), several epistles addressed to the Ṣáḥib-Díwán, or first prime minister of Ḥulágú Khán the Mongol, and his successor, Shamsu'd-Dín Muḥammad Juwayní, some amusing but not elevating anec­dotes labelled Muḍḥikát (Facetiæ), a Pand-náma, or Book of Counsels, on the model of 'Aṭṭár's, and others.

It would evidently be impossible to discuss in detail or give specimens of each of these many forms in which the activity Sa'dí as a linguist. of Sa'dí manifested itself. Nor is the above list quite exhaustive, for Sa'dí has the reputation of being the first to compose verse in the Hindustání or Urdú language, something of which he apparently acquired during his Indian travels, and specimens of these verses I have met with in a manuscript belonging to the Royal Asiatic Society, though as to their genuineness I do not venture to express an opinion. He also composed some Fahlawiyyát, or poems in dialect, specimens of which I published in the J.R.A.S. for October, 1895, in a paper entitled “Notes on the Poetry of the Persian Dialects” (see especially pp. 792-802). There is one poem of his not mentioned in this article, and on which I cannot now lay my hand, which contains couplets in a considerable number of languages and dialects. Until, however, we have both a better text of Sa'dí's works and a fuller knowledge of these mediæval dialects of Persian, a doubt must always remain as to the poet's real knowledge of them. It is quite possible that they were very “impres­sionist,” and that he really knew no more about them than do some of those who write books about Ireland, to which they endeavour to give an air of verisimilitude by spelling English words in a grotesque manner, and peppering the pages with distorted or ill-comprehended Irish words like “musha,” “acushla machree,” and “mavourneen.”

In Persia and India it is commonly stated that Sa'dí's Arabic qaṣídas are very fine, but scholars of Arabic speech Sa'dí's qaṣídas. regard them as very mediocre performances. His Persian qaṣídas are, on the other hand, very fine, especially one beginning:—

“Set not thy heart exclusively on any land or friend,
For lands and seas are countless, and sweethearts without end.”

Another celebrated qaṣída is the one in which he laments the destruction of Baghdád by the Mongols and the violent death of the Caliph al-Musta'ṣim in A.D. 1258. Of this a specimen has been already given at pp. 29-30 supra.

In his ghazals, or odes, as already said, Sa'dí is considered as inferior to no Persian poet, not even Ḥáfidh. The number of these ghazals (which, as already explained, are divided into four classes, Ṭayyibát, Badáyi', Khawátím, and “Early Poems”),

Sa'dí's ghazals. is considerable, and they fill 153 pages of the Bombay lithographed edition of the Kul-liyyát published in A.H. 1301 (= A.D. 1883-84). I give here translations of two, which may serve as samples of the rest. The first is as follows:—