I THEN set out for Isphahan, and waited on my parents, and visited my brothers and friends. This was one of the great mercies of God. I con­tinued to be deeply employed in teaching, reading, and writing on scientific objects and questions; and I frequented the society of the eminent scholars of that great city. At that time my parents wished, that I should resolve to marry, and used their utmost efforts to persuade me. A crowd of my equals in rank and of the grandees, shewed a desire for the connexion. But through my application and immense love to science, I had no inclination to marriage, thinking it would be a hindrance to my leisure, and that celibacy was more suitable to my tranquillity and freedom: so that notwithstanding all their endeavours I would not consent.

Afterwards I attended the lectures of the Emperor of the Sophists, the most excellent of solid philosophers, the great Mawla and most wise liberalist, the theatre of sciences and truths, the accomplished in all the wisdom of the ancients and moderns, the reviver of philosophy and father of virtues, Mawlana Mohammed Sâdic of Ardistan, God have mercy on his soul! who was an inhabitant of Isphahan, and devoted his time to the instruction of a multitude of ingenious and excellent young men. He was one of the princes of philosophers; and ages must elapse, before another learned man shall rise up equal to him. He had boundless affection for me, and with him I read many both known and unknown books of specu­lative and practical wisdom. The obligations which I owe to that accomplished philosopher, are more than to any other of my instructors, and, till the time of his decease, my opportunities of profiting by attendance upon him, were not inter­rupted. In the year one thousand one hundred and thirty-four, during the siege of Isphahan, he repaired to the divine mercy.

At this period, I wrote a Treatise, named Tow­fik, on the Agreement of Philosophy and the Sacred Law, a Treatise on the Explanation of the Assertions of the Ancient Wise Men among the Magi on the Beginning of the World, Scholia on the Commentary on Hikmat Ishrâk and The Fra­grances of Paradise, a Treatise to disprove the doc­trine of the Metempsychosis for the benefit of the Naturalists, a Commentary on the Treatise, called Kalimat Attasavvof, of Sheikh Ishrak, Scholia on the Divinity of the Shefâ and The Feraid Olfavaid, Scholia on the Commentary on The Heyakil Onnôr, a Treatise on the Medarij Horôf and The Farasnâmeh, and many other compositions, and answers on various other questions, which, from their multiplicity, I cannot wholly recall to mind at the present time. The poetry also, which during that period had occurred to me, being col­lected together made a Divan of, I suppose, ten thousand couplets. This was my second collection of the kind. I began likewise at Isphahan a Mesnavi, which I called Tedzkeret Elâshikin. The beginning of it is this:

Cup-bearer, of orthodox wine,*

Which carries away the darkness of idolatry from amongst us;

Which to our gloomy hearts, is like a flame of fire,

Or the mid-night illumination of Mount Sinai;

Give us goblets, that we may move aside from ourselves,

And, out of ourselves in ecstacy, take our way towards the Incomparable.

Musician, put thy heart-attracting breath to the reed,

And shorten this dark night of separation.

Raise the curtain from the morning of conjunction:

Convert into the dawn of day the eve of our painful banish­ment;

That I may be freed at length from this disunion,

And may gain the presence of the object of my love.

Cup-bearer, a goblet of Magian wine

Fresh-drawn from the jar of the wine-house

Pour into the palate of the dry-lipped Hazin,

As a libation to his fiery heart:

Till I can drag myself away to the world of water,

And be at rest and relieved from this fever and heat.

Musician, thy breath gives brightness to the soul;

For the dead of heart it is the inspiration of the Messiah.

We are shrunk, as stagnant blood in the darkened cuticle:

A lancet is good for a congealed vein.

For a dead heart the cold body is a grave:

The sound of thy reed is the voice of the last trumpet.

This Mesnavi was of about four thousand cou­plets. It contained a story, which is told of Asmaï, who on a stone that I saw on the road through Tâyif, had written this couplet;*

Arabic.

Listen, ye troop of Lovers! for God's sake, tell me,

When love is grown strong on a youth, how shall he act?

The whole story is well known.