And how many of all the Odes called his...

And how many of all the Odes called his, more and fewer in various Copies, do you yourself care to deal with?-And in the better ones how often some lines, as I think for this reason, unworthy of the Rest-interpolated perhaps from the Mouths of his many Devotees, Mystical and Sensual-or crept into Manuscripts of which he never arranged or corrected one from the First?

This, together with the confined Action of Persian Grammar, whose organic simplicity seems to me its difficulty when applied, makes the Line by Line Translation of a Poem not line by line precious tedious in proportion to its length.

Especially- (what the Sonnet does not feel)-in the Narrative; which I found when once eased in its Collar, and yet missing somewhat of rhythmical Amble, somehow, and not without resistance on my part, swerved into that "easy road" of Verse-easiest as unbeset with any exigencies of Rhyme.

Those little Stories, too, which you thought untractable, but which have their Use as well as Humour by way of quaint Interlude Music between the little Acts, felt ill at ease in solemn Lowth-Isaiah Prose, and had learn’d their tune, you know, before even Hiawatha came to teach people to quarrel about it. Till, one part drawing on another, the Whole grew to the present form.

As for the much bodily omitted-it may be readily guessed that an Asiatic of the 15th Century might say much on such a subject that an Englishman of the 19th would not care to read. Not that our Jámi is ever licentious like his Contemporary Chaucer, nor like Chaucer's Posterity in Times that called themselves more Civil. But better Men will not now endure a simplicity of Speech that Worse men abuse.

Then the many more, and foolisher, Stories-preliminary Te Deums to Allah and Allah's-shadow Sháh-very much about Alef Noses, Eyebrows like inverted Núns, drunken Narcissus Eyes-and that eternal Moon Face which never wanes from Persia-of all which there is surely enough in this Glimpse of the Original. No doubt some Oriental character escapes-the Story sometimes becomes too Skin and Bone without due interval of even Stupid and Bad.

Of the two Evils?-At least what I have chosen is least in point of bulk; scarcely in proportion with the length of its Apology which, as usual, probably discharges one's own Conscience at too great a Price; people at once turning against you the Arms they might have wanted had you not laid them down.