"
It would show a sad lack of humour if we were to take this too
seriously, and shake our heads over our eastern visitor. The cult of
Omar has been blamed for paganising English society. Really it came in
as a foreign curiosity, and, for the most part, that it has remained.
When we had a visit some years ago from that great oriental potentate Li
Hung Chang, we all put on our best clothes and went out to welcome him.
That was all right so long as we did not naturalise him, a course which
neither he nor we thought of our adopting. Had we naturalised him, it
would have been a different matter, and even Mayfair might have found
the fashions of China somewhat _risque_. One remembers that introductory
note to Browning's _Ferishtah's Fancies_--"You, Sir, I entertain you for
one of my Hundred; only, I do not like the fashion of your garments: you
will say they are Persian; but let them be changed."[1] The only safe
way of dealing with Omar Kayyam is to insist that his garments be _not_
changed. If you naturalise him he will become deadly in the West. The
East thrives upon fatalism, and there is a glamour about its most
materialistic writings, through which far spiritual things seem to
quiver as in a sun-haze.
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