"
In Tobacco the son found a lasting and comparatively harmless substitute
for the Wine, which, none can doubt, caused the elder Omar to complain
so bitterly, -
"Indeed, the Idols I have loved so long
Have done my credit in Men's eyes much wrong.''
Note the cheerfulness with which the Son answers the Father in a stanza
which may be taken as a key to his Reformatory Philosophy,
"O foozied Poetasters, fogged with Wine,
Who to your Orgies bid the Muses Nine,
Go bid them then, but leave to me, the Tenth
Whose name is Nicotine, for she is mine!''
Quite in accordance with his policy of improving on his father's rakish
Muse was the frequent endorsement of the beautiful and harmless practice
of kissing. The kiss is mentioned some forty-eight times in the present
work, and in the nine hundred untranslated Rubaiyat, two hundred and ten
more kisses occur, making a grand total of two hundred and fifty-eight
Omaric kisses -
"Enough! - of Kisses can there be Enough?"
It may be truly said that the Father left the discovery of Woman to his
Son, for nowhere in the Rubaiyat of Naishapur's poet is full justice
done to the charms of the fair.
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