Penny Dreadfuls, 1900 · page 22 of 142
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, and the Salaman and Absal of Jami — page 22: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# What This Page Contains This is a page of scholarly prose—specifically, an introduction or preface discussing the textual history of Omar Khayyám's poems. The text examines the rarity and corruption of manuscript copies of Khayyám's work across various libraries in England, Paris, Calcutta, and elsewhere, noting how different manuscripts contain wildly varying numbers of quatrains (called "Rubaiyat" or "Tetrastichs"). A footnote indicates this material was written for a review, and a later editor has appended an update about discovering an 1836 printed edition containing 438 quatrains. The page appears to be from a Victorian scholarly edition rather than a penny dreadful.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
; Lee Xl OMAR KHAYYAM, abroad. The MSS. of his Poems, mutilated beyond the average Casualties of Oriental Transcription, are so rare in the Hast as scarce. to have reacht West- ward at all, in spite of all the acquisitions of Arms and Science. There is no copy at the India House, none at the Bibliothéque Nationale of Paris. We know but of one in England : No. 140 of the Ouseley MSS. at the Bodleian, written at Shiraz, a.p. 1460. This contains but 158 Rubaiyat. One in the Asiatic Society’s Library at Calcutta (of which we have a Copy), contains (and yet incomplete) 516, though swelled to that by all kinds of Repetition and Corruption. So Von Hammer speaks of his Copy as containing about 200, while Dr. Sprenger cata- logues the Lucknow MS. at double that number.' The Scribes, too, of the Oxford and Calcutta MSS. seem to do their Work under a sort of Protest; each beginning with a Tetrastich (whether genuine or not), taken out of its alphabetical order; the Oxford with one of Apology; the Calcutta with one of Expostula- tion, supposed (says a Notice prefixed to the MS.) to have arisen from a Dream, in which Omar’s 1 <« Since this Paper was written (adds the Reviewer in a note), ‘we have met with a Copy of a very rare Edition, printed at Caleutta in 1836. This contains 438 ‘Tetrastichs, with an Appendix containing 54 others not found in some MSS.” | = CORNICLOO 4 (CO)