to Mr. Forster by a man on shore; but he gave a different, and
indeed more proper answer, by saying, 'No man who used the sea could
say where he should be buried.'"

Thus far--without fear of Trespass--from the Calcutta Review. The
writer of it, on reading in India this story of Omar's Grave, was
reminded, he says, of Cicero's Account of finding Archimedes' Tomb at
Syracuse, buried in grass and weeds. I think Thorwaldsen desired to
have roses grow over him; a wish religiously fulfilled for him to the
present day, I believe. However, to return to Omar.

Though the Sultan "shower'd Favors upon him," Omar's Epicurean
Audacity of Thought and Speech caused him to be regarded askance in
his own Time and Country. He is said to have been especially hated
and dreaded by the Sufis, whose Practise he ridiculed, and whose Faith
amounts to little more than his own, when stript of the Mysticism and
formal recognition of Islamism under which Omar would not hide. Their
Poets, including Hafiz, who are (with the exception of Firdausi) the
most considerable in Persia, borrowed largely, indeed, of Omar's
material, but turning it to a mystical Use more convenient to
Themselves and the People they addressed; a People quite as quick of
Doubt as of Belief; as keen of Bodily sense as of Intellectual; and
delighting in a cloudy composition of both, in which they could float
luxuriously between Heaven and Earth, and this World and the Next, on
the wings of a poetical expression, that might serve indifferently for
either. Omar was too honest of Heart as well of Head for this.
Having failed (however mistakenly) of finding any Providence but
Destiny, and any World but This, he set about making the most of it;
preferring rather to soothe the Soul through the Senses into
Acquiescence with Things as he saw them, than to perplex it with vain