Borneo! Here, indeed, was a sensation in the world of letters - a
revelation as thrilling as the disinterment of Ossian's forgotten songs
- the discovery of an unsubmerged Atlantis. While some stout Cortez more
worthy than the Editor might have stood on this new Darien and gazed
over the sleeping demesne of Omar Khayyam, Jr., he had, so to speak, the
advantage of being first on the ground, and to him fell the duty, nolens
volens, of lifting the rare philosophy out of the Erebus that had so
long cloaked it in obscurity.

It is still a matter of surprise to the Editor that the discovery of
these Rubaiyat should have been left to this late date, when in
sentiment and philosophy they have points of superiority over the
quatrains of the first Omar of Naishapur. The genius of the East has,
indeed, ever been slow to reveal itself in the West. It took a Crusade
to bring to our knowledge anything of the schöner Geist of the Orient;
and it was not until the day of Matthew Arnold that the Epic of
Persia[1] was brought into the proper realm of English poesy. What
wonder, then, that not until the first Omaric madness had passed away
were the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Jr., lifted into the light after an
infinity of sudor et labor spent in excavating under the 9,000 irregular
verbs, 80 declensions, and 41 exceptions to every rule which go to make
the ancient Mango-Bornese dialect in which the poem was originally
written, foremost among the dead languages!

Although little is known of the life of Omar Khayyam the elder, the
details of his private career are far more complete than those of his
son, Omar Khayyam, Jr. In fact, many historians have been so careless as
to have entirely omitted mention of the existence of such a person as
the younger Omar. Comparative records of the two languages, however,
show plainly how the mantle was handed from the Father to the Son, and