considered poverty the companion of genius, he constantly refused the
invitation, of monarchs to visit their courts. There is endless variety in
the poems of Hafiz, and they are replete with surpassing beauty of
thought, feeling, and expression. The grace, ease, and fancy of his
numbers are inimitable, and there is a magic in his lays which few even of
his professed enemies have been able to resist. To the young, the gay, and
the enthusiastic his verses are ever welcome, and the sage discovers in
them a hidden mystery which reconciles him to their subjects. His tomb,
near Shiraz, is visited as a sacred spot by pilgrims of all ages. The
place of his birth is held in veneration, and there is not a Persian whose
heart does not echo his strains.

Jami (d. 1492) was born in Khorassan, in the village of Jam, from whence
he is named,--his proper appellation being Abd Arahman. He was a Sufi, and
preferred, like many of his fellow-poets, the meditations and ecstasies of
mysticism to the pleasures of a court. His writings are very voluminous;
he composed nearly forty volumes, all of great length, of which twenty-two
are preserved at Oxford. The greater part of them treat of Mohammedan
theology, and are written in the mystic style. He collected the most
interesting under the name of the "Seven Stars of the Bear," or the "Seven
Brothers," and among these is the famous poem of Yussuf and Zuleika. This
favorite subject, which every Persian poet has touched with more or less
success, has never been so beautifully rendered as by Jami. Nothing can
exceed the admiration which this poem inspires in the East.

Hatifi (d. 1520) was the nephew of the great poet Jami. It was his
ambition to enter the lists with his uncle, by composing poems on similar
subjects. Opinions are divided as to whether he succeeded as well as his
master, but none can exceed him in sweetness and pathos. His version of
the sad tale of Mejnoun and Leila, the Romeo and Juliet of the East, is