Note 51 — Chapter IX

In two splendid volumes, printed by native hands under the sanction of the Government at Calcutta, in 1891, Lieutenant-Colonel H. Wilberforce Clarke published an English prose translation of The Divan, written in the Fourteenth Century, by Khwaja Shamshu-d-Din Muhammad-i-Hafiz. The work is described in the Quarterly Review of January 1892, by a writer who thus begins: ‘About two miles north-west of Shiraz, in the garden called Mosella which is, being interpreted, “the place of prayer,” lies, beneath the shadow of cypress-trees, one of which he is said to have planted with his own hand, Shems-Edden Mohammed, surnamed Hafiz, or “the steadfast in Scripture,” poet, recluse, and mystic.... No other Persian has equalled him in fame—not Sadi, whose monument, now in ruins, may be visited near his own; nor Firdusi, nor Jami. Near the garden tomb is laid open the book of well nigh seven hundred poems which he wrote. According to Sir Gore Ouseley, who turned over its pages in 1811, it is a volume abounding in bright and delicate colour, with illuminated miniatures, and the lovely tints of the Persian caligraphy.’