ABSTRACT
Edward FitzGerald was a man of independent though not large fortune, and in one sense, if not in all, of the most independent character possible. FitzGerald, however, was nothing if not literary, though he would not have been true to his general character if he had not extended his literary interests outside, while by no means neglecting, the more usual curricula. FitzGerald's greatest predecessor, in translation, at Trinity, Cambridge, had avowedly answered the question "what he thinks is the general drift of that original in the form most likely to produce a similar or at least a corresponding effect on his probable readers?" Of the stanza which FitzGerald substituted for the curiously artificial, but certainly not, in English, engaging, form of the original something should be said. Omar Khayyam was a Persian poet of the eleventh and twelfth centuries who was also an astronomer of great scientific acquisitions and accomplishments.
