III.
Badi Az-Zaman al-Hamadani, the author of some beautiful epistles and excellent essays, which last Hariri took as a model in the composition of his, wrote as follows about death: 'Death is awful till it comes, and then it is found light; its touch seems grating till felt, and then it is smooth; the world is so hostile and its injustice so great that death is the lightest of its inflictions, the least of its wrongs. Look, then, to the right; do you see aught but affliction? Look to the left; do you see aught but woe?'