118. The Gulistan, 1888.
The Gulistan of Sadi, [409] which was the next book issued, is best known in England from the translations by James Ross (1823) and Edward B. Eastwick (1852). Sadi's aim was to make "a garden of roses whose leaves the rude hand of the blast of Autumn could not affect." [410] "The very brambles and rubbish of this book," says an ancient enthusiastic admirer, "are of the nature of ambergris." Men treasured the scraps of Sadi's writing "as if they were gold leaf," and The Gulistan has attained a popularity in the East "which has never been reached in this Western world." The school-boy lisps his first lessons in it, the pundit quotes it, and hosts of its sayings have become proverbial. From end to end the "unity, the unapproachable majesty, the omnipotence, the long-suffering and the goodness of God" are nobly set forth—the burden of every chapter being:
"The world, my brother! will abide with none,
By the world's Maker let thy heart be won."