She shines sae bricht to wyle us hame,
But by my sooth she'll wait a wee!
We are na fou, we're no that fou,
But just a drappie in our ee;
The Cock may craw, the day may daw,
And aye we'll taste the barley bree!'
We are sorry to believe, notwithstanding Mr. Fitzgerald's rather lame and halting Apology, that it became, more and more, a confirmed habit; and that 'willy-nilly' the old Nature-tyrant had it out with him too. Alas! that it should so often be so with these genial poetic souls-poets, who in their youth 'begin in gladness, and thereof in the end doth come Despondency and Madness'! In vain does the much-admired Translator protest; for again he shows poor parched old Khayyám 'by the Tavern Door agape'!; the Nightingale only pipes to him 'Wine! Wine! Wine!'; his burden of Clay 'with long Oblivion is gone dry'!; his last hope and only prayer is: 'Ah, with the Grape my fading Life provide, And wash the Body whence the Life has died'; and his last word and the final horror is—'an empty Glass!' But he is much more candid in his 'cups' than his ingenious Translator, as all such are wont at a certain stage to be; for he quite frankly tells us his Rule of Life: 'Drink!—for once dead you never shall return!' Nay, he takes us, in the most friendly way and with irresistible candour, into his most intimate confidence, and informs us how and when, and how deliberately, when he found out 'the sorry Scheme of Things,' his glorified new Creed and boasted new Life came about:—
'You know, my Friends, with what a brave Carouse
I made a Second Marriage in my house;
Divorced old barren Reason from my Bed,