ested and independent scholar and poet, he does not escape the inconsistency which often follows in the wake of cavil. Read this, for instance:
"Like many of those who have failed to secure material prosperity, he found comfort in a system which flatters the vanity of those who have not succeeded by teaching that success is not worth attaining."
And this, not on the same page perhaps, but close to it:
"For though other roads towards obtaining the means of supporting himself at Baghdad have been open to him, that which he refused to follow (the profession of an encomiast, i. e. a sycophant, a toady) was the most certain."
(g) Biography of Abu'l-Ala by Adh-Dhahabi.
(h) "The Letters, which abound in quotations, enable us to gauge the power of his memory better than these wonder-loving narrators."—D. S. Margoliouth.
(i) In one of his poems he speaks of three prisons, his body being the third. Here is Professor Nicholson's translation:
Methink I am thrice-imprisoned—ask not me
Of news that need no telling—
By loss of sight, confinement in my house,
And this vile body for my spirit's dwelling.
(j) Also his Commentary on the works of the poet Al-Mutanabbi.
(k) Adh-Dhahabi gives the titles of forty-eight of his works, to which Safadi adds fourteen. A literary
baggage of considerable bulk, had not most of it
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