Excerpt from Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Vol. 1 of 2 Not long after Hyde was electrifying the learned world by his display Of genius, the attention Of English people was strongly attracted to the Orient, not only by the vigorous policy Of the East India Company, which was then laying the foundations of England's splendid empire in the East, but also by the first translation of the Arabian Nights, which opened a new world Of imagination, the reflection Of which may be recognized in such works as Addison's Vision of Mirza and Dr. Johnson's Rasselas. The East from this time forth tempted many ambitious young Englishmen to seek fame and fortune. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.