ALTHOUGH Nizami is, in his own right and his own language, a poet and not an essayist, the English translations in essay form made from his works, by Sir William Jones, belong to the literature of the English essay, as they helped to give an Oriental tinge to the essays of the latter part of the eighteenth century. Nizami, who was one of the greatest poets of Persia, was born in 1141 A.D. His productive capacity was immense, as his Divan alone contains twenty-eight thousand distichs, and it is only one of six of his chief productions. Of these Laila and Majnun is best known to Occidental readers. Nizami died in 1202 A.D.