[10] There is a similar story to this in one of our old
        English jest-books, Tales and Quicke Answeres, 1535,
        as follows (I have modernised the spelling):  As an
        astronomer [i.e. an astrologer] sat upon a time in the
        market place, and took upon him to divine and to show
        what their fortunes and chances should be that came to
        him, there came a fellow and told him (as it was indeed)
        that thieves had broken into his house, and had borne
        away all that he had.  These tidings grieved him so sore
        that, all heavy and sorrowfully, he rose up and went his
        way.  When the fellow saw him do so, he said:  “O thou
        foolish and mad man! goest thou about to divine other
        men’s matters, and art ignorant of thine own?”

III

ANECDOTES AND APHORISMS FROM THE “GULISTAN,” WITH ANALOGUES—­CONCLUSION.

Besides the maxims comprised in the concluding chapter of the Gulistan, under the heading of “Rules for the Conduct of Life,” many others, of great pith and moment, are interspersed with the tales and anecdotes which Saadi recounts in the preceding chapters, a selection of which can hardly fail to prove both instructive and interesting.

It is related that at the court of Nushirvan, king of Persia, a number of wise men were discussing a difficult question; and Buzurjmihr (his famous prime minister), being silent, was asked why he did not take part in the debate.  He answered:  “Ministers are like physicians, and the physician gives medicine to the sick only.  Therefore, when I see your opinions are judicious, it would not be consistent with wisdom for me to obtrude my sentiments.  When a matter can be managed without my interference it is not proper for me to speak on the subject.  But if I see a blind man in the way of a well, should I keep silence it were a crime.”  On another occasion, when some Indian sages were discoursing on his virtue, they could discover in him only this fault, that he hesitated in his speech, so that his hearers were kept a long time in suspense before he delivered his sentiments.  Buzurjmihr overheard their conversation and observed:  “It is better to deliberate before I speak than to repent of what I have said."[11]

   [11] The sayings of Buzurjmihr, the sagacious prime minister
        of King Nushirvan, are often cited by Persian writers,
        and a curious story of his precocity when a mere youth
        is told in the Lata’yif at-Taw’ayif, a Persian
        collection, made by Al-Kashifi, of which a translation
        will be found in my “Analogues and Variants” of the
        Tales in vol. iii of Sir R. F. Burton’s Supplemental
        Arabian Nights, pp. 567-9—­too long for reproduction
        here.

A parallel to this last saying of the Persian vazir is found in a “notable sentence” of a wise Greek, in this passage from the Dictes, or Sayings of Philosophers, printed by Caxton (I have modernised the spelling):