Note 243 — THE LOVES OF AL-HAYFA AND YUSUF.[177]

I spare my readers the full formula:—“Yúsuf took it and brake the seal (fazza-hu) and read it and comprehended its contents and purport and significance: and, after perusing it,” etc. These forms, decies repetitæ, may go down with an Eastern audience, but would be intolerable in a Western volume. The absence of padding, however, reduces the story almost to a patchwork of doggerel rhymes, for neither I nor any man can “make a silk purse from a suille ear.”