Volume 6 — THE BIOGRAPHY OF THE BOOK AND ITS REVIEWERS REVIEWED. (continued 2)

“Non est sanctior quod laudaris:

Non est vilior si vituperaris.”

“No one, now-a-days cares for reviews,” wrote Darwin as far back as 1840; and it is easy to see the whys and the wherefores. I have already 419touched upon the duty of reviewing the reviewer when the latter’s work calls for the process, despite the pretensions of modern criticism that it must not be criticised. Although to buffet an anonym is to beat the air still the very effort does good. A well-known and popular novelist of the present day was a favourite butt for certain journalists who, with the normal half-knowledge of men—

“That read too little, and that write too much”—

persistently fell foul of the points in which the author was almost always right and the reviewer was wrong. “An eagle hawketh not at flies:” the object of ill-natured satire despised——

“The creatures of the stall and stye,”

and persisted in contemptuous reticence, giving consent by silence to what was easily refuted, and suffering a fond and foolish sentence to misguide the public which it pretends to direct. “Take each man’s censure but reserve thy judgment,” is a wise saying when silently practised; it leads, however, to suffering in public esteem. The case in question was wholly changed when, at my suggestion, the writer was persuaded to catch a few of the culprits and to administer the dressing and redressing they so richly deserved.

And now to my tale.

Mr. Henry Reeve, Editor of the Edinburgh Review, wrote to me shortly before my first volume was issued to subscribers (September, ’85) asking for advance sheets, as his magazine proposed to produce a general notice of The Arabian Nights Entertainments. But I suspected the man whose indiscretion and recklessness had been so unpleasantly paraded in the shape of the Greville (Mr. Worldly Wiseman’s) Memoirs, and I had not forgotten the untruthful and malignant articles of perfervid brutality which during the hot youth and calm middle age of the Edinburgh had disgraced the profession of letters. My answer, which was temporising and diplomatic, induced only a second and a more urgent application. Bearing in mind that professional etiquette hardly justifies publicly reviewing a book intended only for private reading and vividly remembering the evil record of the periodical, I replied that the sheets should be forwarded but on one condition; namely, that the reviewer would not dwell too lovingly and longingly upon the “archaics,” which had so excited the Tartuffean temperament of the chaste Pall Mall Gazette. Mr. Henry Reeves replied (surlily) that he was not in the habit of dictating to his staff and I rejoined by refusing to grant his request. So he waited until five, that is one-half of my volumes had been distributed to subscribers, and revenged himself by placing them for review in the hands of the “Lane-Poole” clique 420which, as the sequel proved could be noisy and combative as setting hens disturbed when their nest-egg was threatened by an intruding hand.

For the clique had appropriated all right and claim to a monopoly of The Arabian Nights Entertainments which they held in hand as a rotten borough. The “Uncle and Master,” Mr. Edward William Lane, eponymous hero of the house, had re-translated certain choice specimens of the Recueil and the “nephews of their uncle” resolved to make a private gold-mine thereof. The book came out in monthly parts at half-a-crown (1839–41), and when offered for sale in 3 vols. royal 8vo, the edition of 5,000 hung fire at first until the high price (£3. 3s.) was reduced to 27 shillings for the trade. The sale then went off briskly and amply repaid the author and the publishers—Charles Knight and Co. And although here and there some “old Tory” grumbled that new-fangled words (as Wezeer, Kádee and Jinnee) had taken the places of his childhood’s pets, the Vizier, the Cadi, and the Genie, none complained of the workmanship for the all-sufficient reason that naught better was then known or could be wanted. Its succès de salon was greatly indebted to the “many hundred engravings on wood, from original designs by William Harvey”; with a host of quaint and curious Arabesques, Cufic inscriptions, vignettes, head-pieces and culs-de-lampes. These, with the exception of sundry minor accessories,^[448] were excellent and showed for 421the first time the realistic East and not the absurdities drawn from the depths of artistical ignorance and self-consciousness—those of Smirke, Deveria, Chasselot and Co., not to speak of the horrors of the De Sacy edition, whose plates have apparently been used by Prof. Weil and by the Italian versions. And so the three bulky and handsome volumes found a ready way into many a drawing-room during the Forties, when the public was uncritical enough to hail the appearance of these scattered chapters and to hold that at last they had the real thing, pure and unadulterated. No less than three reprints of the “Standard Edition,” 1859 (the last being in ’83) succeeded one another and the issue was finally stopped, not by the author’s death (ætat 75; London, August 10, 1876: nat. Hereford, September 17, 1801), nor by the plates, which are now the property of Messieurs Chatto and Windus, becoming too worn for use, but simply by deficient demand. And the clique, represented by the late Edward Lane-Poole in 1879, who edited the last edition (1883) with a Preface by Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole, during a long run of forty-three years never paid the public the compliment of correcting the multitudinous errors and short-comings of the translation. Even the lengthy and longsome notes, into which The Nights have too often been merged, were left untrimmed. Valuable in themselves and full of information, while wholly misplaced in a recueil of folk-lore, where they stand like pegs behung with the contents of the translator’s adversaria, the monographs on details of Arab life have also been exploited and reprinted under the “fatuous” title, “Arabian (for Egyptian) Society in the Middle Ages: 422Studies on The Thousand and One Nights.” They were edited by Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole (Chatto and Windus) in 1883.

At length the three volumes fell out of date, and the work was formally pronounced unreadable. Goëthe, followed from afar by Emerson, had foreseen the “inevitable increase of Oriental influence upon the Occident,” and the eagerness with which the men of the West would apply themselves to the languages and literature of the East. Such garbled and mutilated, unsexed and unsouled versions and perversions like Lane’s were felt to be survivals of the unfittest. Mr. John Payne (for whom see my Foreword, vol. i. pp. xii.–xiii.) resolved to give the world the first honest and complete version of the Thousand Nights and a Night. He put forth samples of his work in the New Quarterly Magazine (January-April, 1879), whereupon he was incontinently assaulted by Mr. Reginald Stuart Poole, the then front of the monopolists, who after drawing up a list of fifteen errata (which were not errata) in two Nights, declared that “they must be multiplied five hundred-fold to give the sum we may expect.” (The Academy, April 26, 1879; November 29, 1881; and December 7, 1881.) The critic had the courage, or rather impudence, to fall foul of Mr. Payne’s mode and mannerism, which had long become deservedly famous, and concludes:—“The question of English style may for the present be dropped, as, if a translator cannot translate, it little matters in what form his results appear. But it may be questioned whether an Arab edifice should be decorated with old English wall-papers.”

Evidently I had scant reason to expect mercy from the clique: I wanted none and I received none.

My reply to the arch-impostor, who

Spreads the light wings of saffron and of blue,

will perforce be somewhat detailed: it is necessary to answer paragraph by paragraph, and the greater part of the thirty-three pages refers more or less directly to myself. To begin with the beginning, it caused me and many others some surprise to see the “Thousand Nights and a Night” expelled the initial list of thirteen items, as if it were held unfit for mention. Cet article est principalement une diatribe contre l’ouvrage de Sir Richard Burton, et dans le libre cet ouvrage n’est même pas mentionné, writes my French friend. This proceeding was a fair specimen of “that impartiality which every reviewer is supposed to possess.” But the ignoble “little dodge” presently suggested itself. The preliminary excursus (p. 168) concerning the “Mille et Une Nuits (read Nuit) an audacious fraud, though not the less the best story book in the world,” affords us a useful measure of the writer’s competence in the matter of audacity and ill-judgment. The honest and single-minded Galland is here (let us believe through that pure ignorance which haply may hope for “fool’s pardon”) grossly and unjustly vilified; and, by way of making 423bad worse, we are assured (p. 167) that the Frenchman “brought the Arabic manuscript from Syria”—an unfact which is surprising to the most superficial student. “Galland was a born story-teller, in the good and the bad sense” (p. 167) is a silly sneer of the true Lane-Poolean type. The critic then compares most unadvisedly (p. 168) a passage in Galland (De Sacy edit. vol. i. 414) with the same in Mr. Payne’s (i. 260) by way of proving the “extraordinary liberties which the worthy Frenchman permitted himself to take with the Arabic”: had he troubled himself to collate my version (i. 290–291), which is made fuller by the Breslau Edit. (ii. 190), he would have found that the Frenchman, as was his wont, abridged rather than amplified;^[449] although, when the original permitted exact translation, he could be literal enough. And what doubt, may I enquire, can we have concerning “The Sleeper Awakened” (Lane, ii. 351–376), or, as I call it, “The Sleeper and the Waker” (Suppl. vol. i. 1–39), when it occurs in a host of MSS., not to mention the collection of tales which Prof. Habicht converted into the Arabian Nights by breaking the text into a thousand and one sections (Bresl. Edit. iv. 134–189, Nights cclxxii.–ccxci.). The reckless assertions that “the whole of the last fourteen (Gallandian) tales have nothing whatever to do with ‘The Nights’” (p. 168); and that of the histories of Zayn al-Asnám and Aladdin, “it is abundantly certain that they belong to no manuscript of the Thousand and One Nights” (p. 169), have been notably stultified by M. Hermann Zotenberg’s purchase of two volumes containing both these bones of long and vain contention. See Foreword to my Suppl. vol. iii. pp. viii.–xi., and Mr. W. F. Kirby’s interesting notice of M. Zotenberg’s epoch-making booklet (vol. vi. p. 35).

“The first English edition was published (pace Lowndes) within eight years of Galland’s” (p. 170) states a mere error. The second part of Galland (6 vols. 12mo) was not issued till 1717, or two years after the translator’s death. Of the English editio princeps the critic tells nothing, nor indeed has anyone as yet been able to tell us aught. Of the dishonouring assertion (again let us hope made in simple ignorance) concerning “Cazotte’s barefaced forgery” (p. 170), thus slandering the memory of Jacques Cazotte, one of the most upright and virtuous of men who ever graced the ranks of literature, I have disposed in the Foreword to my Supplemental vol. vi. “This edition (Scott’s) was tastefully reprinted by Messrs. Nimmo and Bain in four volumes in 1883” (p. 170). But why is the reader not warned that the eaux fortes are by Lalauze (see suprà, p. 408), 19 in number, and taken from the 21 illustrations in MM. Jouaust’s edit. of Galland with preface by J. Janin? Why also did the critic not inform us that Scott’s sixth volume, the only original part of the work, was wilfully omitted? This paragraph ends with mentioning 424the labours of Baron von Hammer-Purgstall, concerning whom we are afterwards told (p. 186) for the first time that he “was brilliant and laborious.” Hard-working, yes! brilliant, by no means!

We now come to the glorification of the “Uncle and Master,” concerning whom I can only say that Lane’s bitterest enemy (if the amiable Orientalist ever had any unfriend) could not have done him more discredit than this foolish friend. “His classical (!) translation was at once recognised as an altogether new departure,” (p. 171) and “it was written in such a manner that the Oriental tone of The Nights should be reflected in the English.” (ibid.) “It aims at reproducing in some degree the literary flavour of the original” (p. 173). “The style of Lane’s translation is an old-fashioned somewhat Biblical language” (p. 173), and “it is precisely this antiquated ring” (of the imperfect and mutilated “Boulak edition,” unwisely preferred by the translator) “that Lane has succeeded in preserving.” “The measured and finished language Lane chose for his version is eminently fitted to represent the rhythmical tongue of the Arab” (Memoir, p. xxvii). “The translation itself is distinguished by its singular accuracy and by the marvellous way in which the Oriental tone and colour are retained” (ibid). The writer has taken scant trouble to read me when he asserts that the Bulak edit. was my text, and I may refer him for his own advantage, to my Foreword (vol. i. p. xix), which he has wilfully ignored by stating unfact. I hasten to plead guilty before the charge of “really misunderstanding the design of Lane’s style” (p. 173). Much must be pardoned to the panegyrist, the encomiast; but the idea of mentioning in the same sentence with Biblical English, the noblest and most perfect specimen of our prose, the stiff and bald, the vapid and turgid manner of the Orientalist who “commences” and “concludes”—never begins and ends; who never uses a short word if he can find a long word, who systematically rejects terse and idiomatic Anglo-Saxon when a Latinism is to be employed and whose pompous stilted periods are the very triumph of the “Deadly-lively”! By arts precisely similar the learned George Sale made the Koran, that pure and unstudied inspiration of Arabian eloquence, dull as a law document, and left the field clear for the Rev. Mr. Rodwell. I attempted to excuse the style-laches of Lane by noticing the lack of study in English linguistic which distinguished the latter part of the xviiith and the first half of the xixth centuries, when men disdaining the grammar of their own tongue, learned it from Latin and Greek; when not a few styled Shakespeare “silly-billy,” and when Lamb, the essayist, wrote, “I can read, and I say it seriously, the homely old version of the Psalms for an hour or two together sometimes, without sense of weariness.” But the reviewer will have none of my palliative process, he is surprised at my “posing as a judge of prose style,” being “acquainted with my quaint perversions of the English language” (p. 173) and, when combating my sweeping assertion that “our prose” (especially 425the prose of schoolmasters and professors, of savans and Orientalists) “was perhaps the worst in Europe,” he triumphantly quotes half a dozen great exceptions whose eminence goes far to prove the rule.

As regards Lane’s unjustifiable excisions the candid writer tells us everything but the truth. As I have before noted (vol. ix. 304), the main reason was simply that the publisher, who was by no means a business man, found the work outgrowing his limits and insisted upon its coming to an untimely and, alas! a tailless end. This is perhaps the principal cause for ignoring the longer histories, like King Omar bin al-Nu’umán (occupying 371 pages in my vols. ii. and iii.); Abú Hasan and his slave-girl Tawaddud (pp. 56, vol. v. 189–245); the Queen of the Serpents with the episodes of Bulukiyá, and of Jánshah (pp. 98 vol. v. 298–396); The Rogueries of Dalilah the Crafty and the Adventures of Mercury Ali (pp. 55 vol. vii. 144–209). The Tale of Harun al-Rashid and Abu Hasan of Oman (pp. 19, vol. ix. 188–207) is certainly not omitted by dictations of delicacy, nor is it true of the parts omitted in general that “none could be purified without being destroyed.” As my French friend remarks, “Few parts are so plain-spoken as the introduction, le cadre de l’ouvrage, yet M. Lane was not deterred by such situation.” And lastly we have, amongst the uncalled-for excisions, King Jali’ad of Hind, etc. (pp. 102, vol. ix. 32–134). The sum represents a grand total of 701 pages, while not a few of the notes are filled with unimportant fabliaux and apologues.

But the critic has been grandly deceptive, either designedly or of ignorance prepense, in his arithmetic. “There are over four hundred of these (anecdotes, fables, and stories) in the complete text, and Lane has not translated more than two hundred” (p. 172). * * * “Adding the omitted anecdotes to the omitted tales, it appears that Lane left out about a third of the whole ‘Nights,’ and of that third at least three-fourths was incompatible with a popular edition. When Mr. Payne and Captain Burton boast of presenting the public ‘with three times as much matter as any other version,’ they perhaps mean a third as much again” (p. 173). * * * “Captain Burton records his opinion that Lane has omitted half and by far the more characteristic half of the Arabian Nights, but Captain Burton has a talent for exaggeration, and for ‘characteristic’ we should read ‘unclean.’ It is natural that he should make the most of such omissions, since they form the raison d’être of his own translation; but he has widely overshot the mark, and the public may rest assured that the tales omitted from the standard version (proh pudor!) are of very slight importance in comparison with the tales included in it” (p. 173).

What a mass of false statement!

Let us now exchange fiction for fact. Lane’s three volumes contain a total, deducting 15 for index, of pp. 1995 (viz. 618 + 643 + 734); while each (full) page of text averages 38 lines and of notes (in smaller type) 48. The text with a number of illustrations represents a total of pp. 1485 426(viz. 441 + 449 + 595). Mr. Payne’s nine volumes contain a sum of pp. 3057, mostly without breaks, to the 1485 of the “Standard edition.” In my version the sum of pages, each numbering 41 lines, is 3156, or 1163 more than Lane’s total and 2671 more than his text.

Again, in Lane’s text the tales number 62 (viz. 35 + 14 + 13) and as has been stated all the longest have been omitted, save only Sindbad the Seaman. The anecdotes in the notes amount to 44½ (viz. 3½ + 35 + 6): these are for the most part the merest outlines and include the 3½ of volume i. viz. the Tale of Ibrahim al-Mausilí (pp. 223–24), the Tale of Caliph Mu’áwiyah (i. pp. 521–22), the Tale of Mukhárik the Musician (i. pp. 224–26), and the half tale of Umm ’Amr (i. p. 522). They are quoted bodily from the “Halbat al-Kumayt” and from “the Kitáb al-Unwán fí Makáid al-Niswán,” showing that at the early stage of his labours the translator, who published in parts, had not read the book on which he was working; or, at least, had not learned that all the three and a half had been borrowed from The Nights. Thus the grand total is represented by 106½ tales, and the reader will note the difference between 106½ and the diligent and accurate reviewer’s “not much more than two hundred.” In my version the primary tales amount to 171; the secondaries, &c., to 96 and the total to 267, while Mr. Payne has 266.^[450] And these the critic swells to “over four hundred!” Thus I have more than double the number of pages in Lane’s text (allowing the difference between his 38 lines to an oft-broken page and my 41) and nearly two and a-half tales to his one, and therefore I do not mean “a third as much again.”

Thus, too, we can deal with the dishonest assertions concerning Lane’s translation “not being absolutely complete” (p. 171) and that “nobody desired to see the objectionable passages which constituted the bulk of Lane’s omissions restored to their place in the text” (p. 175).

The critic now passes to The Uncle’s competence for the task, which he grossly exaggerates. Mr. Lane had no “intimate acquaintance with Mahommedan life” (p. 174). His “Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians” should have been entitled “Modern Cairenes;” he had seen nothing of Nile-land save what was shown to him by a trip to Philæ in his first visit (1825–28) and another to Thebes during his second; he was profoundly ignorant of Egypt as a whole, and even in Cairo he knew nothing of woman-life and child-life—two thirds of humanity. I doubt if he could have understood the simplest expression in baby language; not to mention the many idioms peculiar to the Harem-nursery. The characteristic of his work is geniality combined with a true affection for 427his subject, but no scholar can ignore its painful superficiality. His studies of legal theology gave him much weight with the Olema, although, at the time when he translated The Nights, his knowledge of Arabic was small. Hence the number of lapses which disfigures his pages. These would have been excusable in an Orientalist working out of Egypt; but Lane had a Shaykh ever at his elbow and he was always able to command the assistance of the University Mosque, Al-Azhar. I need not enter upon the invidious task of cataloguing these errors, especially as the most glaring have been cursorily noticed in my volumes. Mr. Lane after leaving Egypt became one of the best Arabic scholars of his day, but his fortune did not equal his deserts. The Lexicon is a fine work although sadly deficient in the critical sense, but after the labour of thirty-four years (it began printing in 1863) it reached only the 19th letter Ghayn (p. 2386). Then invidious Fate threw it into the hands of Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole. With characteristic audacity he disdained to seek the services of some German Professor, an order of men which, rarely dining out and caring little for “Society,” can devote itself entirely to letters; perhaps he hearkened to the silly charge against the Teuton of minuteness and futility of research as opposed to “good old English breadth and suggestiveness of treatment.” And the consequence has been a “continuation” which serves as a standard whereby to measure the excellence of the original work and the woful falling-off and deficiencies of the sequel—the latter retaining of the former naught save the covers.^[451]

428Of Mr. Lane’s Notes I have ever spoken highly: they are excellent and marvellously misplaced—non erat his locus. The text of a story-book is too frail to bear so ponderous a burden of classical Arabian lore, and the annotations injure the symmetry of the book as a work of art. They begin with excessive prolixity: in the Introduction these studies fill 27 closely printed pages to 14 of a text broken by cuts and vignettes. In chapt. i. the proportion is pp. 20, notes: 15 text; and in chapt. ii. it is pp. 20: 35. Then they become, under the publisher’s protest, beautifully 429less; and in vol. iii. chapt. 30 (the last) they are pp. 5: 57. Long disquisitions, “On the initial Moslem formula,” “On the Wickedness of Women,” “On Fate and Destiny,” “On Arabian Cosmogony,” “On Slaves,” “On Magic,” “On the Two Grand Festivals,” all these being appended to the Introduction and the first chapter, are mere hors d’œuvres: such “copy” should have been reserved for another edition of “The Modern Egyptians.” The substitution of chapters for Nights was perverse and ill-judged as it could be; but it appears venial compared with condensing the tales in a commentary, thus converting the Arabian Nights into Arabian Notes. However, “Arabian Society in the Middle Ages,” a legacy left by the “Uncle and Master”; and, like the tame and inadequate “Selections from the Koran,” utilised by the grand-nephew, has been of service to the Edinburgh. Also, as it appears three several and distinct times in one article (pp. 166, 174, and 183), we cannot but surmise that a main object of the critique was to advertise the volume. Men are crafty in these days when practising the “puff indirect.”

But the just complaint against Lane’s work is its sin of omission. The partial Reviewer declares (pp. 174–75) that the Arabist “re-translated The Nights in a practical spirit, omitting what was objectionable, together with a few tales (!) that were, on the whole, uninteresting or tautological, and enriching the work with a multitude of valuable notes. We had now a scholarly version of the greater part of The Nights imbued with the spirit of the East and rich in illustrative comment; and for forty years no one thought of anything more, although Galland still kept his hold on the nursery.” Despite this spurious apology, the critic is compelled cautiously to confess (p. 172), “We are not sure that some of these omissions were not mistaken;” and he instances “Abdallah the Son of Fazil” and “Abu ’l-Hasan of Khorasan” (he means, I suppose, Abu Hasan al-Ziyádi and the Khorasani Man (iv. 285),) whilst he suggests, “a careful abridgment of the tale of Omar the Son of No’man” (ii. 77, etc.) Let me add that wittiest and most rollicking of Rabelaisian skits, “Ali the Persian and the Kurd Sharper” (iv. 149), struck-out in the very wantonness of “respectability;” and the classical series, an Arabian “Pilpay,” entitled “King Jali’ád of Hind and his Wazir Shimas” (iv. 32). Nor must I omit to notice the failure most injurious to the work which destroyed in it half the “spirit of the East.” Mr. Lane had no gift of verse or rhyme: he must have known that the ten thousand lines of the original Nights formed a striking and necessary contrast with the narrative part, acting as aria to recitativo. Yet he rendered them only in the baldest and most prosaic of English without even the balanced style of the French translations. He can be excused only for one consideration—bad prose is not so bad as bad verse.

The ill-judged over-appreciation and glorification of Mr. Lane is followed (p. 176), by the depreciation and bedevilment of Mr. John 430Payne, who first taught the world what The Nights really is. We are told that the author (like myself) “unfortunately did not know Arabic;” and we are not told that he is a sound Persian scholar: however, “he undoubtedly managed to pick up enough of the language (!) to understand The Arabian Nights with the assistance of the earlier translations of (by?) Torrens and Lane,” the former having printed only one volume out of some fifteen. This critic thinks proper now to ignore the “old English wall-papers,” of Mr. R. S. Poole, indeed he concedes to the translator of Villon, a “genius for language,” a “singular robust and masculine prose, which for the present purpose he intentionally weighted with archaisms and obsolete words but without greatly injuring its force or brilliancy” (p. 177). With plausible candour he also owns that the version “is a fine piece of English; it is also, save where the exigencies of rhyme compelled a degree of looseness, remarkably literal” (p. 178). Thus the author is damned with faint praise by one who utterly fails to appreciate the portentous difference between linguistic genius and linguistic mediocrity, and the Reviewer proceeds, “a careful collation” (we have already heard what his “careful” means) “of the different versions with their originals leads us to the conclusion that Mr. Payne’s version is little less faithful than Lane’s in those parts which are common to both, and is practically as close a rendering as is desirable” (p. 178). Tell the truth, man, and shame the Devil! I assert and am ready to support that the “Villon version” is incomparably superior to Lane’s not only in its simple, pure and forcible English, but also in its literal and absolute correctness, being almost wholly free from the blunders and inaccuracies which everywhere disfigure Torrens, and which are rarely absent from Lane. I also repeat that wherever the style and the subject are the most difficult to treat, Mr. Payne comes forth most successfully from the contest, thus giving the best proof of his genius and capacity for painstaking. Of the metrical part which makes the Villon version as superior to Lane’s as virgin gold to German silver, the critique offers only three inadequate specimens specially chosen and accompanied with a growl that “the verse is nothing remarkable” (p. 177) and that the author is sometimes “led into extreme liberties with the original” (ibid.). Not a word of praise for mastering the prodigious difficulties of the monorhyme!

But—and there is a remarkable power in this particle—Mr. Payne’s work is “restricted to the few wealthy collectors of proscribed books and what booksellers’ catalogues describe as ‘facetiæ’” (p. 179); for “when an Arabic word is unknown to the literary language” (what utter imbecility!), and “belongs only to the low vocabulary of the gutter” (which the most “elegant” writers most freely employ) “Mr. Payne laboriously searches out a corresponding term in English ‘Billingsgate,’ and prides himself upon an accurate reproduction of the tone of the original” (p. 178). This is a remarkable twisting of the truth. Mr. Payne persisted, 431despite my frequent protests, in rendering the “nursery words” and the “terms too plainly expressing natural situations” by old English such as “kaze” and “swive,” equally ignored by the “gutter” and by “Billingsgate”: he also omitted an offensive line whenever it did not occur in all the texts and could honestly be left untranslated. But the unfact is stated for a purpose: here the Reviewer mounts the high horse and poses as the Magister Morum per excellentiam. The Battle of the Books has often been fought, the crude text versus the bowdlerised and the expurgated; and our critic can contribute to the great fray only the merest platitudes. “There is an old and trusty saying that ‘evil communications corrupt good manners,’ and it is a well-known fact that the discussion (?) and reading of depraved literature leads (sic) infallibly to the depravation of the reader’s mind” (p. 179).^[452] I should say that the childish indecencies and the unnatural vice of the original cannot deprave any mind save that which is perfectly prepared to be depraved; the former would provoke only curiosity and amusement to see bearded men such mere babes, and the latter would breed infinitely more disgust than desire. The man must be prurient and lecherous as a dog-faced baboon in rut to have aught of passion excited by either. And most inept is the conclusion, “So long as Mr. Payne’s translation remains defiled by words, sentences, and whole paragraphs descriptive of coarse and often horribly depraved sensuality, it can never stand beside Lane’s, which still remains the standard version of the Arabian Nights” (p. 179.) Altro! No one knows better than the clique that Lane, after an artificially prolonged life of some half-century, has at last been weighed in the balance and been found wanting; that he is dying that second death which awaits the unsatisfactory worker and that his Arabian Nights are consigned by the present generation to the limbo of things obsolete and forgotten.

But if Mr. Payne is damned with poor praise and mock modesty, my 432version is condemned without redemption—beyond all hope of salvation: there is not a word in favour of a work which has been received by the reviewers with a chorus of kindly commendation. “The critical battery opens with a round-shot.” “Another complete translation is now appearing in a surreptitious way” (p. 179). How “surreptitious” I ask of this scribe, who ekes not the lack of reason by a superfluity of railing, when I sent out some 24,000–30,000 advertisements and published my project in the literary papers? “The amiability of the two translators (Payne and Burton) was testified by their each dedicating a volume to the other. So far as the authors are concerned nothing could be more harmonious and delightful; but the public naturally ask, What do we want with two forbidden versions?” And I again inquire, What can be done by me to satisfy this atrabilious and ill-conditioned Aristarchus? Had I not mentioned Mr. Payne, my silence would have been construed into envy, hatred and malice: if I am proud to acknowledge my friend’s noble work the proceeding engenders a spiteful sneer. As regards the “want,” public demand is easily proved. It is universally known (except to the Reviewer who will not know) that Mr. Payne, who printed only 500 copies, was compelled to refuse as many hundreds of would-be subscribers; and, when my design was made public by the Press, these and others at once applied to me. “To issue a thousand still more objectionable copies by another and not a better hand” (notice the quip cursive!) may “seem preposterous” (p. 180), but only to a writer so “preposterous” as this.

“A careful (again!) examination of Captain Burton’s translation shows that he has not, as he pretends (!), corrected it to agree with the Calcutta text, but has made a hotchpotch of various texts, choosing one or another—Cairo, Breslau, Macnaghten or first Calcutta—according as it presented most of the ‘characteristic’ detail (note the dig i’ the side vicious), in which Captain Burton’s version is peculiarly strong” (p. 180). So in return for the severe labour of collating the four printed texts and of supplying the palpable omissions, which by turns disfigure each and every of the quartette, thus producing a complete copy of the Recueil, I gain nothing but blame. My French friend writes to me: Lorsqu’il s’agit d’établir un texte d’après différents manuscrits, il est certain qu’il faut prendre pour base une-seule redaction. Mais il n’est pas de même d’une traduction. Il est conforme aux règles de la saine critique littéraire, de suivre tous les textes. Lane, I repeat, contented himself with the imperfect Bulak text while Payne and I preferred the Macnaghten Edition which, says the Reviewer, with a futile falsehood all his own, is “really only a revised form of the Cairo text”^[453] (ibid.). He concludes, making me his rival in ignorance, 433that I am unacquainted with the history of the MS. from which the four-volume Calcutta Edition was printed (ibid.). I should indeed be thankful to him if he could inform me of its ultimate fate: it has been traced by me to the Messieurs Allen and I have vainly consulted Mr. Johnston who carries on the business under the name of that now defunct house. The MS. has clean disappeared.

“On the other hand he (Captain Burton) sometimes omits passages which he considers (!) tautological and thereby deprives his version of the merit of completeness (e.g. vol. v. p. 327). It is needless to remark that this uncertainty about the text destroys the scholarly value of the translation” (p. 180). The scribe characteristically forgets to add that I have invariably noted these excised passages which are always the merest repetitions, damnable iterations of a twice-, and sometimes a thrice-told tale, and that I so act upon the great principle—in translating a work of imagination and “inducing” an Oriental tale, the writer’s first duty to his readers is making his pages readable.

“Captain Burton’s version is sometimes rather loose” (p. 180), says the critic who quotes five specimens out of five volumes and who might have quoted five hundred. This is another favourite “dodge” with the rogue-reviewer, who delights to cite words and phrases and texts detached from their contexts. A translator is often compelled, by way of avoiding recurrences which no English public could endure, to render a word, whose literal and satisfactory meaning he has already given, by a synonym or a homonym in no way so sufficient or so satisfactory. He charges me with rendering “Siyar, which means ‘doings,’ by ‘works and words’”; little knowing that the veteran Orientalist, M. Joseph Derenbourgh (p. 98, Johannes de Capua, Directorium, etc.,) renders “Akhlák-í wa Síratí” (sing. of Siyar) by caractère et conduite, the latter consisting of deeds and speech. He objects to “Kabir” (lit. = old) being turned into very old; yet this would be its true sense were the Ráwí or story-teller to lay stress and emphasis upon the word, as here I suppose him to have done. But what does the Edinburgh know of the Ráwí? Again I render “Mal’únah” (not the mangled Mal’ouna) lit. = accurst, as “damned whore,” which I am justified in doing when the version is of the category Call-a-spade-a-spade.

“Captain Burton’s Arabian Nights, however, has another defect besides this textual inaccuracy” (p. 180); and this leads to a whole page of abusive rhetoric anent my vocabulary: the Reviewer has collected some thirty specimens—he might have collected three hundred from the five volumes—and he concludes that the list places Captain Burton’s version “quite out of the category of English books” (p. 181) and “extremely annoying to any reader with a feeling for style.” Much he must know of modern literary taste which encourages the translator of an ancient work such as Mr. Gibb’s Aucassin and Nicholete (I quote 434but one in a dozen) to borrow the charm of antiquity by imitating the nervous and expressive language of the pre-Elizabethans and Shakespeareans. Let him compare any single page of Mr. Payne with Messieurs Torrens and Lane and he will find that the difference saute aux yeux. But a purist who objects so forcibly to archaism and archaicism should avoid such terms as “whilom Persian Secretary” (p. 170); as anthophobia, which he is compelled to explain by “dread of selecting only what is best” (p. 175); as anthophobist (p. 176); as “fatuous ejaculations” (p. 183), as a “raconteurs” (p. 186), and as “intermedium” (p. 194) terms which are certainly not understood by the general. And here we have a list of six in thirty-three pages:—evidently this Reviewer did not expect to be reviewed.

“Here is a specimen of his (Captain Burton’s) verse, in which, by the way, there is seen another example of the careless manner in which the proofs have been corrected” (p. 181). Generous and just to a work printed from abroad and when absence prevented the author’s revision: false as unfair to boot! And what does the critic himself but show two several misprints in his 33 pages; “Mr. Payne, vol. ix. p. 274” (p. 168, for vol. i. 260), and “Jamshah” (p. 172, for Jánsháh). These faults may not excuse my default: however, I can summon to my defence the Saturday Review, that past-master in the art and mystery of carping criticism, which, noticing my first two volumes (Jan. 2, 1886), declares them “laudably free from misprints.”

“Captain Burton’s delight in straining the language beyond its capabilities (?) finds a wide field when he comes to those passages in the original which are written in rhyming prose” (p. 181). “Captain Burton of course could not neglect such an opportunity for display of linguistic flexibility on the model of ‘Peter Parley picked a peck of pickled pepper’” (p. 182, where the Saj’a or prose rhyme is most ignorantly confounded with our peculiarly English alliteration). But this is wilfully to misstate the matter. Let me repeat my conviction (Terminal Essay, 163–164) that The Nights, in its present condition, was intended as a text or handbook for the Ráwí or professional story-teller, who would declaim the recitative in quasi-conversational tones, would intone the Saj’a and would chant the metrical portions to the twanging of the Rabábah or one-stringed viol. The Reviewer declares that the original has many such passages; but why does he not tell the reader that almost the whole Koran, and indeed all classical Arab prose, is composed in such “jingle”? “Doubtfully pleasing in the Arabic,” it may “sound the reverse of melodious in our own tongue” (p. 282); yet no one finds fault with it in the older English authors (Terminal Essay, p. 256), and all praised the free use of it in Eastwick’s “Gulistán.” Torrens, Lane and Payne deliberately rejected it, each for his own and several reason; Torrens because he never dreamt of the application; Lane, because his scanty 435knowledge of English stood in his way; and Payne because he aimed at a severely classical style, which could only lose grace, vigour and harmony by such exotic decoration. In these matters every writer has an undoubted right to carry out his own view, remembering the while that it is impossible to please all tastes. I imitated the Saj’a, because I held it to be an essential part of the work, and of my fifty reviewers none save the Edinburgh considered the reproduction of the original manner aught save a success. I care only to satisfy those whose judgment is satisfactory: “the abuse and contempt of ignorant writers hurts me very little” as Darwin says (iii. 88), and we all hold with Don Quixote that, es mejor ser loado de los pocos sabios, que burlado de los muchos necios.

“This amusement (of reproducing the Saj’a) maybe carried to any length (how?), and we do not see why Captain Burton neglects the metre of the poetry, or divides his translation into sentences by stops, or permits any break in the continuity of the narrative, since none such exists in the Arabic” (p. 182). My reply is that I neglect the original metres first and chiefly because I do not care to “caper in fetters,” as said Drummond of Hawthornden; and, secondly, because many of them are unfamiliar and consequently unpleasant to English ears. The exceptions are mostly two, the Rajaz (Anapæsts and Iambs, Terminal Essay, x. 294), and the Tawíl or long measure (ibid. pp. 282, 296), which Mr. Lyall (Translations of Ancient Arab. Poetry, p. xlix.) compares with “Abt Vogler,”

And there! ye have heard and seen: consider and bow the head.

This metre greatly outnumbers all others in The Nights; but its lilting measure by no means suits every theme and in English it is apt to wax monotonous.

“The following example of a literal rendering which Mr. Payne adduces (vol. ix. 381: comp. my vol. v. 66) in order to show the difficulty of turning the phraseology of the original into good English, should have served Captain Burton as a model, and we are surprised he has not adopted so charmingly cumbrous a style” (p. 102). I shall quote the whole passage in question and shall show that by the most unimportant changes, omissions and transpositions, without losing a word, the whole becomes excellent English, and falls far behind the Reviewer’s style in the contention for “cumbrousness”:—

“When morrowed the morning he bedabbled his feet with the water they twain had expressed from the herb and, going-down to the sea, went thereupon walking days and nights, he wondering the while at the horrors of the ocean and the marvels and rarities thereof. And he ceased not faring over the face of the waters till he arrived at an island as indeed it were Paradise. So Bulukiya went up thereto and fell to wondering thereanent and at the beauties thereof; and he found it a great island whose dust was saffron and its gravel were cornelian and precious stones: its edges were gelsomine and the growth was the goodliest of the trees and the brightest of 436the scented herbs and the sweetest of them. Its rivulets were a-flowing; its brushwood was of the Comorin aloe and the Sumatran lign-aloes; its reeds were sugar-canes and round about it bloomed rose and narcissus and amaranth and gilliflower and chamomile and lily and violet, all therein being of several kinds and different tints. The birds warbled upon those trees and the whole island was fair of attributes and spacious of sides and abundant of good things, comprising in fine all of beauty and loveliness,” etc. (Payne, vol. ix. p. 381).

The Reviewer cites in his list, but evidently has not read, the “Tales from the Arabic,” etc., printed as a sequel to The Nights, or he would have known that Mr. Payne, for the second part of his work, deliberately adopted a style literal as that above-quoted because it was the liveliest copy of the original.

We now come to the crucial matter of my version, the annotative concerning which this “decent gentleman,” as we suppose this critic would entitle himself (p. 185) finds a fair channel of discharge for vituperative rhetoric. But before entering upon this subject I must be allowed to repeat a twice-told tale and once more to give the raison d’être of my long labour. When a friend asked me point-blank why I was bringing out my translation so soon after another and a most scholarly version, my reply was as follows:—“Sundry students of Orientalism assure me that they are anxious to have the work in its crudest and most realistic form. I have received letters saying, Let us know (you who can) what the Arab of The Nights was: if good and high-minded let us see him: if witty and humorous let us hear him: if coarse and uncultivated, rude, childish and indecent, still let us have him to the very letter. We want for once the genuine man. We would have a mediæval Arab telling the tales and traditions with the lays and legends of his own land in his own way, and showing the world what he has remained and how he has survived to this day, while we Westerns have progressed in culture and refinement. Above all things give us the naïve and plain-spoken language of the original—such a contrast with the English of our times—and show us, by the side of these enfantillages, the accumulated wit and wisdom, life-knowledge and experience of an old-world race. We want also the technique of the Recueil, its division into nights, its monorhyme, in fact everything that gives it cachet and character.” Now I could satisfy the longing, which is legitimate enough, only by annotation, by a running commentary, as it were, enabling the student to read between the lines and to understand hints and innuendoes that would otherwise have passed by wholly unheeded. I determined that subscribers should find in my book what does not occur in any other, making it a repertory of Eastern knowledge in its esoteric phase, by no means intended for the many-headed but solely for the few who are not too wise to learn or so ignorant as to ignore their own ignorance. I regretted to display the gross and bestial vices of the original, in the rare places where obscenity becomes rampant, but not the less I held it my duty to translate the text word for 437word, instead of garbling it and mangling it by perversion and castration. My rendering (I promised) would be something novel, wholly different from all other versions, and it would leave very little for any future interpreter.^[454]

And I resolved that, in case of the spiteful philanthropy and the rabid pornophobic suggestion of certain ornaments of the Home-Press being acted upon, to appear in Court with my version of The Nights in one hand and bearing in the other the Bible (especially the Old Testament, a free translation from an ancient Oriental work) and Shakespeare, with Petronius Arbiter and Rabelais by way of support and reserve. The two former are printed by millions; they find their way into the hands of children, and they are the twin columns which support the scanty edifice of our universal home-reading. The Arbiter is sotadical as Abú Nowás and the Curé of Meudon is surpassing in what appears uncleanness to the eye of outsight not of insight. Yet both have been translated textually and literally by eminent Englishmen and gentlemen, and have been printed and published as an “extra series” by Mr. Bohn’s most respectable firm and sold by Messieurs Bell and Daldy. And if The Nights are to be bowdlerised for students, why not, I again ask, mutilate Plato and Juvenal, the Romances of the Middle Ages, Boccaccio and Petrarch and the Elizabethan dramatists one and all? What hypocrisy to blaterate about The Nights in presence of such triumphs of the Natural! How absurd to swallow such camels and to strain at my midge!

But I had another object while making the notes a Repertory of Eastern knowledge in its esoteric form (Foreword p. xix). Having failed to free the Anthropological Society from the fetters of mauvaise honte and the mock-modesty which compels travellers and ethnological students to keep silence concerning one side of human nature (and that side the most interesting to mankind), I proposed to supply the want in these pages. The England of our day would fain bring up both sexes and keep all ages in profound ignorance of sexual and intersexual relations; and the consequences 438of that imbecility are peculiarly cruel and afflicting. How often do we hear women in Society lamenting that they have absolutely no knowledge of their own physiology; and at what heavy price must this fruit of the knowledge-tree be bought by the young first entering life. Shall we ever understand that ignorance is not innocence? What an absurdum is a veteran officer who has spent a quarter-century in the East without learning that all Moslem women are circumcised, and without a notion of how female circumcision is effected; without an idea of the difference between the Jewish and the Moslem rite as regards males; without an inkling of the Armenian process whereby the cutting is concealed, and without the slightest theoretical knowledge concerning the mental and spiritual effect of the operation. Where then is the shame of teaching what it is shameful not to have learnt? But the ultra-delicacy, the squeamishness of an age which is by no means purer or more virtuous than its ruder predecessors, has ended in trenching upon the ridiculous. Let us see what the modern English woman and her Anglo-American sister have become under the working of a mock-modesty which too often acts cloak to real dévergondage; and how Respectability unmakes what Nature made. She has feet but no “toes”; ankles but no “calves”; knees but no “thighs”; a stomach but no “belly” nor “bowels”; a heart but no “bladder” nor “groin”; a liver and no “kidneys”; hips and no “haunches”; a bust and nor “backside” nor “buttocks”: in fact, she is a monstrum, a figure fit only to frighten the crows.

But the Edinburgh knows nothing of these things, and the “decent gentleman,” like the lady who doth protest overmuch, persistently fixes his eye upon a single side of the shield. “Probably no European has ever gathered such an appalling collection of degrading customs and statistics of vice as is contained in Captain Burton’s translation of the ‘Arabian Nights’” (p. 185). He finds in the case of Mr. Payne, like myself, “no adequate justification for flooding the world (!) with an ocean of filth” (ibid.) showing that he also can be (as said the past-master of catchwords, the primus verborum artifex) “an interested rhetorician inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity.” But audi alteram partem—my view of the question. I have no apology to make for the details offered to the students of Moslem usages and customs, who will find in them much to learn and more to suggest the necessity of learning. On no wise ashamed am I of lecturing upon these esoteric matters, the most important to humanity, at a time when their absence from the novel of modern society veils with a double gloom the night-side of human nature. Nay, I take pride to myself for so doing in the face of silly prejudice and miserable hypocrisy, and I venture to hold myself in the light of a public benefactor. In fact, I consider my labours as a legacy bequeathed to my countrymen at a most critical time when England the puissantest of Moslem powers is called upon, without adequate knowledge of the Moslem’s inner life, to administer Egypt as 439well as to rule India. And while Pharisee and Philister may be or may pretend to be “shocked” and “horrified” by my pages, the sound common sense of a public, which is slowly but surely emancipating itself from the prudish and prurient reticences and the immodest and immoral modesties of the early xixth century, will in good time do me, I am convinced, full and ample justice.

In p. 184 the Reviewer sneers at me for writing “Roum” in lieu of Rum or Rúm; but what would the latter have suggested to the home-reader save a reference to the Jamaican drink? He also corrects me (vol. v. 248) in the matter of the late Mr. Emanuel Deutsch (p. 184), who excised “our Saviour” from the article on the Talmud reprinted amongst his literary remains. The Reviewer, or inspirer of the Review, let me own, knew more of Mr. Deutsch than I, a simple acquaintance, could know; but perhaps he does not know all, and if he did he probably would not publish his knowledge. The truth is that Mr. Deutsch was, during his younger years, a liberal, nay, a latitudinarian in religion, differing little from the so-styled “Christian Unitarian.” But when failing health drove him to Egypt and his hour drew nigh he became (and all honour to him!) the scrupulous and even fanatical Hebrew of the Hebrews; he consorted mainly with the followers and divines of his own faith, and it is said that he ordered himself when dying to be taken out of bed and placed upon the bare floor. The “Saviour” of the article was perhaps written in his earlier phase of religious thought, and it was excised as the end drew in sight.

“Captain Burton’s experience in the East seems to have obliterated any (all?) sentiments of chivalry, for he is never weary of recording disparaging estimates of women, and apparently delights in discovering evidence of ‘feminine devilry’” (p. 184). This argumentum ad feminam is sharpish practice, much after the manner of the Christian “Fathers of the Church” who, themselves vehemently doubting the existence of souls non-masculine, falsely and foolishly ascribed the theory and its consequences to Mohammed and the Moslems. And here the Persian proverb holds good “Harf-i-kufr kufr níst”—to speak of blasphemy is not blasphemous. Curious readers will consult the article “Woman” in my Terminal Essay (x. 192), which alone refutes this silly scandal. I never pretended to understand woman, and, as Balzac says, no wonder man fails when He who created her was by no means successful. But in The Nights we meet principally Egyptian maids, matrons and widows, of whose “devilry” I cannot speak too highly, and in this matter even the pudibund Lane is as free-spoken as myself. Like the natives of warm, damp and malarious lowlands and river-valleys adjacent to rugged and healthy uplands, such as Mazanderán, Sind, Malabar and California, the passions and the sexual powers of the females greatly exceed those of their males, and hence a notable development of the crude form of polyandry popularly 440termed whoredom. Nor have the women of the Nile-valley improved under our rule. The last time I visited Cairo a Fellah wench, big, burly and boisterous, threatened one morning, in a fine new French avenue off the Ezbekiyah Gardens, to expose her person unless bought off with a piastre. And generally the condition of womenkind throughout the Nile-valley reminded me of that frantic outbreak of debauchery which characterised Afghanistan during its ill-judged occupation by Lord Auckland, and Sind after the conquest by Sir Charles Napier.

“Captain Burton actually depends upon the respectable and antiquated D’Herbelot for his information” (p. 184). This silly skit at the two great French Orientalists, D’Herbelot and Galland, is indeed worthy of a clique which, puff and struggle however much it will, can never do a tithe of the good work found in the Bibliothèque Orientale. The book was issued in an unfinished state; in many points it has been superseded, during its life of a century and a half, by modern studies, but it is still a mine of facts, and a revised edition would be a boon to students. Again, I have consulted Prof. Palmer’s work, and the publications of the Palæographical Society (p. 184); but I nowhere find proofs that the Naskhi character (vol. i. 128) so long preceded the Cufic which, amongst vulgar Moslems, is looked upon like black letter in Europe. But Semitic epigraphy is only now entering upon its second stage of study, the first being mere tentative ignorance: about 80 years ago the illustrious De Sacy proved, in a learned memoir, the non-existence of letters in Arabia before the days of Mohammed. But Palmer,^[455] Halevy, Robertson Smith, Doughty and Euting have changed all that, and Herr Eduard Glaser of Prague is now bringing back from Sana’á some 390 Sabæan epigraphs—a mass of new-old literature.

And now, having passed in review, and having been much scandalised by “the extravagant claims of the complete translations over the Standard Version”—a term which properly applies only to the Editio princeps, 3 vols. 8vo.—the Edinburgh delivers a parting and insolent sting. “The different versions, however, have each its proper destination—Galland for the nursery, Lane for the library, Payne for the study, and Burton for the sewers” (p. 184). I need hardly attempt to precise the ultimate and well-merited office of his article: the gall in that ink may enable it hygienically to excel for certain purposes the best of “curl-papers.” Then our critic passes to the history of the work, concerning which nothing need be said: it is bodily borrowed from Lane’s Preface (pp. ix.–xv.), and his Terminal Review (iii. 735–47) with a few unimportant and uninteresting details taken from Al-Makrízí, and probably from the studies of the late Rogers Bey (pp. 191–92). Here the cult of the Uncle and Master emerges most 441extravagantly. “It was Lane who first brought out the importance of the ‘Arabian Nights’ as constituting a picture of Moslem life and manners” (p. 192); thus wholly ignoring the claims of Galland, to whom and whom alone the honour is due. But almost every statement concerning the French Professor involves more or less of lapse. “It was in 1704 that Antoine Galland, sometime of the French embassy at Constantinople, but then professor at the Collège de France, presented the world with the contents of an Arab Manuscript which he had brought from Syria, and which bore the title of ‘The Thousand Nights and One Night’” (p. 167), thus ignoring the famous Il a fallu le faire venir de Syrie. At that time (1704) Galland was still at Caen in the employ of “L’intendant Fouquet”; and he brought with him no MS., as he himself expressly assures us in Preface to his first volume. Here are two telling mistakes in one page, and in the next (p. 168) we find “As a professed translation Galland’s ‘Mille et une Nuits’ (N.B. the Frenchman always wrote Mille et une Nuit,)^[456] is an audacious fraud.” It requires something more than “audacity” to offer such misstatement even in the pages of the Edinburgh, and can anything be falser than to declare “the whole of the last fourteen tales have nothing whatever to do with the ‘Nights’”?

These bévues, which give us the fairest measure for the Reviewer’s competence to review, are followed (p. 189) by a series of obsolete assertions. “The highest authority on this point (the date) is the late Mr. Lane, who states his unqualified conviction that the tales represent the social life of mediæval Egypt, and he selects a period approaching the close of the fifteenth century as the probable date of collection, though some of the tales are, he believes, rather later” (p. 189). Mr. Lane’s studies upon the subject were painfully perfunctory. He distinctly states (Preface, p. xii.) that “the work was commenced and completed by one man,” or a least that “one man completed what another commenced.” With a marvellous want of critical acumen he could not distinguish the vast difference of style and diction, treatment and sentiments which at once strikes every intelligent reader, and which proves incontestably that many hands took part in the Great Saga-book. He speaks of “Galland’s very imperfect MS.,” but he never took the trouble to inspect the three volumes in question which are still in the Bibliothèque Nationale. And when he opines that “it (the work) was most probably not commenced earlier than the fifteenth century of our era” (Pref. p. xiii.) M. Hermann Zotenberg, judging from the style of writing, would attribute the MS. to the beginning^[457] of the xivth century. The French Savant has printed a specimen page in his Histoire d’ ’Alâ al-Dîn (p. 6; see my 442Suppl. vol. iii., Foreword p. ix.); and now, at the request of sundry experts, he is preparing for publication other proofs which confirm his opinion. We must correct Lane’s fifteenth century to thirteenth century—a difference of only 200 years.^[458]

After this unhappy excursus the Reviewer proceeds to offer a most unintelligent estimate of the Great Recueil. “Enchantment” may be “a constant motive,” but it is wholly secondary and subservient: “the true and universal theme is love;” “‘all are but the ministers of love’ absolutely subordinate to the great theme” (p. 193). This is the usual half-truth and whole unfact. Love and war, or rather war and love, form the bases of all romantic fiction even as they are the motor power of the myriad forms and fashions of dancing. This may not appear from Lane’s mangled and mutilated version, which carefully omits all the tales of chivalry and conquest as the History of Gharíb and his brother ’Ajíb (vol. vi. 257) and that of Omar ibn Al-Nu’umán, “which is, as a whole, so very unreadable” (p. 172) though by no means more so than our European romances. But the reverse is the case with the original composition. Again, “These romantic lovers who will go through fire to meet each other, are not in themselves interesting characters: it may be questioned whether they have any character at all” (p. 195). “The story and not the delineation of character is the essence of the ‘Arabian Nights’” (p. 196). I can only marvel at the utter want of comprehension and appreciation with which this critic read what he wrote about: one hemisphere of his brain must have been otherwise occupied and his mental cecity makes him a phenomenon even amongst reviewers. He thus ignores all the lofty morale of the work, its marvellous pathos and humour, its tender sentiment and fine touches of portraiture, the personal individuality and the nice discrimination between the manifold heroes and heroines which combine to make it a book for all time.

The critic ends his article with doing what critics should carefully avoid to do. After shrewdly displaying his powers of invective and depreciation he has submitted to his readers a sample of his own workmanship. He persists in writing “Zobeyda,” “Khalifa,” “Aziza” (p. 194) and “Kahramana” (p. 199) without the terminal aspirate which, in Arabic if not in Turkish, is a sine quâ non (see my Suppl. vol. v. 419). He preserves the pretentious blunder “The Khalif” (p. 193), a word which does not exist in Arabic. He translates (p. 181), although I have taught him to do better, “Hádimu ’l-Lizzáti wa Mufarriku ’l-Jama’át,” by “Terminator of Delights and Separator of Companies” instead of Destroyer of delights and Severer of societies. And lastly he pads the 443end of his article (pp. 196–199) with five dreary extracts from Lane (i. 372–373) who can be dull even when translating the Immortal Barber.

The first quotation is so far changed that the peppering of commas (three to the initial line of the original) disappears to the reader’s gain, Lane’s textual date (App. 263) is also exchanged for that of the notes (A.H. 653); and the “æra of Alexander,” A.M. 7320, an absurdity which has its value in proving the worthlessness of such chronology, is clean omitted, because Lane used the worthless Bul. Edit. The latinisms due to Lane show here in force—“Looked for a considerable time” (Maliyyan = for a long while); “there is an announcement that presenteth itself to me” (a matter which hath come to my knowledge), and “thou hast dissipated^[459] my mind” (Azhakta rúhí = thou scatterest my wits, in the Calc. Edit. Saghgharta rúhí = thou belittlest my mind). But even Lane never wrote “I only required thee to shave my head”—the adverb thus qualifying, as the ignoramus loves to do, the wrong verb—for “I required thee only to shave my head.” In the second échantillon we have “a piece of gold” as equivalent of a quarter-dinar and “for God’s sake” which certainly does not preserve local colour. In No. 3 we find “‘May God,’ said I,” etc.; “There is no deity but God! Mohammed is God’s apostle!”. Here Allah ought invariably to be used, e.g. “Mohammed is the Apostle of Allah,” unless the English name of the Deity be absolutely required as in “There is no god but the God.” The Moslem’s “Wa’lláhi” must not be rendered “By God,” a verbal translation and an absolute non-equivalent; the terms Jehovah, Allah and God and the use of them involving manifold fine distinctions. If it be true that God made man, man in his turn made and mismade God who thus becomes a Son of Man and a mere racial type. I need not trouble my reader with further notices of these extracts whose sole use is to show the phenomenal dullness of Lane’s latinised style: I prefer even Torrens (p. 273).

“We have spoken severely with regard to the last” (my version) says the Reviewer (p. 185) and verily I thank him therefor. Laudari ab illaudato has never been my ambition. A writer so learned and so disinterested could hurt my feelings and mortify my pride only by approving me and praising me. Nor have I any desire to be exalted in the pages of the Edinburgh, so famous for its incartades of old. As Dryden says “he has done me all the honour that any man can receive from him, which is to be railed at by him.” I am content to share the vituperation of this veteran-incapable in company with the poetaster George Gordon who suffered for “this Lord’s station;” with that “burnisht fly in the pride of May,” Macaulay; and with the great trio, Darwin, Huxley and Hooker, who also have been the butts of his bitter 444and malignant abuse (April ’63 and April ’73). And lastly I have no stomach for sweet words from the present Editor of the Edinburgh, Mr. Henry Reeve, a cross and cross-grained old man whose surly temper is equalled only by his ignoble jealousy of another’s success. Let them bedevil the thin-skinned with their godless ribaldry; for myself peu m’importe—my shoulders are broad enough to bear all their envy, hatred and malice.

During the three years which have elapsed since I first began printing my book I have not had often to complain of mere gratuitous impertinence and a single exception deserves some notice. The following lines which I addressed to The Academy (August 11 ’88) will suffice to lay my case before my readers:—

THE BESTIAL ELEMENT IN MAN.

“One hesitates to dissent from so great an authority as Sir Richard Burton on all that relates to the bestial element in man.” So writes (p. xli., Introduction to the Fables of Pilpay), with uncalled for impertinence, Mr. Joseph Jacobs, who goes out of his way to be offensive, and who confesses to having derived all his knowledge of my views not from “the notorious Terminal Essay of the Nights,” but from the excellent article by Mr. Thomas Davidson on “Beast-fables,” in Chambers’s Cyclopædia, Edinburgh, 1888. This lofty standpoint of morality was probably occupied for a reason by a writer who dedicates “To my dear wife” a volume rich in anecdotes grivoises, and not poor in language the contrary of conventional. However, I suffer from this Maccabee in good society together with Prof. Max Müller (pp. xxvi. and xxxiii.), Mr. Clouston (pp. xxxiii. and xxxv.), Byron (p. xlvi.), Theodor Benfey (p. xlvii.), Mr. W. G. Rutherford (p. xlviii.), and Bishop Lightfoot (p. xlix.). All this eminent halfdozen is glanced at, with distinct and several sneers, in a little volume which, rendered useless by lack of notes and index, must advertise itself by the réclame of abuse.

As regards the reminiscence of Homo Darwiniensis by Homo Sapiens, doubtless it would ex hypothesi be common to mankind. Yet to me Africa is the old home of the Beast-fable, because Egypt was the inventor of the alphabet, the cradle of letters, the preacher of animism and metempsychosis, and, generally, the source of all human civilisation.

Richard F. Burton.

And now I must proceed a trifle further a-field and meet

THE CRITIC IN ANGLO-AMERICA.

The Boston Daily Advertiser (Jan. 26 ’86) contains the following choice morceau which went the round of the Transatlantic Press:—

G. W. S. writes from London to the New York Tribune in regard to Captain Burton’s notorious translation of the “Arabian Nights.” Of Captain Burton’s translation of “The Arabian Nights,” two volumes have now appeared. Before anything had been seen of them, I gave some account of this scheme, and of the material on which he had worked, with a statement of the reasons which made all existing versions unsatisfactory to the student, and incomplete. Captain Burton saw fit to reprint these 445desultory paragraphs as a kind of circular or advertisement on his forthcoming book. He did not think it necessary to ask leave to do this, nor did I know to what use my letter had been put till it was too late to object. In any ordinary case it would have been of no consequence, but Captain Burton’s version is of such a character that I wish to state the facts, and to say that when I wrote my letter I had never seen a line of his translation, and had no idea that what I said of his plans would be used for the purpose it has been, or for any purpose except to be printed in your columns. As it is, I am made to seem to give some sort of approval to a book which I think offensive, and not only offensive, but grossly and needlessly offensive. If anybody has been induced to subscribe for it by what I wrote I regret it, and both to him and to myself I think this explanation due.

Mr. Smalley is the London correspondent of the New York Tribune, which represents Jupiter Tonans in the Western World. He may be unable to write with independent tone—few Anglo-Americans can afford to confront the crass and compound ignorance of a “free and independent majority;”—but even he is not called upon solemnly to state an untruth. Before using Mr. Smalley’s article as a circular, my representative made a point of applying to him for permission, as he indeed was bound to do by the simplest rules of courtesy. Mr. Smalley replied at once, willingly granting the favour, as I can prove by the note still in my possession; and presently, frightened by the puny yelping of a few critical curs at home, he has the effrontery to deny the fact.

In my last volumes I have been materially aided by two Anglo-American friends MM. Thayer and Cotheal and I have often had cause to thank the Tribune and the Herald of New York for generously appreciating my labours. But no gratitude from me is due to the small fry of the Transatlantic Press which has welcomed me with spiteful little pars., mostly borrowed from unfriends in England and mainly touching upon style and dollars. In the Mail Express of New York (September 7, ’85) I read, “Captain Richard Burton, traveller and translator, intends to make all the money that there may be in his translation of the ‘Arabian Nights.’ * * * If he only fills his list, and collects his money he will be in easy circumstances for the remainder of his days.” In a subsequent issue (Oct. 24) readers are told that I have been requested not to publish the rest of the series under pain of legal prosecution. In the same paper (October 31, ’85: see also November 7, ’85) I find:—

The authorities have discovered where Capt. Burton’s “Thousand and One Nights” is being printed, despite the author’s efforts to keep the place a secret, but are undecided whether to suppress it or to permit the publication of the coming volumes. Burton’s own foot-notes are so voluminous that they exceed the letterpress of the text proper, and make up the bulk of the work.^[460] The foulness of the second volume of his translation places it at a much higher premium in the market than the first.

446The Tribune of Chicago (October 26, ’85) honours me by declaring “It has been resolved to request Captain Burton not to publish the rest of his translation of the ‘Thousand and One Nights,’ which is really foul and slipshod as to style.” The New York Times (October 17 and November 9, ’85) merely echoes the spite of its English confrère:—

Capt. Burton’s translation of the “Arabian Nights” bears the imprint “Benares.” Of course the work never saw Benares. America, France, Belgium and Germany have all been suggested as the place of printing, and now the Pall Mall Gazette affirms that the work was done “north of the Tweed.” There is, without doubt, on British soil, it says, “a press which year after year produces scores of obscene publications.”

And the same is the case with the St. Louis Post Dispatch (November 11, ’85); the Mail Express of New York (November 23, ’85); the Weekly Post of Boston (November 27, ’85) which again revives a false report and with the Boston Herald (December 16, ’85). The Chicago Daily News (January 30, ’86) contains a malicious sneer at the Kamashastra Society. The American Register (Paris, July 25, ’86) informs its clientèle, “If, as is generally supposed, Captain Burton’s book is printed abroad, the probability is that every copy will on arrival be confiscated as ‘indecent’ by the Custom-house.” And to curtail a long list of similar fadaises I will quote the Bookmart (of Pittsburg, Pa. U.S.A., October, ’86): “Sir Richard Burton’s ‘Nights’ are terribly in want of the fig-leaf, if anything less than a cabbage-leaf will do, before they can be fit (fitted?) for family reading. It is not possible (Is it not possible?) that by the time a household selection has been sifted out of the great work, everything which makes the originality and the value—such as it is—of Richard’s series of volumes will have disappeared, and nothing will remain but his diverting lunacies of style.” The Bookmart, I am informed, is edited by one Halkett Lord, an unnaturalised Englishman who finds it pays best to abuse everything and everyone English. And lastly the Springfield Republican (April 5, ’88) assures me that I have published “fully as much as the (his?) world wants of the ‘Nights’.”

In the case of “The Nights,” I am exposed to that peculiar Protestant form of hypocrisy, so different from the Tartuffean original of Catholicism, and still as mighty a motor force, throughout the length and breadth of the North-American continent, as within the narrow limits of England. There also as here it goes hand-in-hand with “Respectability” to blind judgment and good sense.

A great surgeon of our day said (or is said to have said) in addressing his students:—“Never forget, gentlemen, that you have to deal with an ignorant public.” The dictum may fairly be extended from medical knowledge to general information amongst the many-headed of England; and the Publisher, when rejecting a too recondite book, will repeat parrot-fashion, The English public is not a learned body. Equally valid is the 447statement in the case of the Anglo-American community which is still half-educated and very far from being erudite. The vast country has produced a few men of great and original genius, such as Emerson and Theodore Parker, Edgar Allan Poe and Walt. Whitman; but the sum total is as yet too small to leaven the mighty mass which learns its rudiments at school and college and which finishes its education with the newspaper and the lecture. When Emerson died it was said that the intellectual glory of a continent had departed; but Edgar A. Poe, the peculiar poetic glory of the States, the first Transatlantic who dared be himself and who disdained to borrow from Schiller and Byron, the outlander poet who, as Edgar Allan Poé, is now the prime favourite in France, appears to be still under ban because he separated like Byron from his spouse, and he led a manner of so-called “Bohemian” life. Indeed the wide diffusion of letters in the States, that favourite theme for boasting and bragging over the unenlightened and analphabetic Old World, has tended only to exaggerate the defective and disagreeable side of a national character lacking geniality and bristling with prickly individuality. This disposition of mind, whose favourable and laudable presentations are love of liberty and self-reliance, began with the beginnings of American history. The “Fathers,” Pilgrim and Puritan, who left their country for their country’s good and their own, fled from lay tyranny and clerkly oppression only to oppress and tyrannise over others in new and distant homes. Hardly had a century and a half elapsed before the sturdy colonists, who did not claim freedom but determined to keep it, formally revolted and fought their way to absolute independence—not, by-the-by, a feat whereof to be overproud when a whole country rose unanimously against a handful of troops. The movement, however, reacted powerfully upon the politics of Europe which stood agape for change, and undoubtedly precipitated the great French Revolution. As soon as the States became an empire, their democratic and republican institutions at once attracted hosts of emigrants from the Old World, thus peopling the land with a selection of species: the active and the adventurous, the malcontent and the malefactor readily expatriate themselves while the pauvre diable remains at home. The potato-famine in Ireland (1848) gave an overwhelming impetus to the exode of a race which had never known a racial baptism; and, lastly, the Germans flying from the conscription, the blood-tax of the Fatherland, carried with them over the ocean a transcendentalism which has engendered the wildest theories of socialism and communism. And the emigration process still continues. Whole regions, like the rugged Bocche di Cattaro in Dalmatia and pauper Iceland, are becoming depopulated: to me the wonder is that a poor man ever consents to live out of America or a rich man to live in it.

The result of such selection has been two-fold. The first appears in a splendid self-esteem, a complacency, a confidence which passes all 448bounds of the golden mean. “I am engrossed in calmly contemplating the grandeur of my native country and her miraculous growth,” writes to me an old literary friend. The feeling normally breaks out in the grossest laudation of everything American. The ultra-provincial twang which we still hear amongst the servant-classes of Lancashire and Yorkshire, and which is so notable in the nouveau riche, modified by traditional nasalisation and, as in Australia, by climatic influences, is American and, therefore, the purest of English utterances. The obsolete vocabulary—often obsolete in England without just reason—contrasting with a modern disfigured etymology which strips vocables of their genealogy and history, is American and ergò admirably progressive. The spurious facetiousness which deals mainly in mere jargon, words ill-spelt and worse pronounced; in bizarre contrast of ideas, and in ultra-Rabelaisian exaggeration, is American wit and humour—therefore unsurpassable. The Newspaper Press, that great reflector of nationalities, that prime expression of popular taste, too often of an écœurant vulgarity, personal beyond all bounds of common decency, sensational as a transpontine drama, is American; America is the greatest nation upon earth’s face; ergò the daily sheet is setting-up the standard of English speech and forming the language of the Future, good and too good for all the world. This low standard of the Press is the more regretable as its exalted duty is at present to solve the highest problems social and industrial, such as co-operation in labour, the development of fisheries, direct taxation versus indirect and a host of enigmas which the young world, uncumbered by the burdens of the Old World, alone shall unravel.

The second result is still more prejudicial and perilous. This is the glorification of mediocrity, of the average man and woman whose low standard must be a norm to statesman and publicist. Such cult of the common and the ignoble is the more prejudicial because it “wars against all distinction and against the sense of elevation to be gained by respecting and admiring superiority.” Its characteristic predominance in a race which, true to its Anglo-Saxon origin, bases and builds the strongest opinions upon the weakest foundations, hinders the higher Avatars of genius and interferes with the “chief duty of a nation which is to produce great men.” It accounts for the ever-incroaching reign of women in literature—meaning as a rule cheap work and second-rate. And the main lack is not so much the “thrill of awe,” which Goethe pronounces to be the best thing humanity possesses, but that discipline of respect, that sense of loyalty, not in its confined meaning of attachment to royalty, but in a far higher and nobler signification, the recognising and welcoming elevation and distinction whatever be the guise they may assume. “The soul lives by admiration and hope and love.”

And here we see the shady side of the educational process, the diffusion of elementary and superficial knowledge, of the veneer and polish 449which mask, until chipped-off, the raw and unpolished material lying hidden beneath them. A little learning is a dangerous thing because it knows all and consequently it stands in the way of learning more or much. Hence it is sorely impatient of novelty, of improvement, of originality. It is intolerant of contradiction, irritable, thin-skinned, and impatient of criticism, of a word spoken against it. It is chargeable with the Law of Copyright, which is not only legalised plunder of the foreigner, but is unfair, unjust and ungenerous to native talent for the exclusive benefit of the short-sighted many-headed. I am far from charging the United States with the abomination called “International Copyright;” the English publisher is as sturdy an enemy to “protection” as the Transatlantic statesman; but we expect better things from a new people which enjoys the heritage of European civilisation without the sufferings accompanying the winning of it. This mediocrity has the furious, unpardoning hatred of l’amour propre offensé. Even a word in favour of my old friends the Mormons is an unpardonable offence: the dwarfish and dwarfing demon “Respectability” has made their barbarous treatment a burning shame to a so-called “free” country: they are subjected to slights and wrongs only for practising polygamy, an institution never condemned by Christ or the early Christians. The calm and dispassionate judgments of Sir Lepel Griffith and the late Matthew Arnold, who ventured to state, in guarded language, that the boasted civilisation of the United States was not quite perfect, resulted in the former being called a snob and the latter a liar. English stolidity would only have smiled at the criticism even had it been couched in the language of persiflage. And when M. Max O’Rell traverses the statements of the two Englishmen and exaggerates American civilisation, we must bear in mind first that la vulgarité ne se traduit pas, and secondly, that the foes of our foemen are our friends. Woe be to the man who refuses to fall down and do worship before that brazen-faced idol (Eidolon Novi Mundi), Public Opinion in the States; unless, indeed, his name be Brown and he hail from Briggsville.

Some years ago I proposed to write a paper upon the reflex action of Anglo-America upon England, using as a base the last edition of Mrs. Trollope, who was compelled to confess that almost every peculiarity which she had abused in her first issue had become naturalised at home. Yankee cuteness has already displaced in a marvellous way old English rectitude and plain-dealing; gambling on the Stock Exchange, cornering, booms and trusts have invaded the trading-classes from merchant-princes to shopkeepers and threaten, at their actual rate of progress, not to leave us an honest man. But now the student’s attention will be called to the great and ever-growing influence of the New World upon the Old, and notably upon Europe. Some 50,000 Americans annually visit the continent, they are rapidly becoming the most important item of the floating population, and in a few years they will number 500,000. Meanwhile they 450are revolutionising all the old institutions; they are abolishing the classical cicerone whose occupation is gone amongst a herd which wants only to see streets and people: they greatly increase the cost of travelling; they pay dollars in lieu of francs, and they are satisfied with inferior treatment at superior prices:—hence the American hotel abroad is carefully shunned by Englishmen and natives. At home the “well-to-do-class” began by regarding their kinsmen d’outre mer with contemptuous dislike; then they looked upon them as a country squire would regard a junior branch which has emigrated and has thriven by emigration; and now they are welcomed in Society because they amuse and startle and stir up the duller depths. But however warm may be private friendship between Englishmen and Anglo-Americans there is no public sympathy nor is any to be expected from the present generation. “New England does not understand Old England and never will,” the reverse being equally the fact. “The Millennium must come” says Darwin (ii. 387) “before nations love each other:” I add that first Homo alalus seu Pithecanthropus must become Homo Sapiens and cast off his moral slough—egoism and ignorance. Mr. Cleveland, in order to efface the foul stigma of being the “English President,” found it necessary to adopt the strongest measures in the matter of “Fisheries;” and the “Irish vote” must quadrennially be bought at the grave risk of national complications. Despite the much-bewritten “brotherhood of the two great English-speaking races of the world,” the old leaven of cousinly ill-feeling, the jealousy which embitters the Pole against his Russian congener, is still rampant. Uncle Sam actively dislikes John Bull and dispraises England. An Anglo-American who has lived years amongst us and in private intimacy must, when he returns home, speak disparagingly of the old country unless he can afford the expensive luxury of telling unpopular truths and of affronting Demos, the hydraheaded.

But there are even now signs of better things in the Great Republic. Mr. James R. Lowell, an authority (if there be any) upon the subject of Democracy, after displaying its fine points and favourable aspects in his addresses to English audiences, has at length had the uncommon courage to discuss family affairs, and to teach Boston and New York what “weaknesses and perils there may be in the practical working of a system never before set in motion under such favourable circumstances, nor on so grand a scale.” He is emboldened to say firmly and aloud, despite the storming of false and hollow self-praise, that American civilisation, so strong on the material side, is sadly wanting on the other, and still lacks much to make it morally acceptable or satisfactory. And we have home truths concerning that Fool’s Paradise the glorification of the “average man.” Every citizen of the world must wish full success to the “Independents” (in politics) who sit at the feet of so wise and patriotic a teacher.

And here I feel myself bound to offer some explanation concerning

451

THE HOUSEHOLD EDITION OF THE ARABIAN NIGHTS,

lest any subscriber charge me, after contracting not to issue or to allow the issue of a cheaper form, with the sharp practice which may be styled

To keep the word of promise to our ear

And break it to our hope.

Hardly had my third volume of “The Nights” (proper) been issued to my patrons when a benevolent subscriber, whose name I am bound to conceal, apprised me that he had personal and precise information concerning a project to pirate the production. England and Anglo-America, be it observed, are the only self-styled civilised countries in the world where an author’s brain-work is not held to be his private property: his book is simply no book unless published and entered, after a cost of seven presentation copies, at “Stationers’ Hall”—its only ægis. France, Italy and Austria treat such volumes as private MSS.: here any dishonest house may reproduce them in replica without the slightest regard to the writer’s rightful rights. In my case this act of robbery was proposed by a German publisher domiciled in London, supported by a Frenchman equally industrious, who practises in Paris, and of whose sharp doings in money-matters not a few Englishmen have had ample reason bitterly to complain. This par nobile agreed to print in partnership an issue of handier form and easier price than my edition, and their plan if carried out would have seriously damaged the property of my subscribers: the series which cost them £10 10s. would have fallen probably to one-half value. The two pirates met by agreement in Paris, where the design was duly discussed and determined; but, fortunately for me, an unexpected obstacle barred the way. The London solicitor, professionally consulted by the dishonest firm, gave his opinion that such a work publicly issued would be a boon to the Society for the Suppression of Vice, and would not escape the unsavoury attentions of old Father Antic—the Law.

But, although these two men were deterred by probable consequences, a bolder spirit might make light of them. I had never intended to go beyond my original project; that is, of printing one thousand copies and no more; nor did I believe that any cunning of disguise could make “The Nights” presentable in conventionally decent society. It was, however, represented to me by many whose opinions I valued that thus and thus only the author and his subscribers could be protected from impudent fraud, and finally an unwilling consent was the result.

Mr. Justin Huntley McCarthy, a name well known in the annals of contemporary literature, undertook the task of converting the grand old 452barbarian into a family man to be received by the “best circles.” His proofs, after due expurgation, were passed on to my wife, who I may say has never read the original, and she struck out all that appeared to her over-free, under the promise that no mother should hesitate in allowing the book to her daughters. It would, perhaps, surprise certain “modest gentlemen” and blatantly virtuous reviewers that the amount of raw material excised from the text and the notes, chiefly addressed to anthropologists and Orientalists, amounts to only 215 pages out of a grand total numbering 3,156.

Between 1886 and 1888 appeared the revision in six pretty volumes, bearing emblematic colours, virgin-white adorned with the golden lilies of St. Joseph and the “chaste crescent of the young moon.” The price also was reduced to the lowest (£3 3s.) under the idea that the work would be welcome if not to families at any rate to libraries and reading-rooms, for whose benefit the older translations are still being reproduced. But the flattering tale of Hope again proved to be a snare and a delusion; I had once more dispensed with the services of Mr. Middleman, the publisher, and he naturally refused to aid and abet the dangerous innovation. The hint went abroad that the book belonged to the category which has borrowed a name from the ingenious Mr. Bowdler, and vainly half a century of reviewers spoke bravely in its praise. The public would have none of it: even innocent girlhood tossed aside the chaste volumes in utter contempt, and would not condescend to aught save the thing, the whole thing, and nothing but the thing, unexpurgated and uncastrated. The result was an unexpected and unpleasant study of modern taste in highly respectable England. And the fact remains that of an edition which began with a thousand copies only 457 were sold in the course of two years. Next time I shall see my way more clearly to suit the peculiar tastes and prepossessions of the reading world at home.

Before dismissing the subject of the Household Edition, I would offer a few words of explanation on the part of the Editress. While touching-up and trimming the somewhat hurried work of our friend, Mr. McCarthy, she was compelled to accompany me abroad, and to nurse me through a dangerous illness, which left but little time for the heavy claims of business. Unable to superintend, with the care required, the issue of her six volumes she entrusted the task to two agents in whose good will and experience she had and still has the fullest confidence; but the results were sundry letters of appeal and indignation from subscribers touching matters wholly unknown and unintelligible to her. If any mistakes have been made in matters of detail she begs to express her sincerest regret, and to assure those aggrieved that nothing was further from her intention than to show discourtesy where she felt cordial gratitude was due.

453Nothing now remains for me but the pleasant task of naming the many friends and assistants to whom this sixteenth and last volume has been inscribed. The late Reverend G. Percy Badger strongly objected to the literal translation of “The Nights” (The Academy, December 8, ’81); not the less, however, he assisted me in its philology with all readiness. Dr. F. Grenfell Baker lent me ready and valuable aid in the mechanical part of my hard labour. Mr. James F. Blumhardt, a practical Orientalist and teacher of the Prakrit dialects at Cambridge, englished for me the eight Gallandian tales (Foreword, Supp. vol. iii.) from the various Hindostan versions. To Mr. William H. Chandler, of Pembroke College, Oxford, I have expressed (Supp. vol. iii.) the obligations due to a kind and generous friend: his experiments with photography will serve to reconcile the churlishness and retrograde legislation of the great Oxford Library with the manners and customs of more civilised peoples. Mr. W. A. Clouston, whose degree is high in “Storiology,” supplied my second and third Supplemental volumes with valuable analogues and variants. Mr. Alexander J. Cotheal, Consul-General for Nicaragua at New York, sent a valuable MS. to me across the water, and was persuaded to translate, for my sixth Supplemental volume, a novel version of the “Tale of Attáf.” Mr. A. G. Ellis, of the British Museum, amongst other favours kindly revised the Foreword of my sixth volume. Mr. E. J. W. Gibb, an Orientalist of the modern and realistic school, who is not deterred by literal translation, permitted me to print his version of the Turkish Zayn al-Asnám (Supp. vol. iii.) and translations of three tales which he judged inexpedient to publish (Supp. vol. iv.). M. O. Houdas, Professeur d’Arabe Vulgaire à l’école des langues Orientales vivantes, Paris, copied for me the Arabic text of Zayn al-Asnám and the whole MS. used by MM. Chavis and Cazotte: he also obligingly assisted me in overcoming the various difficulties of a crabbed and imperfect text. My friend, Mr. W. F. Kirby appended to volume x. 471 of “The Nights” (proper) his most valuable contributions to the bibliology of the work with its various imitations and a table showing the contents of the principal editions and translations of “The Nights”: he also enriched my Supplemental volumes v. and vi. with his excellent annotations. Mr. Kingsbury (and Notcutt) photographed for my use 400 and odd pages of the Wortley-Montague MS., and proved how easy it was to produce a perfect fac simile of the whole. Mr. George Lewis gave me the soundest advice touching legal matters and Mr. Philip M. Justice was induced to take an active interest in the “Household Edition.” The eminent Orientalist, Dr. Pertsch, Librarian of the Grand-Ducal Collection, Saxe-Gotha, in lively contrast to my countrymen of the Bodleian, offered to send me the two volumes of a valuable MS. containing the most detailed texts of Judar and his brethren (vol. vi. 213) and of Zahir and his son Ali. Dr. Reinhold Rost, Librarian of the Indian Office, took much trouble about the W. M. MS. but all in vain. Mr. 454Alexander W. Thayer, of Trieste, who has studied for years the subject of the so-called Jewish “Exodus,” obliged me with a valuable note detailing his original views. His Excellency Yacoub Artin Pasha, Minister of Public Instruction, Cairo, a friend of many years standing, procured for me the decorations in the Cufic, Naskhí and other characters, which add to much of novelty and ornament to the outer semblance of my sixteen volumes. Mr. Hermann Zotenberg, Keeper of Oriental MS. at the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, lent me his own transcription of the “Alaeddin,” and generously supplied me with exact bibliographical notes and measurements of sundry tomes in that admirable collection.