that a few of these tales were apparently identical with some which are included in the "Arabian Nights."

The general character of the "Nights," however, is certainly not Persian. The people, whether the scene be laid in Persia or India or China, are Muslims, not Magians. Their manners and customs are not early Persian, but mainly medieval Egyptian and Syrian, and here and there purely Arab. If more Égyptian than Syrian or Persian, the life described is broadly Mohammadan, and represents the mediæval "Arab" or Saracen, whatever his nationality, exactly as he lived in the "golden prime" of the Khalifehs of Baghdad. The thirteen tales (most of which are in this first volume) which alone are found in all the manuscripts, and which may be taken as the nucleus of the book, are Mohammadan stories, and may be referred with much probability to the period of the early 'Abbasid Khalifate of the eighth to the tenth centuries of our era. But the very plan of the work lent itself in the simplest manner to the story-teller's art. A night may be long or short, and stories may be added or omitted without altering the number of nights; and as the telling of popular tales in the East was always in the hands of professional raconteurs, the beloved of coffee-house frequenters, and was not tied down to written manuscripts, it is easy to see how the "Nights" came to include very diverse elements within their elastic limits, and how no two manuscripts agree in the order or identity or number of the tales. In short, the "Arabian Nights," founded on the Persian "Tales," formed a vehicle for every sort of Oriental fable, romance, and anecdote, and gradually grew in the hands of a long series of reciters from the early nucleus of the tenth century to the present form, containing elements which may be as late as the sixteenth. The Review at the end

of vol. iv epitomizes the evidence we possess on the history of the book.

Lane's "Thousand and One Nights" has been the standard version now for three-quarters of a century. It was written and published between 1838 and 1840, after the translator had devoted sixteen years to the study of Arabic, five of which were spent in Egypt, chiefly in Cairo, where he lived almost exclusively among the Mohammadans, "speaking their language, conforming to their general habits with the most scrupulous exactitude," as he says himself, "and received into their society on terms of perfect equality," though without professing their faith; and where he acquired that mastery of the language which made him the first Arabic scholar of Europe. He had already published in 1836 his account of the "Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians," which displayed his intimate acquaintance with a characteristic form of Mohammadan life and character. Cairo was then the city in which Arabian manners were still preserved in their integrity—such life and such manners as are reflected in the "Arabian Nights." With these qualifications, the work of translation offered few difficulties, and its value and popularity are attested by numerous reprints. It has been adversely criticized, but never on the ground of scholarship. No one has ever ventured to challenge the accuracy of the translation. It was criticized for its style and for its omissions.

As to the first, the English is old-fashioned-not necessarily a fault-with a flavour of the Authorized Version-an unquestioned merit; it is too full of Latin as opposed to Saxon derivatives; it often lacks fire and force. But so does its original; and the very deliberation and smooth level of Lane's prose, with its elderly staidness, convey approximately the impression produced by the original, which itself is not modern colloquial Arabic, but a decidedly tame

imitation of the literary style of the Middle Ages. The slightly antiquated tone of the translation is more appropriate than the mixture of slang and archaism with which more recent translators have sought to reproduce the effect of the Arabic, though no one can deny the force and beauty of much of Mr. Payne's version.

With regard to the omissions, Lane's translation is intended for the general public of both sexes, and it was absolutely necessary to excise a number of words, phrases, and passages on the score of decency. Even a few complete tales had to be omitted, because they could not be purified without destruction. The "Arabian Nights" is not a prurient book, but in the original it often frankly describes things that we do not talk about, and it was inevitable that it must be carefully cleansed of such details if it were to be placed in every one's hands.*

Such omissions are obviously justified.

"I have thought it right to omit such tales, anecdotes, &c., as are comparatively uninteresting or on any account objectionable. In other words, I insert nothing that I deem greatly inferior in interest to the tales in the old version. Certain passages which, in the original work, are of an objectionable nature, I have slightly varied; but in doing this, I have been particularly careful to render them so as to be perfectly agreeable with Arab manners and customs. It was originally my intention to omit almost the whole of the poetry, thinking that the loss of measure and rhyme, and the impossibility of preserving the examples of paronomasia and some other figures with which they abound, would render translations of them generally intolerable to the reader: but afterwards I reflected that the character of the work would be thus greatly altered; and its value, as illustrating Arab manners and feelings, much diminished. I therefore determined to preserve a considerable number of select pieces, chosen either for their relative merits or because required by the context. The number of those comprised in the first volume of my translation is nearly half of the number contained in the corresponding portion of the original work; but in several cases I have omitted one or more verses of a piece as unsuitable, or for some other reason; and in a few instances I have given only the first verse or the first couplet." (Original Preface.)

The other omissions consist in leaving out a few tales which Lane regarded as tedious and uninteresting or as practically replicas of others already included. His judgment is, of course, open to argument, and some of the omitted tales might perhaps have been retained with advantage, and would possibly have been included if the bulk of the work had not exceeded the original publisher's limit.* Galland, the earliest translator of the "Nights," omitted a third more than Lane did, and I am not sure that the Frenchman's fine literary instinct was at fault, and that Lane did not err rather on the side of redundance than of reduction. Besides the tales themselves, there are numerous anecdotes interspersed among the longer stories; these are often historical and characteristic, but many are foolish or repeat each other, and some are decidedly nauseous. Lane wisely omitted nearly half of them. Altogether his translation contains about two-thirds of the complete text from which he worked, and by far the best part of the "Thousand and One Nights."

The text from which Lane's translation was made was published at Bulak (Cairo), in 2 vols., 1835 (1251 A.H.). "I have taken as my general standard of the

* Ten of the fourteen tales omitted occur after the third and last volume of the translation was one-third printed (1840). Of the fourteen, five were omitted on the ground that they were inherently objectionable (The Seven Wezirs, of which Lane gave only an abstract; Delileh, Mesrur and Zeyn-el-Mawassif, the Merchant of 'Oman, and Kamar-ez-Zeman and the Jeweller's Wife); five because they resembled others in the collection (The Queen of the Serpents, Ardeshir and Hayaten-Nufus, ‘Ali Nur-ed-din and the Frank King's Daughter, Abu-l-Hasan of Khorasan, and 'Abd-Allah ibn Fadil); four because they were tedious or uninteresting ('Omar ibn EnNoʻman, of which, however, Lane translated the included tales of Taj-el-Muluk and 'Aziz and 'Azizeh ; Taweddud, too learned and technical; Gharib and ‘Ajib; and King Jeli‘ad and his Wezir Shemmas).

original text the Cairo edition lately printed; it being greatly superior to the other printed editions, and probably to every manuscript copy. It appears to agree almost exactly with the celebrated MS. of Von Hammer, than which no copy more copious, I believe, exists. . . . The manuscript from which it was printed was carefully collated and corrected by a very learned man, the Sheykh 'Abd-Er-Rahman Es-Safti Esh-Sharkawi, who also superintended the progress of the work through the press. But in addition

to the value conferred upon it by the corrections of this sheykh, the copy from which the whole of my translation is made, except in a few instances, possesses an advantage which, I believe, renders it incomparably superior to any other now existing it has been again revised and corrected, and illustrated with numerous manuscript notes, by a person whom I think I may safely pronounce the first philologist of the first Arab college of the present day, the sheykh Mohammad 'Eyyad Et-Tantawi, or, more properly, Et-Tanditai. His notes are chiefly philological, and explanatory of words which do not belong to the classical language." (Original Preface.) In addition to the Cairo (Bulak) text, which formed the basis of his work, Lane consulted and occasionally adopted the readings of the Calcutta edition of the first two hundred Nights (by Sheykh Ahmad Shirwani elYemeni, 2 vols., 1814, 1818), and the Breslau edition (by Habicht, 8 vols., 1825-1838, to the 703rd Night; the continuation by Fleischer was not published until after Lane's version was finished).* He noted some of the more important variations presented by these

* My father, Edward Stanley Poole, for his (1859) edition of Lane's translation, also collated, at least in part, the complete Calcutta edition (by Sir W. H. Macnaghten, 1832-42), "for various readings, without finding any one of importance" (Editor's Preface, 1859).