The next point to consider is the date of The Nights in its present form; and here opinions range between the tenth and the sixteenth centuries. Professor Galland began by placing it arbitrarily in the middle of the thirteenth. De Sacy, who abstained from detailing reasons and who, forgetting the number of editors and scribes through whose hands it must have passed, argued only from the nature of the language and the peculiarities of style, proposed le milieu du neuvieme siecle de l'hegire ( = A.D. 1445-6) as its latest date. Mr. Hole, who knew The Nights only through Galland's version, had already advocated in his "Remarks" the close of the fifteenth century; and M. Caussin (de Perceval), upon the authority of a supposed note in Galland's MS. (vol. iii. fol. 20, verso), declares the compiler to have been living in A.D. 1548 and 1565. Mr. Lane says "Not begun earlier than the last fourth of the fifteenth century nor ended before the first fourth of the sixteenth," i.e. soon after Egypt was conquered by Selim, Sultan of the Osmanli Turks in A.D. 1517. Lastly the learned Dr. Weil says in his far too scanty Vorwort (p. ix. 2nd Edit.):—"Das wahrscheinlichste durfte also sein, das im 15. Jahrhundert ein Egyptier nach altern Vorbilde Erzählungen fur 1001 Nächte theils erdichtete, theils nach mündlichen Sagen, oder frühern schriftlichen Aufzeichnungen, bearbeitete, dass er aber entweder sein Werk nicht vollendete, oder dass ein Theil desselben verloren ging, so dass das Fehlende von Andern bis ins 16. Jahrhundert hinein durch neue Erzählungen ergänzt wurde." But, as justly observed by Mr. Payne, the first step when enquiring into the original date of The Nights is to determine the nucleus of the Repertory by a comparison of the four printed texts and the dozen MSS which have been collated by scholars. This process makes it evident that the tales common to all are the following thirteen:—

The Introduction (with a single incidental story "The Bull and the Ass").

The Trader and the Jinni (with three incidentals).

The Fisherman and the Jinni (with four).

The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad (with six).

The Tale of the Three Apples.

The Tale of Nur al-Din Ali and his son Badr al-Din Hasan.

The Hunchback's Tale (with eleven incidentals).

Nur al-Din and Anis al-Jalis.

Tale of Ghanim bin 'Ayyub (with two incidentals).

Ali bin Bakkár and Shams al-Nahár (with two).

Tale of Kamar al-Zamán.

The Ebony Horse; and

Julnár the Seaborn.

These forty-two tales, occupying one hundred and twenty Nights, form less than a fifth part of the whole collection which in the Mac. Edit. contains a total of two hundred and sixty-four. Hence Dr. Patrick Russell, the Natural Historian of Aleppo, whose valuable monograph amply deserves study even in this our day, believed that the original Nights did not outnumber two hundred, to which subsequent writers added till the total of a thousand and one was made up. Dr. Jonathan Scott, who quotes Russell, "held it highly probable that the tales of the original Arabian Nights did not run through more than two hundred and eighty Nights, if so many." So this suggestion I

Terminal Essay. 79 may subjoin, "habent sua fata libelli." Galland, who preserves in his Mille et une Nuits only about one fourth of The Nights, ends them in No. cclxiv with the seventh voyage of Sindbad: after that he intentionally omits the dialogue between the sisters and the reckoning of time, to proceed uninterruptedly with the tales. And so his imitator, Petis de la Croix, in his Mille et un Jours, reduces the thousand to two hundred and thirty-two. The internal chronological evidence offered by the Collection is useful only in enabling us to determine that the tales were not written after a certain epoch: the actual dates and, consequently, all deductions from them, are vitiated by the habits of the scribes. For instance we find the Tale of the Fisherman and the Jinni (vol. i. 41) placed in A.H. 169 = A.D. 785, which is hardly possible. The immortal Barber in the "Tailor's Tale" (vol. i.294) places his adventure with the unfortunate lover on Safar 10 A.H. 653 ( = March 25th, 1255) and 7,230 years of the era of Alexander. This is supported in his Tale of Himself (vol. i. PP. 317-348), where he dates his banishment from Baghdad during the reign of the penultimate Abbaside, Al-Mustansim bi 'llah (A.H. 623-640 = 1225-1242), and his return to Baghdad after the accession of another Caliph who can be no other but Al-Muntasim bi 'llah (A.H. 640-656 = A.D. 1242-1258). Again at the end of the tale (vol. i. 350) he is described as "an ancient man, past his nineties year" and "a very old man" in the days of Al-Mustansir (vol. i. 318); so that the Hunchback's adventure can hardly be placed earlier than A.D. 1265 or seven years after the storming of Baghdad by Hulaku Khan, successor of Janghiz Khan, a terrible catastrophe which resounded throughout the civilised world. Yet there is no allusion to this crucial epoch and the total silence suffices to invalidate the date. Could we assume it as true, by adding to A.D. 1265 half a century for the composition of the Hunchback's story and its incidentals, we should place the earliest date in A.D. 1315. As little can we learn from inferences which have been drawn from the body of the book: at most they point to its several editions or redactions. In the Tale of the "Ensorcelled Prince" (vol. i. 77) Mr. Lane (i. 135) conjectured that the four colours of the fishes were suggested by the sumptuary laws of the Mameluke Soldan, Mohammed ibn Kala'un, "subsequently to the commencement of the eighth century of the Flight, or fourteenth of our era."

But he forgets that the same distinction of dress was enforced by the Caliph Omar after the capture of Jerusalem in A.D. 636; that it was revived by Harun al-Rashid, a contemporary of Carolus Magnus and that it was noticed as a long standing grievance by the so called Mandeville in A.D. 1322. In the Tale of the Porter and the Ladies of Baghdad the "Sultáni oranges" (vol. i. 83) have been connected with Sultáníyah city in Persian Irák, which was founded about the middle of the thirteenth century: but "Sultáni" may simply mean "royal," a superior growth. The same story makes mention (vol. i. 94) of Kalandars or religious mendicants, a term popularly corrupted, even in writing, to Karandal. Here again "Kalandar" may be due only to the scribes as the Bresl. Edit. reads Sa'alúk = asker, beggar. The Khan al-Masrur in the Nazarene Broker's story {i.265) was a ruin during the early ninth century A.H. = A.D. 1420; but the Bab Zuwaylah (i. 269) dates from A.D. 1087. In the same tale occurs the Darb al-Munkari (or Munakkari) which is probably the Darb al-Munkadi of al-Makrizi's careful topography, the Khitat (ii. 40). Here we learn that in his time (about A.D. 1430) the name had become obsolete, and the highway was known as Darb al-Amír Baktamír al-Ustaddar from one of two high officials who both died in the fourteenth

Terminal Essay. 81 century (circ. A.D. 1350). And lastly we have the Khan al-Jáwali built about A.D.1320. In Badr al-Din Hasan(vol.i.237)"Sáhib" is given as a Wazirial title and it dates only from the end of the fourteenth century. In Sindbad the Seaman, there is an allusion (vol. vi. 67) to the great Hindu Kingdom, Vijayanagar of the Narasimha, the great power of the Deccan; but this may be due to editors or scribes as the despotism was founded only in the fourteenth century (A.D. 1320). The Ebony Horse (vol. v. 1) apparently dates before Chaucer; and "The Sleeper and The Waker" (Bresl. Edit. iv. 134-189) may precede Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shrew": no stress, however, can be laid upon such resemblances, the nouvelles being world-wide. But when we come to the last stories, especially to Kamar al-Zamán II. and the tale of Ma'aruf, we are apparently in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The first contains (Night cmlxxvii.) the word Láwandiyah = Levantine, the mention of a watch = Sa'ah in the next Night; and, further on (cmlxxvi.), the "Shaykh Al-Islam," an officer invented by Mohammed II. after the capture of Stambul in A.D. 1483. In Ma'aruf the 'Ádiliyah is named; the mosque founded outside the Bab al-Nasr by al-Malik al-'Adil, Tuman Bey in A.H. 906 = A.D. 1501. But, I repeat, all these names may be mere interpolations. On the other hand, a study of the vie intime in Al-Islam and of the manners and customs of the people proves that the body of the work, as it now stands, must have been written before A.D. 1400. The Arabs use wines, ciders and barley beer, not distilled spirits; they have no coffee or tobacco and, while familiar with small-pox (judrí), they ignore syphilis. The battles in The Nights are fought with bows and javelins, swords, spears (for infantry) and lances (for cavalry); and, whenever fire-arms are mentioned, we must suspect the scribe. Such is the case with the Madfa' or cannon by means of which Badr Al-Din Hasan breaches the bulwarks of the Lady of Beauty's virginity (i. 223). This consideration would determine the work to have been written before the fourteenth century. We ignore the invention-date and the inventor of gunpowder, as of all old discoveries which have affected mankind at large: all we know is that the popular ideas betray great ignorance and we are led to suspect that an explosive compound, having been discovered in the earliest ages of human society, was utilised by steps so gradual that history has neglected to trace the series. According to Demmin, bullets for stuffing with some incendiary composition, in fact bombs, were discovered by Dr. Keller in the Palafites or Crannogs of Switzerland; and the Hindu's Agni Astar ("fire-weapon"), Agni-ban ("fire-arrow") and Shatagni ("hundred-killer"), like the Roman Phalarica, and the Greek fire of Byzantium, suggest explosives. Indeed, Dr. Oppert accepts the statement of Flavius Philostratus that when Appolonius of Tyana, that grand semi mythical figure, was travelling in India, he learned the reason why Alexander of Macedon desisted from attacking the Oxydracæ who live between the Ganges and the Hyphasis (Satadru or Sutledge):—"These holy men, beloved by the gods, overthrow their enemies with tempests and thunderbolts shot from their walls." Passing over the Arab sieges of Constantinople (A.D. 668) and Meccah (A.D. 690) and the disputed passage in Firishtah touching the Tufang or musket during the reign of Mahmud the Ghaznevite (ob. A.D. 1030), we come to the days of Alphonso the Valiant, whose long and short guns, used at the Siege of Madrid in A.D. 1084, are preserved in the Armeria Real.

Terminal Essay. 83

Viardot has noted that the African Arabs first employed cannon in A.D. 1200, and that the Maghribis defended Algeciras near Gibraltar with great guns in A. D. 1247, and utilised them to besiege Seville in A.D. 1342. This last feat of arms introduced the cannon into barbarous Northern Europe, and it must have been known to civilised Asia for many a decade before that date. The mention of wine in The Nights, especially the Nabiz or fermented infusion of raisins well known to the pre-Mohammedan Badawis, perpetually recurs. As a rule, except only in the case of holy personages and mostly of the Caliph Al-Rashid, the "service of wine" appears immediately after the hands are washed; and women, as well as men, drink, like true Orientals, for the honest purpose of getting drunk—la recherche de l'ideal, as the process has been called. Yet distillation became well known in the fourteenth century. Amongst the Greeks and Romans it was confined to manufacturing aromatic waters, and Nicander the poet (B.C. 140) used for a still the term  like the Irish "pot" and its produce "poteen." The simple art of converting salt water into fresh, by boiling the former and passing the steam through a cooled pipe into a recipient, would not have escaped the students of the Philosopher's "stone;" and thus we find throughout Europe the Arabic modifications of Greek terms Alchemy, Alembic (Al-), Chemistry and Elixir; while "Alcohol" (Al-Kohl), originally meaning "extreme tenuity or impalpable state of pulverulent substances," clearly shows the origin of the article. Avicenna, who died in A.H. 428 = 1036, nearly two hundred years before we read of distillation in Europe, compared the human body with an alembic, the belly being the cucurbit and the head the capital:—he forgot one important difference but n'importe. Spirits of wine were first noticed in the xiii century, when the Arabs had overrun the Western Mediterranean, by Arnaldus de Villa Nova, who dubs the new invention a universal panacea; and his pupil, Raymond Lully (nat. Majorca A.D. 1236), declared this essence of wine to be a boon from the Deity. Now The Nights, even in the latest adjuncts, never allude to the "white coffee" of the "respectable" Moslem, the Raki (raisin-brandy) or Ma-hayát (aqua vitæ) of the modern Mohametan: the drinkers confine themselves to wine like our contemporary Dalmatians, one of the healthiest and the most vigorous of seafaring races in Europe. Syphilis also, which at the end of the xvth century began to infect Europe, is ignored by The Nights.

I do not say it actually began: diseases do not begin except with the dawn of humanity; and their history, as far as we know, is simple enough. They are at first sporadic and comparatively non lethal: at certain epochs which we can determine, and for reasons which as yet we cannot, they break out into epidemics raging with frightful violence: they then subside into the endemic state and lastly they return to the milder sporadic form. For instance, "English cholera" was known of old: in 1831 (Oct. 26) the Asiatic type took its place and now, after sundry violent epidemics, the disease is becoming endemic on the Northern seaboard of the Mediterranean, notably in Spain and Italy. So small pox (Aljudri, vol. i. 256) passed over from Central Africa to Arabia in the year of Mohammed's birth (A.D. 570) and thence overspread the civilised world, as an epidemic, an endemic and a sporadic successively. The "Greater Pox" has appeared in human bones of pre historic graves and Moses seems to mention gonorrhoea (Levit. xv. I?). Passing over allusions in Juvenal and Martial, we find Eusebius relating that Galerius died (A.D. 302) of ulcers on the genitals and other parts of his body; and, about a century afterwards, Bishop Palladius records that one Hero, after conversation with a prostitute, fell a victim to an abscess on the penis (phagedænic shanker?). In 1347 the famous Joanna of Naples founded (æt. 23), in her town of Avignon, a bordel whose in mates were to be medically inspected—a measure to which England (proh pudor!) still objects. In her Statuts du Lieu publique d'Avignon, No. iv. she expressly mentions the Mal vengut de paillardise. Such houses, says Ricord who studied the subject since 1832, were common in France after A.D. 1200; and sporadic venereals were known there. But in A.D. 1493-94 an epidemic broke out with alarming intensity at Barcelona, as we learn from the "Tractado llamado fructo de todos los Sanctos contra el mal serpentino, venido de la Isla espanola," of Rodrigo Ruiz Dias, the specialist. In Santo Domingo the disease was common under the names Hipas, Guaynaras and Taynastizas: hence the opinion in Europe that it arose from the mixture

Terminal Essay. 85 of European and "Indian" blood. Some attributed it to the Gypsies who migrated to Western Europe in the xvth century: others to the Moriscos expelled from Spain. But the pest got its popular name after the violent outbreak at Naples in A.D. 1493 4, when Charles VIII. of Anjou with a large army of mercenaries, Frenchmen, Spaniards, and Germans, attacked Ferdinand II. Thence it became known as the Mal de Naples and Morbus Gallicus—una gallica being still the popular term in neo Latin lands—and the "French disease" in England. As early as July 1496 Marion Santo (Journal i. 171) describes with details the "Mal Frances." The scientific "syphilis" dates from Fracastori's poem (A.D. 1521) in which Syphilus the Shepherd is struck like Job, for abusing the sun. After crippling a Pope (Sixtus IV.)and killing a King (Francis I.) it began to abate its violence, under the effects of mercury it is said; and became endemic, a stage still shown at Scherlievo near Fiume, where legend says it was implanted by the Napoleonic soldiery. The Aleppo and other "buttons" also belong apparently to the same grade. Elsewhere it settled as a sporadic and now it appears to be dying out while gonorrhoea is on the increase. The Nights, I have said, belongs to the days before coffee (A.D. 1550) and tobacco (A.D. 1650) had overspread the East. The former, which derives its name from the Kafa or Kaffa province, lying south of Abyssinia proper and peopled by the Sideman Galas, was introduced to Mocha of al-Kaman in A.D. 1429 30 by the Shaykh al-Shazili who lies buried there, and found a congenial ù name in the Arabic Kahwah = old wine. In The Nights (Mac. Edit.) it is mentioned twelve times; but never in the earlier tales: except in the case of Kamar al-Zamán II. it evidently does not belong to the epoch and we may fairly suspect the scribe. In the xvi century coffee began to take the place of wine in the nearer East; and it gradually ousted the classical drink from daily life and from folk-tales. It is the same with tobacco, which is mentioned only once by The Nights (cmxxxi.), in conjunction with meat, vegetables and fruit and where it is called, "Tabah."

Lane (iii. 615) holds it to be the work of a copyist, but in the same tale of Abu Kir and Abu Sir, sherbet and coffee appear to have become en vogue, in fact to have gained the ground they now hold. The result of Lord Macartney's Mission to China was a suggestion that smoking might have originated spontaneously in the Old World. This is undoubtedly true. The Bushmen and other wild tribes of Southern Africa threw their Dakhá (cannabis indica) on the fire and sat round it inhaling the intoxicating fumes. Smoking without tobacco was easy enough. The North American Indians of the Great Red Pipe Stone Quarry and those who lived above the line where nicotiana grew, used the kinni-kinik or bark of the red willow and some seven other succedanea. But tobacco proper, which soon superseded all materials except hemp and opium, was first adopted by the Spaniards of Santo Domingo in A.D. 1496 and reached England in 1565. Hence the word, which, amongst the so-called Red Men, denoted the pipe, the container, not the contained, spread over the Old World as a generic term with additions,

Terminal Essay. 87 like "Tutun," for special varieties. The change in English manners brought about by the cigar after dinner has already been noticed; and much of the modified sobriety of the present day may be attributed to the influence of the Holy Herb en cigarette. Such, we know from history was its effect amongst Moslems; and the normal wine parties of The Nights suggest that the pipe was unknown even when the latest tales were written..

C.

We know absolutely nothing of the author or authors who produced our marvellous Recueil. Galland justly observes (Epist. Dedic.), "probably this great work is not by a single hand; for how can we suppose that one man alone could own a fancy fertile enough to invent so many ingenious fictions?" Mr. Lane, and Mr. Lane alone, opined that the work was written in Egypt by one person or at most by two, one ending what the other had begun, and that he or they had re written the tales and completed the collection by new matter composed or arranged for the purpose. It is hard to see how the distinguished Arabist came to such a conclusion: at most it can be true only of the editors and scribes of MSS. evidently copied from each other, such as the Mac. and the Bul. texts. As the Reviewer (Forbes Falconer?) in the "Asiatic Journal" (vol. xxx., 1839) says, "Every step we have taken in the collation of these agreeable fictions has confirmed us in the belief that the work called the Arabian Nights is rather a vehicle for stories, partly fixed and partly arbitrary, than a collection fairly deserving, from its constant identity with itself, the name of a distinct work, and the reputation of having wholly emanated from the same inventive mind. To say nothing of the improbability of supposing that one individual, with every license to build upon the foundation of popular stories, a work which had once received a definite form from a single writer, would have been multiplied by the copyist with some regard at least to his arrangement of words as well as matter. But the various copies we have seen bear about as much mutual resemblance as if they had passed through the famous process recommended for disguising a plagiarism:

'Translate your English author into French and again into English'." Moreover, the style of the several Tales, which will be considered in a future page (Para.iii.), so far from being homogeneous is heterogeneous in the extreme. Different nationalities show themselves; West Africa, Egypt and Syria are all represented and, while some authors are intimately familiar with Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo, others are equally ignorant. All copies, written and printed, absolutely differ in the last tales and a measure of the divergence can be obtained by comparing the Bresl. Edit. with the Mac. text: indeed it is my conviction that the MSS. preserved in Europe would add sundry volumes full of tales to those hitherto translated; and here the Wortley Montagu copy can be taken as a test." We may, I believe, safely compare the history of The Nights with the so called Homeric poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, a collection of immortal ballads and old Epic formulae and verses traditionally handed down from rhapsode to rhapsode, incorporated in a slowly increasing body of poetry and finally welded together about the age of Pericles. To conclude. From the data above given I hold myself justified in drawing the following deductions:— 1. The framework of the book is purely Persian perfunctorily arabised; the archetype being the Hazár Afsánah. 2. The oldest tales, such as Sindbad (the Seven Wazirs) and King Jili'ád, may date from the reign of Al-Mansur, eighth century A.D. 3. The thirteen tales mentioned above (p. 78) as the nucleus of the Repertory, together with "Dalilah the Crafty," may be placed in our tenth century. 4. The latest tales, notably Kamar al-Zamán the Second and Ma'aruf the Cobbler, are as late as the sixteenth century. 5. The work assumed its present form in the thirteenth century. 6. The author is unknown for the best reason; there never was one: for information touching the editors and copyists we must await the fortunate discovery of some MSS.

Terminal Essay. 89

II. THE NIGHTS IN EUROPE.

The history of The Nights in Europe is one of slow and gradual development. The process was begun (1704-17) by Galland, a Frenchman, continued (1823) by Von Hammer an Austro-German, and finished by Mr. John Payne (1882-84) an Englishman. But we must not forget that it is wholly and solely to the genius of the Gaul that Europe owes "The Arabian Nights' Entertainments" over which Western childhood and youth have spent so many spelling hours. Antoine Galland was the first to discover the marvellous fund of material for the story teller buried in the Oriental mine; and he had in a high degree that art of telling a tale which is far more captivating than culture or scholarship. Hence his delightful version (or perversion) became one of the world's classics and at once made Sheherazade and Dinarzarde, Haroun Alraschid, the Calendars and a host of other personages as familiar to the home reader as Prospero, Robinson Crusoe, Lemuel Gulliver and Dr. Primrose. Without the name and fame won for the work by the brilliant paraphrase of the learned and single minded Frenchman, Lane's curious hash and latinized English, at once turgid and emasculated, would have found few readers. Mr. Payne's admirable version appeals to the Orientalist and the "stylist," not to the many headed; and mine to the anthropologist and student of Eastern manners and customs. Galland did it and alone he did it: his fine literary flaire, his pleasing style, his polished taste and perfect tact at once made his work take high rank in the republic of letters nor will the immortal fragment ever be superseded in the infallible judgment of childhood. As the Encyclopcedia Britannica has been pleased to ignore this excellent man and admirable Orientalist, numismatologist and litterateur, the reader may not be unwilling to see a short sketch of his biography.

Antoine Galland was born in A.D. 1646 of peasant parents "poor and honest" at Rollot, a little bourg in Picardy some two leagues from Montdidier. He was a seventh child and his mother, left a widow in early life and compelled to earn her livelihood, saw scant chance of educating him when the kindly assistance of a Canon of the Cathedral and President of the College de Noyon relieved her difficulties. In this establishment Galland studied Greek and Hebrew for ten years, after which the "strait thing at home" apprenticed him to a trade. But he was made for letters; he hated manual labour and he presently removed en cachette to Paris, where he knew only an ancient kinswoman. She introduced him to a priestly relative of the Canon of Noyon, who in turn recommended him to the "Sous-principal" of the College Du Plessis. Here he made such notable progress in Oriental studies, that M. Petitpied, a Doctor of the Sorbonne, struck by his abilities, enabled him to study at the College Royal and eventually to catalogue the Eastern MSS. in the great ecclesiastical Society. Thence he passed to the College Mazarin, where a Professor, M. Godouin, was making an experiment which might be revived to advantage in our present schools. He collected a class of boys, aged about four, and proposed to teach them Latin speedily and easily by making them converse in the classical language as well as read and write it. Galland, his assistant, had not time to register success or failure before he was appointed attaché secretary to M. de Nointel named in 1660 Ambassadeur de France for Constantinople. His special province was to study the dogmas and doctrines and to obtain official attestations concerning the articles of the Orthodox (or Greek) Christianity which had then been a subject of lively discussion amongst certain Catholics, especially Arnauld (Antoine) and Claude the Minister, and which even in our day occasionally crops up amongst "Protestants." Galland, by frequenting the cafes and listening to the tale teller, soon mastered Romaic and grappled with the religious question,

Terminal Essay. 91 under the tuition of a deposed Patriarch and of sundry Matrans or Metropolitans, whom the persecutions of the Pashas had driven for refuge to the Palais de France. M. de Nointel, after settling certain knotty points in the Capitulations, visited the harbour-towns of the Levant and the "Holy Places," including Jerusalem, where Galland copied epigraphs, sketched monuments and collected antiques, such as the marbles in the Baudelot Gallery of which Pere Dom Bernard de Montfaucon presently published specimens in his "Palæographia Græca," etc. (Parisiis, 1708). In Syria Galland was unable to buy a copy of The Nights: as he expressly states in his Epistle Dedicatory, il a fallu le faire venir de Syrie. But he prepared himself for translating it by studying the manners and customs, the religion and superstition of the people; and in 1675, leaving his chief' who was ordered back to Stambul, he returned to France. In Paris his numismatic fame recommended him to MM. Vaillant, Carcary and Giraud who strongly urged a second visit to the Levant, for the purpose of collecting, and he set out without delay. In 1691 he made a third journey, travelling at the expense of the Compagnie des Indes-Orientales, with the main object of making purchases for the Library and Museum of Colbert the magnificent. The commission ended eighteen months afterwards with the changes of the Company, when Colbert and the Marquis de Louvois caused him to be created "Antiquary to the King," Louis le Grand, and charged him with collecting coins and medals for the royal cabinet. As he was about to leave Smyrna, he had a narrow escape from the earthquake and subsequent fire which destroyed some fifteen thousand of the inhabitants: he was buried in the ruins; but, his kitchen being cold as becomes a philosopher's, he was dug out unburnt. Galland again returned to Paris where his familiarity with Arabic and Hebrew, Persian and Turkish recommended him to MM. Thevenot and Bignon: this first President of the Grand Council acknowledged his services by a pension. He also became a favourite with D'Herbelot whose Bibliotheque Orientale, left unfinished at his death, he had the honour of completing and prefacing. President Bignon died within the year, which made Galland attach himself in 1697 to M. Foucault,

Councillor of State and Intendant (governor) of Caen in Lower Normandy, then famous for its academy: in his new patron's fine library and numismatic collection he found materials for a long succession of works, including a translation of the Koran. They recommended him strongly to the literary world and in 1701 he was made a member of the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres. At Caen Galland issued in 1704, the first part of his Mille et une Nuits, Contes Arabes traduits en Francois which at once became famous as "The Arabian Nights' Entertainments." Mutilated, fragmentary and paraphrastic though the tales were, the glamour of imagination, the marvel of the miracles and the gorgeousness and magnificence of the scenery at once secured an exceptional success; it was a revelation in romance, and the public recognised that it stood in presence of a monumental literary work. France was a fire with delight at a something so new, so unconventional, so entirely without purpose, religious, moral or philosophical: the Oriental wanderer in his stately robes was a startling surprise to the easy going and utterly corrupt Europe of the ancien regime with its indecently tight garments and perfectly loose morals. "Ils produisirent," said Charles Nodier, a genius in his way, "dès le moment de leur publication, cet effet qui assure aux productions de l'esprit une vogue populaire, quoiqu'ils appartinssent à une littérature peu connue en France; et que ce genre de composition admit ou plûtot exigeât des détails de moeurs, de caractere, de costume et de localites absolument étrangers à toutes les idees etablies dans nos contes et nos romans. On fut étonnée du charme que resultait du leur lecture. C'est que la vérité des sentimens, la nouveauté des tableaux, une imagination féconde en prodiges, un coloris plein de chaleur, l'attrait d'une sensibilité sans pretention, et le sel d'un comique sans caricature, c'est que l'esprit et le naturel enfin plaisent partout, et plaisent à tout le monde." The Contes Arabes at once made Galland's name and a popular tale is told of them and him known to all reviewers who, however mostly mangle it.

Terminal Essay. 93

In the Biographie Universelle of Michaud we find:—Dans les deux premiers volumes de ces contes l'exorde était toujours, "Ma chère soeur, si vous ne dormez pas, faites nous un de ces contes que vous savez." Quelques jeunes gens, ennuyés de cette plate uniformité, allèrent une nuit qu'il faisait trés grand froid, frapper à la porte de l'auteur, qui courut en chemise a sa fenêtre. Apres l'avoir fait morfondre quelque temps par diverses questions insignificantes, ils terminèrent en lui disant "Ah, Monsieur Galland, si vous ne dormez pas, faites nous un de ces beaux contes que vous savez si bien." Galland profita de la leçon, et supprima dans les volumes suivants le préambule qui lui avait attiré la plaisanterie. This legend has the merit of explaining why the Professor so soon gave up the Arab framework which he had deliberately adopted. The Nights was at once translated from the French though when, where and by whom no authority seems to know. In Lowndes' "Bibliographer's Manual" the English Editio Princeps is thus noticed, "Arabian Nights' Entertainments translated from the French, London, 1724, 12mo, 6 vols." and a footnote states that this translation, very inaccurate and vulgar in its diction, was often reprinted. In 1712 Addison introduced into the Spectator (No. 535, Nov. 13) the Story of Alnaschar ( = Al-Nashshár, the Sawyer) and says that his remarks on Hope "may serve as a moral to an Arabian tale which I find translated into French by Monsieur Galland." His version appears, from the tone and style, to have been made by himself, and yet in that year a second English edition had appeared. The nearest approach to the Edit. Princeps in the British Museum is a set of six volumes bound in three and corresponding with Galland's first half dozen. Tomes i. and ii.

are from the fourth edition of 1713, Nos. iii. and iv. are from the second of 1713 and v. and vi. are from the third of 1715. It is conjectured that the two first volumes were reprinted several times apart from their subsequents, as was the fashion of the day; but all is mystery. We (my friends and I) have turned over scores of books in the British Museum, the University Library and the Advocates' Libraries of Edinburgh and Glasgow: I have been permitted to put the question in "Notes and Queries" and in the "Antiquary"; but all our researches hitherto have been in vain. The popularity of The Nights in England must have rivalled their vogue in France, judging from the fact that in 1713, or nine years after Galland's Edit. Prin. appeared, they had already reached a fourth issue. Even the ignoble national jealousy which prompted Sir William Jones grossly to abuse that valiant scholar, Auquetil du Perron, could not mar their popularity. But as there are men who cannot read Pickwick, so they were not wanting who spoke of "Dreams of the distempered fancy of the East." "When the work was first published in England," says Henry Webber, "it seems to have made a considerable impression upon the public." Pope in 1720 sent two volumes (French? or English?) to Bishop Atterbury, without making any remark on the work; but, from his very silence, it may be presumed that he was not displeased with the perusal. The bishop, who does not appear to have joined a relish for the flights of imagination to his other estimable qualities, expressed his dislike of these tales pretty strongly and stated it to be his opinion, formed on the frequent descriptions of female dress, that they were the work of some Frenchman (Petis de la Croix, a mistake afterwards corrected by Warburton). The Arabian Nights, however, quickly made their way to public favour. "We have been informed of a singular instance of the effect they produced

Terminal Essay. 95 soon after their first appearance. Sir James Stewart, Lord Advocate for Scotland, having one Saturday evening found his daughters employed in reading these volumes, seized them with a rebuke for spending the evening before the 'Sawbbath' in such worldly amusement; but the grave advocate himself became a prey to the fascination of the tales, being found on the morning of the Sabbath itself employed in their perusal, from which he had not risen the whole night." As late as 1780 Dr. Beattie professed himself uncertain whether they were translated or fabricated by M. Galland; and, while Dr. Pusey wrote of them "Noctes Mille et Una dictæ, quæ in omnium firmè populorum cultiorum linguas conversGe, in deliciis omnium habentur, manibusque omnium terentur," the amiable Carlyle, in the gospel according to Saint Froude, characteristically termed them "downright lies" and forbade the house to such "unwholesome literature. What a sketch of character in two words! The only fault found in France with the Contes Arabes was that their style is peu correcte; in fact they want classicism. Yet all Gallic imitators, Trébutien included, have carefully copied their leader and Charles Nodier remarks:—"Il me semble que l'on n'a pas rendu assez de justice au style de Galland. Abondant sans être prolixe, naturel et familier sans être lâche ni trivial, il ne manque jamais de cette elegance qui résulte de la facilité, et qui presente je ne sais quel mélange de la naiveté de Perrault et de la bonhomie de La Fontaine."

Our Professor, with a name now thoroughly established, returned in 1706 to Paris, where he was an assiduous and efficient member of the Societe Numismatique and corresponded largely with foreign Orientalists. Three years afterwards he was made Professor of Arabic at the College de France, succeeding Pierre Dippy; and, during the next half decade, he devoted himself to publishing his valuable studies. Then the end came. In his last illness, an attack of asthma complicated with pectoral mischief, he sent to Noyon for his nephew Julien Galland to assist him in ordering his MSS. and in making his will after the simplest military fashion: he bequeathed his writings to the Bibliothèque du Roi, his Numismatic Dictionary to the Academy and his Alcoran to the Abbe Bignon. He died, aged sixty nine on February 17, 1715, leaving his second part of The Nights unpublished. Professor Galland was a French litterateur of the good old school which is rapidly becoming extinct. Homme vrai dans les moindres choses (as his Eloge stated); simple in life and manners and single-hearted in his devotion to letters, he was almost childish in worldly matters, while notable for penetration and acumen in his studies. He would have been as happy, one of his biographers remarks, in teaching children the elements of education as he was in acquiring his immense erudition. Briefly, truth and honesty, exactitude and indefatigable industry characterised his most honourable career. Galland informs us (Epist. Ded.) that his MS. consisted of four volumes, only three of which are extant, bringing the work down to Night cclxxxii., or about the beginning of "Camaralzaman." The missing portion, if it contained like the other volumes 140 pages, would end that tale together with the Stories of Ghanim and the Enchanted (Ebony) Horse; and such is the disposition in the Bresl. Edit. which mostly favours in its ordinance the text used by the first translator. But this would hardly have filled more than two thirds of his volumes; for the other third he interpolated, or is supposed to have interpolated, the ten following tales.

Histoire du prince Zeyn Al-asnam et du Roi des Génies.

Histoire de Codadad et de ses frères.

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Histoire de la Lampe merveilleuse (Aladdin).

Histoire de l'aveugle Baba Abdalla.

Histoire de Sidi Nouman.

Histoire de Cogia Hassan Alhabbal.

Histoire d'Ali Baba, et de Quarante Voleurs exterminés par une Esclave.

Histoire d'Ali Cogia, marchand de Bagdad.

Histoire du prince Ahmed et de la fée Peri Banou.

Histoire de deux Soeurs jalouses de leur Cadette.

Concerning these interpolations which contain two of the best and most widely known stories in the work, Aladdin and the Forty Thieves, conjectures have been manifold but they mostly: run upon three lines. De Sacy held that they were found by Galland in the public libraries of Paris. Mr. Chenery, whose acquaintance with Arabic grammar was ample, suggested that the Professor had borrowed them from the recitations of the Rawis, rhapsodists or professional story tellers in the bazars of Smyrna and other ports of the Levant. The late Mr. Henry Charles Coote (in the "Folk Lore Record," vol. iii. Part ii. p. 178 et seq.), "On the source of some of M. Galland's Tales," quotes from popular Italian, Sicilian and Romaic stories incidents identical with those in Prince Ahmad, Aladdin, Ali Baba and the Envious Sisters, suggesting that the Frenchman had heard these paramythia in Levantine coffee houses and had inserted them into his unequalled corpus fabularum. Mr. Payne (ix. 268) conjectures the probability "of their having been composed at a comparatively recent period by an inhabitant of Baghdad' in imitation of the legends of Haroun er Rashid and other well known tales of the original work;" and adds, "It is possible that an exhaustive examination of the various MS. copies of the Thousand and One Nights known to exist in the public libraries of Europe might yet cast some light upon the question of the origin of the interpolated Tales."

I quite agree with him, taking "The Sleeper and the Waker" and "Zeyn Al-asnam" as cases in point; but I should expect, for reasons before given, to find the stories in a Persic rather than an Arabic MS. And I feel convinced that all will be recovered: Galland was not the man to commit a literary forgery. As regards Aladdin, the most popular tale of the whole work, I am convinced that it is genuine, although my unfortunate friend, the late Professor Palmer, doubted its being an Eastern story. It is laid down upon all the lines of Oriental fiction. The mise-en scène is China, "where they drink a certain warm liquor" (tea); the hero's father is a poor tailor; and, as in "Judar and his Brethren," the Maghribi Magician presently makes his appearance, introducing the Wonderful Lamp and the Magical Ring. Even the Sorcerer's cry, "New lamps for old lamps!"—a prime point—is paralleled in the Tale of the Fisherman's Son, where the Jew asks in exchange only old rings and the Princess, recollecting that her husband kept a shabby, well-worn ring in his writing stand, and he being asleep, took it out and sent it to the man. In either tale the palace is transported to a distance and both end with the death of the wicked magician and the hero and heroine living happily together ever after. All Arabists have remarked the sins of omission and commission, of abridgment, amplification and substitution, and the audacious distortion of fact and phrase in which Galland freely indulged, whilst his knowledge of Eastern languages proves that he knew better. But literary license was the order of his day and at that time French, always the most bégueule of European languages, was bound by a rigorisme of the narrowest and the straightest of lines from which the least écart condemned a man as a barbarian and a tudesque. If we consider Galland fairly we shall find that he errs mostly for a purpose, that of popularising his work; and his success indeed justified his means. He has been derided (by scholars) for "Hé Monsieur!" And "Ah Madame!"; but he could not write "O mon sieur" and "O ma dame;" although we can borrow from biblical and Shakespearean English, "O my lord!" And "O my lady!" "Bon Dieu! Ma soeur" (which our translators English by "O heavens," Night xx.) is good French for Wa'lláhi

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By God; and "cinquante cavaliers bien faits" ("fifty handsome gentlemen on horseback") is a more familiar picture - than fifty knights. "L'officieuse Dinarzade" (Night lxi.), and "Cette plaisante querelle des deux freres" (Night lxxii.) become ridiculous only in translation—"the officious Dinarzade" and "this pleasant quarrel;" while "ce qu'il y de remarquable" (Night lxxiii.) would relieve the Gallic mind from the mortification of "Destiny decreed." "Plusieurs sortes de fruits et de bouteilles de vin" (Night ccxxxi. etc.) Europeanises flasks,and flaggons; and the violent convulsions in which the girl dies (Night cliv., her head having been cut off by her sister) is mere Gallic squeamishness: France laughs at "le shoking" in England but she has only to look at home especially during the reign of Galland's contemporary—Roi Soleil. The terrible "Old man" (Shaykh) "of the Sea" (-board) is badly described by "l'incommode vieillard" ("the ill natured old fellow"): "Brave Maimune" and "Agréable Maimune" are hardly what a Jinni would say to a Jinniyah (ccxiii.); but they are good Gallic. The same may be noted of Plier les voiles pour marque qu'il se rendait" (Night ccxxxv.), a European practice; and of the false note struck in two passages. "Je m'estimais heureuse d'avoir fait une si belle conquête" (Night lxvii.) gives a Parisian turn; and, "Je ne puis voir sans horreur cet abominable barbier que voilà: quoiqu'il soit né dans un pays où tout le monde est blanc, il ne laisse pas à resembler a un Êthiopien; mais il a l'âme encore plus noire et horrible que le visage" (Night clvii.), is a mere affectation of Orientalism. Lastly, "Une vieille dame de leur connaissance" (Night clviii.) puts French polish upon the matter of fact Arab's "an old woman."

The list of absolute mistakes, not including violent liberties, can hardly be held excessive. Professor Weil and Mr. Payne (ix.271) justly charge Galland with making the Trader (Night i.) throw away the shells (écorces) of the date which has only a pellicle, as Galland certainly knew; but dates were not seen every day in France, while almonds and walnuts were of the quatre mendiants. He preserves the ecorces, which later issues have changed to noyaux, probably in allusion to the jerking practice called Inwá. Again in the "First Shaykh's Story" (vol. i. 27) the "maillet" is mentioned as the means of slaughtering cattle, because familiar to European readers: at the end of the tale it becomes "le couteaufuneste." InBadral Din a"tarte à la crème," so well known to the West, displaces, naturally enough, the outlandish "mess of pomegranate-seeds." Though the text especially tells us the hero removed his bag-trousers (not only "son habit") and placed them under the pillow, a crucial fact in the history, our Professor sends him to bed fully dressed, apparently for the purpose of informing his readers in a foot-note that Easterns "se couchent en calecon" (Night lxxx.). It was mere ignorance to confound the arbalete or crossbow with the stone-bow (Night xxxviii.), but this has universally been done, even by Lane who ought to have known better; and it was an unpardonable carelessness or something worse to turn Nar (fire) and Dun (in lieu of) into "le faux dieu Nardoun" (Night lxv.): as this has been untouched by De Sacy, I cannot but conclude that he never read the text with the translation. Nearly as bad also to make the Jewish physician remark, when the youth gave him the left wrist (Night cl.), "voila une grande ignorance de ne savoir pas que l'on presente la main droite a un medecin et non pas la gauche"—whose exclusive use all travellers in the East must know. I have noticed the incuriousness which translates "along the Nile-shore" by "up towards Ethiopia" (Night cli.), and the "Islands of the Children of Khaledan" (Night ccxi.) instead of the Khalidatani or Khalidat, the Fortunate Islands. It was by no means "des petits soufflets" ("some taps from time to time with her fingers") which the sprightly dame administered to the Barber's second brother (Night clxxi.), but sound and heavy "cuffs" on the nape; and the sixth brother (Night clxxx.) was not "aux levres fendues" ("he of the hair lips"), for they had been cut off by the Badawi jealous of his fair wife. Abu al-Hasan would not greet his beloved by saluting "le tapis a ses pieds:" he would kiss her hands and feet. Haiatalnefous (Hayat al-Nufus, Night ccxxvi.) would not "throw cold water in the Princess's face:" she would sprinkle it with eau de rose. "Camaralzaman" I. addresses his two abominable wives in language purely European (ccxxx.), "et de la vie il ne s'approcha d'elles," missing one of the fine touches of the tale which shows its hero a weak and violent man, hasty and lacking the pundonor. "La belle Persienne," in the Tale of Nur al-Din, was no Persian; nor would her master address her, "Venez ca, impertinente!" ("come here, impertinence"). In the story of Badr, one of the Comoro Islands becomes "L'lle de la Lune." "Dog" and "dog son" are not "injures atroces et indignes d'un grand roi:" the greatest Eastern kings allow themselves far more energetic and significant language.

Terminal Essay. 101

Fitnah is by no means "Force de coeurs." Lastly the denouement of The Nights is widely different in French and in Arabic but that is probably not Galland's fault, as he never saw the original, and indeed he deserves high praise for having invented so pleasant and sympathetic a close, inferior only to the Oriental device. Galland's fragment has a strange effect upon the Orientalist and those who take the scholastic view, be it wide or narrow. De Sacy does not hesitate to say that the work owes much to his fellow-countryman's hand; but I judge otherwise: it is necessary to dissociate the two works and to regard Galland's paraphrase, which contains only a quarter of The Thousand Nights and a Night, as a wholly different book. Its attempts to amplify beauties and to correct or conceal the defects and the grotesqueness of the original, absolutely suppress much of the local colour, clothing the bare body in the best of Parisian suits. It ignores the rhymed prose and excludes the verse, rarely and very rarely rendering a few lines in a balanced style. It generally rejects the proverbs, epigrams and moral reflections which form the pith and marrow of the book; and, worse still, it disdains those finer touches of character which are often Shakespearean in their depth and delicacy, and which, applied to a race of familiar ways and thoughts, manners and customs, would have been the wonder and delight of Europe. It shows only a single side of the gem that has so many facets. By deference to public taste it was compelled to expunge the often repulsive simplicity, the childish indecencies and the wild orgies of the original, contrasting with the gorgeous tints, the elevated morality and the religious tone of passages which crowd upon them. We miss the odeur du sang which taints the parfums du harem; also the humouristic tale and the Rabelaisian outbreak which relieve and throw out into strong relief the splendour of Empire and the havoc of Time.

Considered in this light it is a caput mortuum, a magnificent texture seen on the wrong side; and it speaks volumes for the genius of the man who could recommend it in such blurred and caricatured condition to readers throughout the civilised world. But those who look only at Galland's picture, his effort to "transplant into European gardens the magic flowers of Eastern fancy," still compare his tales with the sudden prospect of magnificent mountains seen after a long desert march: they arouse strange longings and indescribable desires; their marvellous imaginativeness produces an insensible brightening of mind and an increase of fancy power, making one dream that behind them lies the new and unseen, the strange and unexpected—in fact, all the glamour of the unknown. The Nights has been translated into every far-extending Eastern tongue, Persian, Turkish and Hindostani. The latter entitles them Hikáyát al-Jalílah or Noble Tales, and the translation was made by Munshi Shams al-Din Ahmad for the use of the College of Fort George in A.H. 1252 = 1836. All these versions are direct from the Arabic: my search for a translation of Galland into any Eastern tongue has hitherto been fruitless. I was assured by the late Bertholdy Seemann that the "language of Hoffmann and Heine" contained a literal and complete translation of The Nights; but personal enquiries at Leipzig and elsewhere convinced me that the work still remains to be done. The first attempt to improve upon Galland and to show the world what the work really is was made by Dr. Max Habicht and was printed at Breslau (1824-25), in fifteen small square volumes. Thus it appeared before the "Tunis Manuscript" of which it purports to be a translation.

Terminal Essay. 103

The German version is, if possible, more condemnable than the Arabic original. It lacks every charm of style; it conscientiously shirks every difficulty; it abounds in the most extraordinary blunders and it is utterly useless as a picture of manners or a book of reference. We can explain its lâches only by the theory that the eminent Professor left the labour to his collaborateurs and did not take the trouble to revise their careless work. The next German translation was by Aulic Councillor J. von Hammer-Purgstall1 who, during his short stay at Cairo and Constantinople, turned into French the tales neglected by Galland. After some difference with M. Caussin (de Perceval) in 1810, the Styrian Orientalist entrusted his MS. to Herr Cotta the publisher of Tubingen. Thus a German version appeared, the translation of a translation, at the hand of Professor Zinserling, while the French version was unaccountably lost en route to London. Finally the "Contes inédits," etc., appeared in a French translation by G. S. Trebutien (Paris, mdcccxxviii.). Von Hammer took liberties with the text which can compare only with those of Lane: he abridged and retrenched till the likeness in places entirely disappeared; he shirked some difficult passages and he mis explained others. In fact the work did no honour to the amiable and laborious historian of the Turks. The only good German translation of The Nights is due to Dr. Gustav Weil who, born on April 24, 1808, is still (1886) professing at Heidelburg. His originals (he tells us) were the

Breslau Edition, the Bulak text of Abd al-Rahman al-Safati and a MS. in the library of Saxe Gotha. The venerable savant, who has rendered such service to Arabism, informs me that Aug. Lewald's "Vorhalle" (pp. i.-xv.) was written without his knowledge. Dr. Weil neglects the division of days which enables him to introduce any number of tales: for instance, Galland's eleven occupy a large part of vol. iii. The Vorwort wants development; the notes, confined to a few words, are inadequate and verse is everywhere rendered by prose, the Saj'a or assonance being wholly ignored. On the other hand the scholar shows himself by a correct translation, contrasting strongly with those which preceded him, and by a strictly literal version, save where the treatment required to be modified in a book intended for the public. Under such circumstances it cannot well be other than longsome and monotonous reading. Although Spain and Italy have produced many and remarkable Orientalists, I cannot find that they have taken the trouble to translate The Nights for themselves: cheap and gaudy versions of Galland seem to have satisfied the public. Notes on the Romaic, Icelandic, Russian (?) and other versions, will be found in a future page. Professor Galland has never been forgotten in France where, amongst a host of editions, four have claims to distinction; and his success did not fail to create a host of imitators and to attract what De Sacy justly terms "une prodigieuse importation de marchandise de contrabande." As early as 1823 Von Hammer numbered seven in France (Trebutien, Preface xviii.) and during later years they have grown prodigiously. Mr. William F. Kirby, who has made a special study of the subject, has favoured me with detailed bibliographical notes on Galland's imitators which are printed in Appendix No. II.

Terminal Essay 105

III. THE MATTER AND THE MANNER OF THE NIGHTS.