Oriental “costume” and phraseology have almost entirely disappeared, and between Petis de la Croix and the author of “Gil Blas”—­who is said to have had a hand in the work—­the tales have become ludicrously Frenchified.  The English translation made from the French is, if possible, still worse.  We there meet with “persons of quality,” “persons of fashion,” with “seigneurs,” and a thousand and one other inconsistencies and absurdities.  A new translation is much to be desired.  The copy of the Persian text made by Petis is probably in the Paris Library and Ouseley’s fragment is doubtless among his other Oriental MSS. in the Bodleian.  But one should suppose that copies of the “Hazar u Yek Ruz” may be readily procured at Ispahan or Tehran, and at a very moderate cost, since the Persians now-a-days are so poor in general that they are eager to exchange any books they possess for the “circulating medium.”

  Nur al-Din and the damsel Sitt al-Milah.—­Vol.  XII. p. 107.

This is an excellent tale, the incidents occur naturally and the reader’s interest in the fortunes of the hero and heroine never flags.  The damsel’s sojourn with the old Muezzin—­her dispatching him daily to the shroff—­bears some analogy to part of the tale of Ghanim the Slave of Love (vol. ii. of The Nights), which, by the way, finds close parallels in the Turkish “Forty Vazirs” (the Lady’s 18th story in Mr. Gibb’s translation), the Persian “Thousand and One Days” (story of Aboulcasem of Basra), and the “Bagh o Bahar” (story of the First Dervish).  This tale is, in fact, a compound of incidents occurring in a number of different Arabian fictions.

 Tale of king ins bin Kays and his daughter.—­Vol.  XII. p. 138.

Here we have another instance of a youth falling in love with the portrait of a pretty girl (see ante, p. 236).  The doughty deeds performed by the young prince against thousands of his foes throw into the shade the exploits of the Bedouin hero Antar, and those of our own famous champions Sir Guy of Warwick and Sir Bevis of Hampton.

ADDITIONAL NOTES.

FIRUZ AND HIS WIFE, p. 216.

I find yet another variant of this story in my small Ms. collection of Arabian and Persian anecdotes, translated from the French (I have not ascertained its source): 

They relate that a lord of Basra, while walking one day in his garden, saw the wife of his gardener, who was very beautiful and virtuous.  He gave a commission to his gardener which required him to leave his home.  He then said to his wife “Go and shut all the doors.”  She went out and soon returned, saying, “I have shut all the doors except one, which I am unable to shut.”  The lord asked, “And where is that door?” She replied “That which is between you and the respect due to your Maker:  there is no way of closing it.”  When the lord heard these words, he asked the woman’s pardon, and became a better and a wiser man.