4.  The latest tales, notably Kamar al-Zaman 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.

Section 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and perfect tact at once made his work take high rank in the republic of letters nor will the immortal fragment ever be superseded in the infallible judgment of childhood.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 Encyclopaedia 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.[FN#198]

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