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 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 dictae, quae in omnium firme populorum cultiorum linguas conversae, in deliciis omnium habentur, manibusque omnium terentur,"[FN#211] 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, Trebutien 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 etre prolixe, naturel et familier sans etre lache ni trivial, il ne manque jamais de cette elegance qui resulte de la facilite, et qui presente je ne sais quel melange de la naivete 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[FN#212] to assist him in ordering his MSS. and in making his will after the simplest military fashion:  he bequeathed his writings to the Bibliotheque 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.[FN#213]