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-scene 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,[FN#218] 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 begueule of European languages, was bound by a rigorisme of the narrowest and the straightest of lines from which the least ecart 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 “He 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’llahi—­by Allah; 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 1xxii.) become ridiculous only in translation—­“the officious Dinarzade” and “this pleasant quarrel;” while “ce qu’il y de remarquable”