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 petite 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 hither, impertinence").  In the story of Badr, one of the Comoro Islands becomes “L’ile 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.

Fitnah[FN#219] 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.[FN#220]

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,