[FN#214] M. Caussin (de Perceval), Professeur of Arabic at the Imperial Library, who edited Galland in 1806, tells us that he found there only two MSS., both imperfect.  The first (Galland’s) is in three small vols. 4to. each of about pp. 140.  The stories are more detailed and the style, more correct than that of other MS., is hardly intelligible to many Arabs, whence he presumes that it contains the original (an early?) text which has been altered and vitiated.  The date is supposed to be circa A.D. 1600.  The second Parisian copy is a single folio of some 800 pages, and is divided into 29 sections and cmv.  Nights, the last two sections being reversed.  The MS. is very imperfect, the 12th, 15th, 16th, 18th, 20th, 21st-23rd, 25th and 27th parts are wanting; the sections which follow the 17th contain sundry stories repeated, there are anecdotes from Bidpai, the Ten Wazirs and other popular works, and lacunae everywhere abound.

[FN#215] Mr. Payne (ix. 264) makes eleven, including the Histoire du Dormeur eveille = The Sleeper and the Waker, which he afterwards translated from the Bresl.  Edit. in his “Tales from the Arabic” (vol. i. 5, etc.)

[FN#216] Mr. E. J. W. Gibb informs me that he has come upon this tale in a Turkish storybook, the same from which he drew his “Jewad.”

[FN#217] A litterateur lately assured me that Nos. ix. and x. have been found in the Bibliotheque Nationale (du Roi) Paris; but two friends were kind enough to enquire and ascertained that it was a mistake.  Such Persianisms as Codadad (Khudadad), Baba Cogia (Khwajah) and Peri (fairy) suggest a Persic MS.

[FN#218] Vol. vi. 212.  “The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments (London:  Longmans, 1811) by Jonathan Scott, with the Collection of New Tales from the Wortley Montagu MS. in the Bodleian.”  I regret to see that Messieurs Nimmo in reprinting Scott have omitted his sixth Volume.

[FN#219] Dr. Scott who uses Fitnah (iv. 42) makes it worse by adding “Alcolom (Al-Kulub?) signifying Ravisher of Hearts” and his names for the six slave-girls (vol. iv. 37) such as “Zohorob Bostan” (Zahr al-Bustan), which Galland rightly renders by “Fleur du Jardin,” serve only to heap blunder upon blunder.  Indeed the Anglo-French translations are below criticism:  it would be waste of time to notice them.  The characteristic is a servile suit paid to the original e.g. rendering hair “accomode en boucles” by “hair festooned in buckles” (Night ccxiv.), and Ile d’Ebene (Jazirat al-Abnus, Night xliii.) by “the Isle of Ebene.”  A certain surly old litterateur tells me that he prefers these wretched versions to Mr. Payne’s.  Padrone! as the Italians say:  I cannot envy his taste or his temper.

[FN#220] De Sacy (Memoire p. 52) notes that in some MSS., the Sultan, ennuye by the last tales of Shahrazad, proposes to put her to death, when she produces her three children and all ends merrily without marriage-bells.  Von Hammer prefers this version as the more dramatic, the Frenchman rejects it on account of the difficulties of the accouchements.  Here he strains at the gnat—­ a common process.