[FN#253] A writer in the Edinburgh Review (July, ’86), of whom more presently, suggests that The Nights assumed essentially their present shape during the general revival of letters, arts and requirements which accompanied the Kurdish and Tartar irruptions into the Nile Valley, a golden age which embraced the whole of the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and ended with the Ottoman Conquest in A. D. 1527.

[FN#254] Let us humbly hope not again to hear of the golden prime of

          “The good (fellow?) Haroun Alrasch’id,”

a mispronunciation which suggests only a rasher of bacon.  Why will not poets mind their quantities, in lieu of stultifying their lines by childish ignorance?  What can be more painful than Byron’s

“They laid his dust in Ar’qua (for Arqua) where he died?”

[FN#255] See De Sacy’s Chrestomathie Arabe (Paris, 1826), vol. i.

[FN#256] See Le Jardin Parfume du Cheikh Nefzaoui Manuel d’Erotologie Arabe Traduction revue et corrigee Edition privee, imprime a deux cent.-vingt exemplaires, par Isidore Liseux et ses Amis, Paris, 1866.  The editor has forgotten to note that the celebrated Sidi Mohammed copied some of the tales from The Nights and borrowed others (I am assured by a friend) from Tunisian MSS. of the same work.  The book has not been fairly edited:  the notes abound in mistakes, the volume lacks an index, &c., &c.  Since this was written the Jardin Parfume has been twice translated into English as “The Perfumed Garden of the Cheikh Nefzaoui, a Manual of Arabian Erotology (sixteenth century).  Revised and corrected translation, Cosmopoli:  mdccclxxxvi.:  for the Kama Shastra Society of London and Benares and for private circulation only.”  A rival version will be brought out by a bookseller whose Committee, as he calls it, appears to be the model of literary pirates, robbing the author as boldly and as openly as if they picked his pocket before his face.

[FN#257] Translated by a well-known Turkish scholar, Mr. E. J. W. Gibb (Glasgow, Wilson and McCormick, 1884).

[FN#258] D’Herbelot (s. v.  “Asmai"):  I am reproached by a dabbler in Orientalism for using this admirable writer who shows more knowledge in one page than my critic does in a whole volume.

[FN#259] For specimens see Al-Siyuti, pp. 301 and 304, and the Shaykh al Nafzawi, pp. 134-35

[FN#260] The word “nakh” (to make a camel kneel) is explained in vol. ii. 139.

[FN#261] The present of the famous horologium-clepsydra-cuckoo clock, the dog Becerillo and the elephant Abu Lubabah sent by Harun to Charlemagne is not mentioned by Eastern authorities and consequently no reference to it will be found in my late friend Professor Palmer’s little volume “Haroun Alraschid,” London, Marcus Ward, 1881.  We have allusions to many presents, the clock and elephant, tent and linen hangings, silken dresses, perfumes, and candelabra of auricalch brought by the Legati (Abdalla Georgius Abba et Felix) of Aaron Amiralmumminim Regis Persarum who entered the Port of Pisa (A.  D. 801) in (vol. v. 178) Recueil des Histor. des Gaules et de la France, etc., par Dom Martin Bouquet, Paris, mdccxliv.  The author also quotes the lines:—­