[FN#281] Vol. viii. 296.

[FN#282] Burckhardt, “Travels in Arabia” vol. i. 185.

[FN#283] The reverse has been remarked by more than one writer; and contemporary French opinion seems to be that Victor Hugo’s influence on French prose, was on the whole, not beneficial.

[FN#284] Mr. W. S. Clouston, the “Storiologist,” who is preparing a work to be entitled “Popular Tales and Fictions; their Migrations and Transformations,” informs me the first to adapt this witty anecdote was Jacques de Vitry, the crusading bishop of Accon (Acre) who died at Rome in 1240, after setting the example of “Exempla” or instances in his sermons.  He had probably heard it in Syria, and he changed the day-dreamers into a Milkmaid and her Milk-pail to suit his “flock.”  It then appears as an “Exemplum” in the Liber de Donis or de Septem Donis (or De Dono Timoris from Fear the first gift) of Stephanus de Borbone, the Dominican, ob.  Lyons, 1261:  it treated of the gifts of the Holy Spirit (Isaiah xi. 2 and 3), Timor, Pietas, Scientia, Fortitudo, Consilium, Intellectus et Sapientia; and was plentifully garnished with narratives for the use of preachers.

[FN#285] The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register (new series, vol. xxx.  Sept.-Dec. 1830, London, Allens, 1839); p. 69 Review of the Arabian Nights, the Mac.  Edit. vol. i., and H. Torrens.

[FN#286] As a household edition of the “Arabian Nights” is now being prepared, the curious reader will have an opportunity of verifying this statement.

[FN#287] It has been pointed out to me that in vol. ii. p. 285, line 18 “Zahr Shah” is a mistake for Sulayman Shah.

[FN#288] I have lately found these lovers at Schloss Sternstein near Cilli in Styria, the property of my excellent colleague, Mr. Consul Faber, dating from A. D. 1300 when Jobst of Reichenegg and Agnes of Sternstein were aided and abetted by a Capuchin of Seikkloster.

[FN#289] In page 226 Dr. Steingass sensibly proposes altering the last hemistich (lines 11-12) to

At one time showing the Moon and Sun.

[FN#290] Omitted by Lane for some reason unaccountable as usual.  A correspondent sends me his version of the lines which occur in The Nights (vol. v. 106 and 107):—­

Behold the Pyramids and hear them teach
What they can tell of Future and of Past: 
They would declare, had they the gift of speech,
The deeds that Time hath wrought from first to last
* * * *
My friends, and is there aught beneath the sky
Can with th’ Egyptian Pyramids compare? 
In fear of them strong Time hath passed by
And everything dreads Time in earth and air.

[FN#291] A rhyming Romance by Henry of Waldeck (flor.  A. D. 1160) with a Latin poem on the same subject by Odo and a prose version still popular in Germany. (Lane’s Nights iii. 81; and Weber’s “Northern Romances.”)

[FN#292] e. g.  ’Ajaib al-Hind (= Marvels of Ind) ninth century, translated by J. Marcel Devic, Paris, 1878; and about the same date the Two Mohammedan Travellers, translated by Renaudot.  In the eleventh century we have the famous Sayyid al-ldrisi, in the thirteenth the ’Ajaib al-Makhlukat of Al-Kazwini and in the fourteenth the Kharidat al-Ajaib of Ibn Al-Wardi.  Lane (in loco) traces most of Sindbad to the two latter sources.