The next is the long romance of chivalry, “King Omar bin al-Nu’man” etc., which occupies an eighth of the whole repertory and the best part of two volumes.  Mr. Lane omits it because “obscene and tedious,” showing the license with which he translated; and he was set right by a learned reviewer,[FN#285] who truly declared that “the omission of half-a-dozen passages out of four hundred pages would fit it for printing in any language[FN#286] and the charge of tediousness could hardly have been applied more unhappily.”  The tale is interesting as a picture of mediaeval Arab chivalry and has many other notable points; for instance, the lines (iii. 86) beginning “Allah holds the kingship!” are a lesson to the manichaeanism of Christian Europe.  It relates the doings of three royal generations and has all the characteristics of Eastern art:  it is a phantasmagoria of Holy Places, palaces and Harems; convents, castles and caverns, here restful with gentle landscapes (ii. 240) and there bristling with furious battle-pictures (ii. 117, 221-8, 249) and tales of princely prowess and knightly derring-do.  The characters stand out well.  King Nu’man is an old lecher who deserves his death; the ancient Dame Zat al-Dawahi merits her title Lady of Calamities (to her foes); Princess Abrizah appears as a charming Amazon, doomed to a miserable and pathetic end; Zau al-Makan is a wise and pious royalty; Nuzhat al-Zaman, though a longsome talker, is a model sister; the Wazir Dandan, a sage and sagacious counsellor, contrasts with the Chamberlain, an ambitious miscreant; Kanmakan is the typical Arab knight, gentle and brave:—­

Now managing the mouthes of stubborne steedes
Now practising the proof of warlike deedes;

And the kind-hearted, simple-minded Stoker serves as a foil to the villains, the kidnapping Badawi and Ghazban the detestable negro.  The fortunes of the family are interrupted by two episodes, both equally remarkable.  Taj al-Muluk[FN#287] is the model lover whom no difficulties or dangers can daunt.  In Aziz and Azizah (ii. 291) we have the beau ideal of a loving woman:  the writer’s object was to represent a “softy” who had the luck to win the love of a beautiful and clever cousin and the mad folly to break her heart.  The poetical justice which he receives at the hands of women of quite another stamp leaves nothing to be desired.  Finally the plot of “King Omar” is well worked out; and the gathering of all the actors upon the stage before the curtain drops may be improbable but it is highly artistic.

The long Crusading Romance is relieved by a sequence of sixteen fabliaux, partly historiettes of men and beasts and partly apologues proper—­a subject already noticed.  We have then (iii. 162) the saddening and dreary love-tale of Ali bin Bakkar, a Persian youth and the Caliph’s concubine Shams al-Nahar.  Here the end is made doleful enough by the deaths of the “two martyrs,” who are killed off, like Romeo and Juliet,[FN#288] a lesson