B.—­The Manner of the Nights.

And now, after considering the matter, I will glance at the language and style of The Nights.  The first point to remark is the peculiarly happy framework of the Recueil, which I cannot but suspect set an example to the Decamerone and its host of successors.[FN#296] The admirable Introduction, a perfect mise-en-scene, gives the amplest raison d’etre of the work, which thus has all the unity required for a great romantic recueil.  We perceive this when reading the contemporary Hindu work the Katha Sarit Sagara,[FN#297] which is at once so like and so unlike The Nights:  here the preamble is insufficient; the whole is clumsy for want of a thread upon which the many independent tales and fables should be strung[FN#298]; and the consequent disorder and confusion tell upon the reader, who cannot remember the sequence without taking notes.

As was said in my Foreword “without The Nights no Arabian Nights!” and now, so far from holding the pauses “an intolerable interruption to the narrative,” I attach additional importance to these pleasant and restful breaks introduced into long and intricate stories.  Indeed beginning again I should adopt the plan of the Cal.  Edit. opening and ending every division with a dialogue between the sisters.  Upon this point, however, opinions will differ and the critic will remind me that the consensus of the MSS. would be wanting:  The Bresl.  Edit. in many places merely interjects the number of the night without interrupting the tale; the Ms. in the Bibliotheque Nationale used by Galland contains only cclxxxii and the Frenchman ceases to use the division after the ccxxxvith Night and in some editions after the cxcviith.[FN#299] A fragmentary Ms. according to Scott whose friend J. Anderson found it in Bengal, breaks away after Night xxix; and in the Wortley Montagu, the Sultan relents at an early opportunity, the stories, as in Galland, continuing only as an amusement.  I have been careful to preserve the balanced sentences with which the tales open; the tautology and the prose-rhyme serving to attract attention, e. g., “In days of yore and in times long gone before there was a King,” etc.; in England where we strive not to waste words this becomes “Once upon a time.”  The closings also are artfully calculated, by striking a minor chord after the rush and hurry of the incidents, to suggest repose:  “And they led the most pleasurable of lives and the most delectable, till there came to them the Destroyer of delights and the Severer of societies and they became as though they had never been.”  Place this by the side of Boccaccio’s favourite formulae:—­Egli conquisto poi la Scozia, e funne re coronato (ii, 3); Et onorevolmente visse infino alla fine (ii, 4); Molte volte goderono del loro amore:  Iddio faccia noi goder del nostro (iii, 6):  E cosi nella sue grossezza si rimase e ancor vi si sta (vi, 8).  We have further docked this tail into:  “And they lived happily ever after.”