Turkey is the only Moslem country which has dared to produce a regular drama[FN#304] and to arouse the energies of such brilliant writers as Munif Pasha, statesman and scholar; Ekrem Bey, literato and professor; Kemal Bey, held by some to be the greatest writer in modern Osmanli-land and Abd al-Hakk Hamid Bey, first Secretary of the London Embassy.  The theatre began in its ruder form by taking subjects bodily from The Nights; then it annexed its plays as we do—­the Novel having ousted the Drama—­ from the French; and lastly it took courage to be original.  Many years ago I saw Harun al-Rashid and the Three Kalandars, with deer-skins and all their properties de rigueur in the court-yard of Government House, Damascus, declaiming to the extreme astonishment and delight of the audience.  It requires only to glance at The Nights for seeing how much histrionic matter they contain.

In considering the style of The Nights we must bear in mind that the work has never been edited according to our ideas of the process.  Consequently there is no just reason for translating the whole verbatim et literatim, as has been done by Torrens, Lane and Payne in his “Tales from the Arabic."[FN#305] This conscientious treatment is required for versions of an author like Camoens, whose works were carefully corrected and arranged by a competent litterateur, but it is not merited by The Nights as they now are.  The Macnaghten, the Bulak and the Bayrut texts, though printed from MSS. identical in order, often differ in minor matters.  Many friends have asked me to undertake the work:  but, even if lightened by the aid of Shaykhs, Munshis and copyists, the labour would be severe, tedious and thankless:  better leave the holes open than patch them with fancy work or with heterogeneous matter.  The learned, indeed, as Lane tells us (i. 74; iii. 740), being thoroughly dissatisfied with the plain and popular, the ordinary and “vulgar” note of the language, have attempted to refine and improve it and have more than once threatened to remodel it, that is, to make it odious.  This would be to dress up Robert Burns in plumes borrowed from Dryden and Pope.

The first defect of the texts is in the distribution and arrangement of the matter, as I have noticed in the case of Sindbad the Seaman (vol. vi. 77).  Moreover, many of the earlier Nights are overlong and not a few of the others are overshort:  this, however, has the prime recommendation of variety.  Even the vagaries of editor and scribe will not account for all the incoherences, disorder and inconsequence, and for the vain iterations which suggest that the author has forgotten what he said.  In places there are dead allusions to persons and tales which are left dark, e. g. vol. i. pp. 43, 57, 61, etc.  The digressions are abrupt and useless, leading nowhere, while sundry pages are wearisome for excess of prolixity or hardly intelligible for extreme conciseness.  The perpetual recurrence of mean colloquialisms and