The writer is kind enough to pat me upon the back for “picturesque and fluent English” and to confess that I have successfully imitated the rhyming cadence of the original.  But The Saturday would not be The Saturday without carping criticism, wrong-headedness and the culte of the common-place, together with absolute and unworthy cruelty to weaker vessels.  The reviewer denounces as “too conceited to be passed over without comment” the good old English “whenas” (for when, vol. ii. 130), the common ballad-terms “a plump of spearmen” (ii. 190) and a “red cent” (i. 321), the only literal rendering of “Fals ahmar” which serves to show the ancient and noble pedigree of a slang term supposed to be modern and American.  Moreover this Satan even condemns fiercely the sin of supplying him with “useful knowledge.”  The important note (ii. 45) upon the normal English mispronunciation of the J in Jerusalem, Jesus, Jehovah, a corruption whose origin and history are unknown to so many, and which was, doubtless, a surprise to this Son of King “We,” is damned as “uninteresting to the reader of the Arabian Nights.”  En revanche, three mistakes of mine ("p. 43” for “p. 45” in vol. ii., index; “King Zahr Shah” for “King Suleyman Shah,” ii. 285, and the careless confusion of the Caliphs Al-Muntasir and Al- Mustansir, ii. 817, note i.) were corrected and I have duly acknowledged the correction.  No. i. article ends with Saturnine geniality and utterly ignoring a bye-word touching dwellers in glass houses:—­

Finally, we mark with regret that Captain Burton should find no more courteous terms to apply to the useful work of a painstaking clergyman than those where in his note he alludes to “Missionary Porter’s miserable Handbook.”

As Mr. Missionary Porter has never ceased to malign me, even in his last Edition of Murray’s “miserable Handbook,” a cento of Hibernian blunders and hashed Bible, I have every reason to lui rendre la pareille.

The second article (March 27, ’86), treating of vol. iii., opens with one of those plagiaristic common-places, so dear to the soul of The Saturday, in its staid and stale old age as in its sprightly youth.  “There is particularly one commodity which all men, therein nobly disregarding their differences of creed and country, are of a mind that it is better to give than to receive.  That commodity is good advice.  We note further that the liberality with which this is everywhere offered is only to be equalled (he means ‘to be equalled only’) by the niggard reception at most times accorded to the munificent donation; in fact the very goodness of advice given apparently militates against its due appreciation in (by?) the recipient.”  The critic then proceeds to fit his ipse dixit upon my case.  The sense of the sentiment is the reverse of new:  we find in The Spectator (No. dxii.), “There is nothing we receive with so much reluctance as good advice,” etc., but Mr. Spectator writes good English and his plagiarist does not.  Nor