half of the Arabian Nights,’ but Captain Burton has a talent for exaggeration, and for ‘characteristic’ we should reed ‘unclear.’  It is natural that he should make the most of such omissions, since they form the raison d’etre of his own translation; but he has widely overshot the mark, and the public may rest assured that the tales omitted from the standard version (proh pudor!) are of very slight importance in comparison with the tales included in it” (p. 173).

What a mass of false statement!

Let us now exchange fiction for fact.  Lane’s three volumes contain a total, deducting 15 for index, of pp. 1995 (viz. 618 + 643 + 734); while each (full) page of text averages 38 lines and of notes (in smaller type) 48.  The text with a number of illustrations represents a total of pp. 1485 (viz. 441 + 449 + 595).  Mr. Payne’s nine volumes contain a sum of pp. 3057, mostly without breaks, to the 1485 of the “Standard edition.”  In my version the sum of pages, each numbering 41 lines, is 3156, or 1163 more than Lane’s total and 2671 more than his text.

Again, in Lane’s text the tales number 62 (viz. 35 + 14 + 13), and as has been stated, all the longest have been omitted, save only Sindbad the Seaman.  The anecdotes in the notes amount to 44 1/2 (viz. 3 1/2 + 35 + 6):  these are for the most pert the merest outlines and include the 3 1/2 of volume i. viz. the Tale of Ibrahim al-Mausili (pp. 223-24), the Tale of Caliph Mu’awiyah (i. pp. 521-22), the Tale of Mukharik the Musician (i. pp. 224- 26), and the half tale of Umm ’Amr (i. p. 522).  They are quoted bodily from the “Halbat al- Kumayt” and from the “Kitab al-Unwan fi Makaid al-Niswan,” showing that at the early stage of his labours the translator, who published in parts, had not read the book on which he was working; or, at least, had not learned that all the three and a half had been borrowed from The Nights.  Thus the grand total is represented by 106 1/2 tales, and the reader will note the difference between 106 1/2 and the diligent and accurate reviewer’s “not much more than two hundred.”  In my version the primary tales amount to 171; the secondaries, &c., to 96 and the total to 267, while Mr. Payne has 266.[FN#449] And these the critic swells to “over four hundred!” Thus I have more than double the number of pages in Lane’s text (allowing the difference between his 38 lines to an oft-broken page and my 41) and nearly two and a half tales to his one, and therefore I do not mean “a third as much again.”

Thus, too, we can deal with the dishonest assertions concerning Lane’s translation “not being absolutely complete” (p. 171) and that “nobody desired to see the objectionable passages which constituted the bulk of Lane’s omissions restored to their place in the text” (p. 175).