vol. iii. chaps. 30 (the last) they are pp. 5:  57.  Long disquisitions, “On the initial Moslem formula,” “On the Wickedness of Women,” “On Fate and Destiny,” “On Arabian Cosmogony,” “On Slaves,” “On Magic,” “On the Two Grand Festivals,” all these being appended to the Introduction and the first chapter, are mere hors d’oeuvres:  such “copy” should have been reserved for another edition of “The Modern Egyptians.”  The substitution of chapters for Nights was perverse and ill-judged as it could be, but it appears venial compared with condensing the tales in a commentary, thus converting the Arabian Nights into Arabian Notes.  However, “Arabian Society in the Middle Ages,” a legacy left by the “Uncle and Master”, and like the tame and inadequate “Selections from the Koran,” utilised by the grand-nephew, has been of service to the Edinburgh.  Also, as it appears three several and distinct times in one article (pp. 166, 174, and 183), we cannot but surmise that a main object of the critique was to advertise the volume.  Men are crafty in these days when practicing the “puff indirect.”

But the just complaint against Lane’s work is its sin of omission.  The partial Reviewer declares (pp. 174 75) that the Arabist “retranslated The Nights in a practical spirit, omitting what was objectionable, together with a few tales(!) that were, on the whole, uninteresting or tautological, and enriching the work with a multitude of valuable notes.  We had now a scholarly version of the greater part of The Nights imbued with the spirit of the East and rich in illustrative comment; and for forty years no one thought of anything more, although Galland still kept his hold on the nursery.”  Despite this spurious apology, the critic is compelled cautiously to confess (p. 172), “We are not sure that some of these omissions were not mistaken;” and he instances “Abdallah the Son of Fazil” and “Abu’l-Hasan of Khorasan” (he means, I suppose, Abu Hasan al-Ziyadi and the Khorasani Man, iv. 285), whilst he suggests, “a careful abridgment of the tale of Omar the Son of No’man” (ii. 7,, etc.).  Let me add that wittiest and most rollicking of Rabelaisian skits, “All the Persian and the Kurd Sharper” (iv. 149), struck-out in the very wantonness of “respectability;” and the classical series, an Arabian “Pilpay,” entitled “King Jali’ad of Hind and his Wazir Shimas” (iv. 32).  Nor must I omit to notice the failure most injurious to the work which destroyed in it half the “spirit of the East.”  Mr. Lane had no gift of verse or rhyme:  he must have known that the ten thousand lines of the original Nights formed a striking and necessary contrast with the narrative part, acting as aria to recitativo.  Yet he rendered them only in the baldest and most prosaic of English without even the balanced style of the French translations.  He can be excused only for one consideration—­bad prose is not so bad as bad verse.