The ill-judged over-appreciation and glorification of Mr. Lane is followed (p. 176) by the depreciation and bedevilment of Mr. John Payne, who first taught the world what The Nights really is.  We are told that the author (like myself) “unfortunately did not know Arabic;” and we are not told that he is a sound Persian scholar:  however, “he undoubtedly managed to pick up enough of the language(!) to understand The Arabian Nights with the assistance of the earlier translations of (by?) Torrens and Lane,” the former having printed only one volume out of some fifteen.  This critic thinks proper now to ignore the “old English wall-papers,” of Mr. R. S. Poole, indeed he concedes to the translator of Villon, a “genius for language,” a “singular robust and masculine prose, which for the present purpose he intentionally weighted with archaisms and obsolete words but without greatly injuring its force or brilliancy” (p. 177).  With plausible candour he also owns that the version “is a fine piece of English, it is also, save where the exigencies of rhyme compelled a degree of looseness, remarkably literal” (p. 178).  Thus the author is damned with faint praise by one who utterly fails to appreciate the portentous difference between linguistic genius and linguistic mediocrity, and the Reviewer proceeds, “a careful collation” (we have already heard what his “careful” means) “of the different versions with their originals leads us to the conclusion that Mr. Payne’s version is little less faithful than Lane’s in those parts which are common to both, and is practically as close a rendering as is desirable” (p. 178).  Tell the truth, man, and shame the Devil!  I assert and am ready to support that the “Villon version” is incomparably superior to Lane’s not only in its simple, pure and forcible English, but also in its literal and absolute correctness, being almost wholly free from the blunders and inaccuracies which everywhere disfigure Torrens, and which are rarely absent from Lane.  I also repeat that wherever the style and the subject are the most difficult to treat, Mr. Payne comes forth most successfully from the contest, thus giving the best proof of his genius and capacity for painstaking.  Of the metrical part, which makes the Villon version as superior to Lane’s as virgin gold to German silver, the critique offers only three inadequate specimens specially chosen and accompanied with a growl that “the verse is nothing remarkable” (p. 177) and that the author is sometimes “led into extreme liberties with the original” (ibid.).  Not a word of praise for mastering the prodigious difficulties of the monorhyme!

But—­and there is a remarkable power in this particle—­Mr. Payne’s work is “restricted to the few wealthy collectors of proscribed books and what booksellers’ catalogues describe as facetiae’” (p. 179); for “when an Arabic word is unknown to the literary language” (what utter imbecility!), “and belongs only to the low vocabulary of the gutter” (which the