“Captain Burton’s version is sometimes rather loose” (p.180), says the critic who quotes five specimens out of five volumes and who might have quoted five hundred.  This is another favourite “dodge” with the rogue-reviewer, who delights to cite words and phrases and texts detached from their contexts.  A translator is often compelled, by way of avoiding recurrences which no English public could endure, to render a word, whose literal and satisfactory meaning he has already given, by a synonym or a homonym in no way so sufficient or so satisfactory.  He charges me with rendering “Siyar, which means ‘doings,’ by ’works and words"’; little knowing that the veteran Orientalist, M. Joseph Derenbourgh (p. 98, Johannes de Capua, Directorium, etc.), renders “Akhlak-i wa Sirati” (sing. of Siyar) by caractere et conducte, the latter consisting of deeds and speech.  He objects to “Kabir” (lit.=old) being turned into very old; yet this would be its true sense were the Rawi or story-teller to lay stress and emphasis upon the word, as here I suppose him to have done.  But what does the Edinburgh know of the Rawi?  Again I render “Mal’unah” (not the mangled Mal’ouna) lit. = accurst, as “damned whore,” which I am justified in doing when the version is of the category Call-a-spade-a-spade.

“Captain Burton’s Arabian Nights, however, has another defect besides this textual inaccuracy” (p. 180); and this leads to a whole page of abusive rhetoric anent my vocabulary:  the Reviewer has collected some thirty specimens—­he might have collected three hundred from the five volumes—­and he concludes that the list places Captain Burton’s version “quite out of the category of English books” (p. 181) and “extremely annoying to any reader with a feeling for style.”  Much he must know of modern literary taste which encourages the translator of an ancient work such as Mr. Gibb’s Aucassin and Nicolette (I quote but one in a dozen) to borrow the charm of antiquity by imitating the nervous and expressive language of the pre-Elizabethans and Shakespeareans.  Let him compare any single page of Mr. Payne with Messieurs Torrens and Lane and he will find that the difference saute aux yeux.  But a purist who objects so forcibly to archaism and archaicism should avoid such terms as “whilom Persian Secretary” (p. 170); as anthophobia, which he is compelled to explain by “dread of selecting only what is best” (p. 175), as anthophobist (p. 176); as “fatuous ejaculations” (p. 183), as a “raconteur” (p. 186), and as “intermedium” (p. 194) terms which are certainly not understood by the general.  And here we have a list of six in thirty-three pages:—­evidently this Reviewer did not expect to be reviewed.