“Here is a specimen of his (Captain Burton’s) verse, in which, by the way, there is seen another example of the careless manner in which the proofs have been corrected” (p. 181).  Generous and just to a work printed from abroad and when absence prevented the author’s revision:  false as unfair to boot!  And what does the critic himself but show two several misprints in his 33 pages; “Mr. Payne, vol. ix. p. 274” (p. 168, for vol. i. 260), and “Jamshah” (p. 172, for Janshah).  These faults may not excuse my default:  however, I can summon to my defence the Saturday Review, that past-master in the art and mystery of carping criticism, which, noticing my first two volumes (Jan. 2, 1886), declares them “laudably free from misprints.”

“Captain Burton’s delight in straining the language beyond its capabilities(?) finds a wide field when he comes to those passages in the original which are written in rhyming prose” (p. 181).  “Captain Burton of course could not neglect such an opportunity for display of linguistic flexibility on the model of ‘Peter Parley picked a peck of pickled peppers"’ (p. 182, where the Saj’a or prose rhyme is most ignorantly confounded with our peculiarly English alliteration).  But this is wilfully to misstate the matter.  Let me repeat my conviction (Terminal Essay, 144-145) that The Nights, in its present condition, was intended as a text or handbook for the Rawi or professional story-teller, who would declaim the recitative in quasi-conversational tones, would intone the Saj’a and would chant the metrical portions to the twanging of the Rababah or one-stringed viol.  The Reviewer declares that the original has many such passages; but why does he not tell the reader that almost the whole Koran, and indeed all classical Arab prose, is composed in such “jingle”?  “Doubtfully pleasing in the Arabic,” it may “sound the reverse of melodious in our own tongue” (p. 282); yet no one finds fault with it in the older English authors (Terminal Essay, p. 220), and all praised the free use of it in Eastwick’s “Gulistan.”  Torrens, Lane and Payne deliberately rejected it, each for his own and several reason; Torrens because he never dreamt of the application, Lane, because his scanty knowledge of English stood in his way; and Payne because he aimed at a severely classical style, which could only lose grace, vigour and harmony by such exotic decoration.  In these matters every writer has an undoubted right to carry out his own view, remembering the while that it is impossible to please all tastes.  I imitated the Saj’a, because I held it to be an essential part of the work and of my fifty reviewers none save the Edinburgh considered the reproduction of the original manner aught save a success.  I care only to satisfy those whose judgment is satisfactory:  “the abuse and contempt of ignorant writers hurts me very little,” as Darwin says (iii. 88), and we all hold with Don Quixote that, es mejor ser loado de los pocos sabios, que burlado de los muchos necios.