“This amusement (of reproducing the Saj’a) may be carried to any length (how?), and we do not see why Captain Burton neglects the metre of the poetry, or divides his translation into sentences by stops, or permits any break in the continuity of the narrative, since none such exists in the Arabic” (p. 182).  My reply is that I neglect the original metres first and chiefly because I do not care to “caper in fetters,” as said Drummond of Hawthornden; and, secondly, because many of them are unfamiliar and consequently unpleasant to English ears.  The exceptions are mostly two, the Rajaz (Anapaests and Iambs, Terminal Essay, x. 253), and the Tawil or long measure (ibid. pp. 242, 255), which Mr. Lyall (Translations of Ancient Arab.  Poetry, p. xix.) compares with “Abt Vogler,”

     And there! ye have heard and seen:  consider and bow the head.

This metre greatly outnumbers all others in The Nights; but its lilting measure by no means suits every theme, and in English it is apt to wax monotonous.

“The following example of a literal rendering which Mr. Payne adduces (vol. ix. 381:  camp. my vol. v. 66) in order to show the difficulty of turning the phraseology of the original into good English, should have served Captain Burton as a model, and we are surprised he has not adopted so charmingly cumbrous a style” (p. 102).  I shall quote the whole passage in question and shall show that by the most unimportant changes, omissions and transpositions, without losing a word, the whole becomes excellent English, and falls far behind the Reviewer’s style in the contention for “cumbrousness":—­

“When morrowed the morning he bedabbled his feet with the water they twain had expressed from the herb and, going-down to the sea, went thereupon, walking days and nights, he wondering the while at the horrors of the ocean and the marvels and rarities thereof.  And he ceased not faring over the face of the waters till he arrived at an island as indeed it were Paradise.  So Bulukiya went up thereto and fell to wondering thereanent and at the beauties thereof; and he found it a great island whose dust was saffron and its gravel were carnelian and precious stones:  its edges were gelsomine and the growth was the goodliest of the trees and the brightest of the scented herbs and the sweetest of them.  Its rivulets were a-flowing; its brushwood was of the Comorin aloe and the Sumatran lign- aloes; its reeds were sugar-canes and round about it bloomed rose and narcissus and amaranth and gilliflower and chamomile and lily and violet, all therein being of several kinds and different tints.  The birds warbled upon those trees and the whole island was fair of attributes and spacious of sides and abundant of good things, comprising in fine all of beauty and loveliness,” etc. (Payne, vol. ix. p. 381).

The Reviewer cites in his list, but evidently has not read, the “Tales from the Arabic,” etc., printed as a sequel to The Nights, or he would have known that Mr. Payne, for the second part of his work, deliberately adopted a style literal as that above-quoted because it was the liveliest copy of the original.