The critic ends his article with doing what critics should carefully avoid to do.  After shrewdly displaying his powers of invective and depreciation he has submitted to his readers a sample of his own workmanship.  He persists in writing “Zobeyda,” “Khalifa,” “Aziza” (p. 194) and “Kahramana” (p. 199) without the terminal aspirate which, in Arabic if not in Turkish, is a sine qua non (see my Suppl. vol. v. 302).  He preserves the pretentious blunder “The Khalif” (p. 193), a word which does not exist in Arabic.  He translates (p. 181), although I have taught him to do better, “Hadimu ’I-Lizzati wa Mufarriku ’l-Jama’at,” by “Terminator of Delights and Separator of Companies” instead of Destroyer of delights and Severer of societies.  And lastly he pads the end of his article (pp. 196-199) with five dreary extracts from Lane (i. 372-73) who can be dull even when translating the Immortal Barber.

The first quotation is so far changed that the peppering of commas (three to the initial line of the original) disappears to the reader’s gain, Lane’s textual date (App. 263) is also exchanged for that of the notes (A.H. 653); and the “aera of Alexander,” A.M. 7320, an absurdity which has its value in proving the worthlessness of such chronology, is clean omitted, because Lane used the worthless Bull Edit.  The latinisms due to Lane show here in force—­“Looked for a considerable time” (Maliyyan = for a long while); “there is an announcement that presenteth itself to me” (a matter which hath come to my knowledge) and “thou hast dissipated[FN#458] my mind” (Azhakta ruhi = thou scatterest my wits, in the Calc.  Edit.  Saghgharta ruhi = thou belittles” my mind).  But even Lane never wrote “I only required thee to shave my head”—­the adverb thus qualifying, as the ignoramus loves to do, the wrong verb—­for “I required thee only to shave my head.”  In the second echantillon we have “a piece of gold” as equivalent of a quarter-diner and “for God’s sake” which certainly does not preserve local colour.  In No. 3 we find “‘May God,’ said I,” etc.; “There is no deity but God!  Mohammed is God’s apostle!” Here Allah ought invariably to be used, e.g.  “Mohammed is the Apostle of Allah,” unless the English name of the Deity be absolutely required as in “There is no god but the God.”  The Moslem’s “Wa’llahi” must not be rendered “By God,” a verbal translation and an absolute nonequivalent; the terms Jehovah, Allah and God and the use of them involving manifold fine distinctions.  If it be true that God made man, man in his turn made and mismade God who thus becomes a Son of Man and a mere racial type.  I need not trouble my reader with further notices of these extracts whose sole use is to show the phenomenal dullness of Lane’s latinised style:  I prefer even Torrens (p. 273).