he says, in a previous state of existence he was a Bedouin.  Did he not for months at a stretch lead the life of a Son of the Faithful, eat, drink, sleep dress, speak, pray like his brother devotees, the sharpest eyes failing to pierce his disguise.  He knows the ways of Eastern men—­and women—­as he does the society of London or Trieste.  How completely at home he is with his adopted brethren he showed at Cairo when, to the amazement of some English friends who were looking on at the noisy devotions of some “howling” Dervishes, he suddenly joined the shouting, gesticulating circle and behaved as if to the manner born.  He has qualified as a “Howler,” he holds a diploma as a master Dervish (see vol. iii. of his “Pilgrimage"), and he can initiate disciples.  Clearly to use a phrase of Arabian story, it was decreed by Allah from the beginning, and fate and fortune have arranged, that Captain Burton should be the one of all others to confer upon his countrymen the boon of the genuine unsophisticated Thousand Nights and a Night.  In the whole of our literature no book is more widely known.  It is spread broadcast like the Bible, Bunyan and Shakespeare; yet although it is in every house, and every soul in the kingdom knows something about it, yet nobody knows it as it really exists.  We have only had what translators have chosen to give—­selected, diluted and abridged transcripts.  And of late some so-called “original” books have been published containing minor tales purloined bodily from the Nights.  There have been many versions, beginning with the beautiful Augustan French example of Professor Galland, but all have failed, or rather no one has attempted, to reproduce the great Oriental masterpiece.  Judged by the number of editions—­a most fallacious test of merit—­Lane’s three volumes, on the whole, have found greatest favour with the British public.  He was too timid to give to the world the full benefit of his studies, and he kept a drawing-room audience in view.  He was careful to adapt his picture to the English standard of propriety, and his suppressions and omissions are on a wholesale scale.  Lord Byron said of English novelists that they give a full length of courtship and but a bust of marriage.  Mr. Lane thought it expedient to draw a tight veil, to tell only half the truth—­in short he stops at the bust.  Moreover he destroyed all the mecanique of his original, and cruelly altered the form.  He did away with the charming and dramatic framework of the tales, turned the Arabian Nights into the Arabian Chapters, and too often into the Arabian Notes.  The first sole and complete translation was furnished recently by Mr. John Payne, whose “Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night” is dedicated to Captain Burton.  Mr. Payne printed 500 copies for private circulation, a mere drop in the ocean.  His edition was instantly absorbed, clutched with avidity, and is unprocurable—­unless, as has happened several times, a stray copy finds its way into the