and joy, “his breast broadened,” “his breast straitened,” or the words used of a person in abject terror, “I died in my skin,” or the cruelty of the scourger who persevered “till her forearm failed,” or the expression of despair “The light before his face became night,” or the grand account of the desert storm “when behold a dust cloud up-flew and grew until it walled the horizon from view.”  Another speciality of Captain Burton’s edition is the Notes.  He is celebrated for sowing the bottom of his pages with curiously illuminating remarks, and he has here carried out his custom in a way to astonish.  He tells us that those who peruse his notes in addition to those of Lane would be complete proficients in the knowledge of Oriental practices and customs.  Lane begins with Islam from Creation to the present day, and has deservedly won for his Notes the honour of a separate reprint.  Captain Burton’s object in his annotations is to treat of subjects which are completely concealed from the multitude.  They are utterly and entirely esoteric, and deal with matters of which books usually are kept clear.  Indeed he has been assured by an Indian officer who had been 40 years in the East, that he was entirely ignorant of the matters revealed in these Notes.  Without these marvellous elucidations the Arabian Nights would remain only half understood, but by their aid we may know as much of the Moslems as the Moslems know of themselves.

       The Lincoln Gazette, Saturday, October 17th, 1885. 
                         Second Notice.

In bringing out his Arabian Nights Captain Burton has made a bold attempt to dispense with the middleman the publisher.  He has gone straight to the printer, he himself undertaking the business of distribution.  It is time somebody should be energetic.  With curious submission authors go on bearing their grievances, and sow that others may reap.  Whole editions of travels are issued, and the person most concerned, the author, gets a pittance of œ5.  And only the other day Walt Whitman, most illustrious of American poets, and in the opinion of capable judges the most illustrious man of letters across the Atlantic, publicly that the profits on his writings for a whole year amounted to a few dollars.  Captain Burton has broken through the bondage, and the result promises to be highly satisfactory.  But he has been threatened with pains and penalties, one trade journal, the Printing Times and Lithographer, under the immediate direction of an eminent bookseller, known for his vast purchases of rare publications, announced that The Arabian Nights would be suppressed unless its tone and morals were unexceptionable!  In short, publishers are exasperated, and, like the Peers, they do not see the force of being abolished.  The authors, however, who sigh to be independent, must not take it for granted that the experiment is easy, or likely to be often successful.  In this particular instance it is a case of the Man and the Book.  There is only one Arabian Nights in the world, and only one Captain Burton.