The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, vol 14 | Page 4

in the Habit of a Darwaysh b. History of Mohammed, Sultan of Cairo c. Story of the First Lunatic d. Story of the Second Lunatic e. Story of the Sage and the Scholar f. The Night-Adventure of Sultan Mohammed of Cairo with the Three Foolish Schoolmasters g. Story of the Broke-Back Schoolmaster h. Story of the Split-Mouthed Schoolmaster i. Story of the Limping Schoolmaster j. Story of the Three Sisters and Their Mother the Sultanah 3. History of the Kazi Who Bare a Babe 4. Tale of the Kazi and the Bhang-Eater a. History of the Bhang-Eater and His Wife b. How Drummer Abu Kasim Became a Kazi c. Story of the Kazi and His Slipper d. Tale of Mahmud the Persian and the Kurd Sharper e. Tale of the Sultan and the Poor Man Who Brought To Him Fruit f. The Fruit-Seller's Tale g. Tale of the Sultan and His Three Sons and the Enchanting Bird h. Adventure of the Fruit-Seller and the Concubine i. Story of the King of Al-Yaman and His Three Sons and the Enchanting Bird j. History of the First Larrikin k. History of the Second Larrikin l. History of the Third Larrikin m. Story of a Sultan of Al-Hind and His Son Mohammed n. Tale of the Fisherman and His Son o. Tale of the Third Larrikin Concerning Himself 5. History of Abu Niyyah and Abu Niyyatayn Appendix A: - Inepti? Bodleian? Appendix B: - The Three Untranslated Tales in Mr. E. J. W. Gibb's "Forty Vezirs"

The Translator's Foreword.
As my first and second volumes (Supplemental) were composed of translated extracts from the Breslau Edition of The Nights, so this tome and its successor (vols. iv. and v.) comprise my version from the (Edward) Wortley Montague Codex immured in the old Bodleian Library, Oxford.
Absence from England prevents for the present my offering a satisfactory description of this widely known manuscript; but I may safely promise that the hiatus shall be filled up in vol. v., which is now ready for the press.
The contents of the Wortley Montague text are not wholly unfamiliar to Europe. In 1811 Jonathan Scott, LL.D. Oxon. (for whom see my vols. i., ix. and x. 434), printed with Longmans and Co. his "Arabian Nights Entertainments" in five substantial volumes 8vo, and devoted a sixth and last to excerpts entitled
TALES SELECTED FROM THE MANUSCRIPT COPY OF THE 1001 NIGHTS BROUGHT TO EUROPE BY EDWARD WORTLEY MONTAGUE, ESQ. Translated from the Arabic BY JONATHAN SCOTT, LL.D.
Unfortunately for his readers Scott enrolled himself amongst the acolytes of Professor Galland, a great and original genius in the line Raconteur, and a practical Orientalist whose bright example was destined to produce disastrous consequences. The Frenchman, however unscrupulous he might have been about casting down and building up in order to humour the dead level of Gallican bon go?t, could, as is shown by his "Aladdin," trans- late literatim and verbatim when the story-stuff is of the right species and acceptable to the average European taste. But, as generally happens in such cases, his servile suite went far beyond their master and model. Petis de la Croix ("Persian and Turkish Tales"), Chavis and Cazotte ("New Arabian Nights"), Dow ("Ináyatu llah") and Morell ("Tales of the Genii"), with others manifold whose names are now all but forgotten, carried out the Gallandian liberties to the extreme of licence and succeeded in producing a branchlet of literature, the most vapid, frigid and insipid that can be imagined by man,--a bastard Europeo-Oriental, pseudo-Eastern world of Western marionettes garbed in the gear which Asiatic are (or were) supposed to wear, with sentiments and opinions, manners and morals to match; the whole utterly lacking life, local colour, vraisemblance, human interest. From such abortions, such monstrous births, libera nos, Domine!
And Scott out-gallanded Galland:--
Diruit, aedificat, mutat quadrata rotundis.
It is hard to quote a line which he deigned textually to translate. He not only commits felony on the original by abstracting whole sentences and pages ad libitum, but he also thrusts false goods into his author's pocket and patronises the unfortunate Eastern story-teller by foisting upon him whatever he, the "translator and traitor," deems needful. On this point no more need be said: the curious reader has but to compare any one of Scott's "translations" with the original or, for that matter, with the present version.
I determined to do that for Scott which Lane had done partly and imperfectly, and Payne had successfully and satisfactorily done for Galland. But my first difficulty was about the text. It was impossible to face without affright the prospect of working for months amid the discomforts and the sanitary dangers of Oxford's learned atmosphere and in her obsolete edifices the Bodleian and the Radcliffe. Having ascertained, however, that in the so-called "University" not a scholar could be found to read