that my manner of writing is well adapted to the matter appears from the
consensus of the “Notices” presently to be quoted. Mr. J. Addington
Symonds pronounces the version to be executed with “peculiar literary
vigour.” Mr. Swinburne is complimentary and even the _Saturday_ deigns
to declare “Captain Burton is certainly felicitous in the manner in
which he has englished the picturesque lines of the original.” But _le
style est de l’homme_; and this is a matter upon which any and every
educated man who writes honestly will form and express and retain his
own opinion: there are not a few who loathe “Pickwick,” and who cannot
relish _Vanity Fair_. So the _Edinburgh Review_ No. 335 (pp. 174, 181),
concerning which more anon, pronounces my work to be “a jumble of the
vulgarest slang of all nations;” also “an unreadable compound of
archæology and ‘slang,’ abounding in Americanisms, and full of an
affected reaching after obsolete or foreign words and phrases;” and
finally shows the assurance to assert “Captain Burton has produced a
version which is neither Arabic nor English, but which has at least the
merit of being beautifully unreadable” (p. 182).
It has been circulated widely enough by the Lane-Poole clique—_poules
mouillées_ they are called by an Arabist friend—that I do not know
Arabic. Let me at once plead guilty to the charge, adding by way of
_circonstance atténuante_ that I know none who does know or who can
thoroughly know a tongue of which we may say as did honest Izaak Walton
of other two crafts, “angling be so like the mathematics that it can
never be fully learned.” Most of us can master one section of a language
concerning which those who use it vernacularly declare “Only Allah
wotteth its entirety”; but we lack as yet the means to study it as a
whole. Older by long ages than Babel’s fabulous Tower, and covering a
continuous area from Eastern Arabia to the Maghrab al-Aksá (western
Mauritania), from Chaldæa in the north to southern Zanzibar, it numbers
of potential vocabulary 1,200,000 words all of which may be, if they are
not, used; and while they specify the finest shades of meaning, not a
few of them, technically termed “Zidd,” bear significations
diametrically opposite, _e.g._, “Maulá” = lord, slave; and “’Ajúz” with
88 different meanings. Its literature, poetic, semi-poetic and prosaic,
falls into three greater sections:—Ancient (The Suspendeds, the Kitáb
al-Aghání and the Koran), Mediæval (Al-Mutanabbi, Al-Asm’ái, Abú Nowás
and the poets of the Harunic cycle) and Moderns, of whom not the least
important (_e.g._ Yúsuf al-Yazají) are those of our own day. Throughout
its vast domain there are local differences of terminology which render
every dialect a study; and of these many are intimately connected with
older families, as the Egyptian with Coptic and the Moorish with Berber.
The purest speakers are still the Badawín who are often not understood
by the citizen-folk (_e.g._ of Cairo, Damascus and Baghdad) at whose
gates they tent; and a few classes like the Banú Fahim of Al-Hijáz still
converse sub-classically, ever and anon using the terminal vowels and
the nunnation elsewhere obsolete. These wildlings, whose evening
camp-fires are still their schools for eloquence and whose
improvisations are still their unwritten laws, divide speech into three
degrees; Al-’Áli the lofty addressed to the great, Al-Wasat used for
daily converse and Al-Dún the lowly or broken “loghat” (jargon)
belonging to most tribes save their own. In Egypt the purest speakers
are those of the Sa’íd—the upper Nile-region—differing greatly from the
two main dialects of the Delta: in Syria, where the older Aramean is
still current amongst sundry of the villagers outlying Damascus, the
best Arabists are the Druzes, a heterogeneous amalgam of Arabs and Kurds
who cultivate language with uncommon care. Of the dialectic families
which subtend the Mediterranean’s southern sea-board, the Maroccan and
the Algerine are barbarised by Berber, by Spanish and by Italian words
and are roughened by the inordinate use of the Sukún (quiescence or
conjoining of consonants); while the Tunisian approaches nearer to the
Syrian and the Maltese was originally Punic. The jargon of Meccah is
confessedly of all the worst. But the wide field has been scratched not
worked out, and the greater part of it, especially the Mesopotamian and
the Himyaritic of Mahrahland, still remains fallow and the reverse of
sterile.
Materials for the study of Arabic in general and of its dialects in
particular are still deficient and the dictionaries mostly content
themselves with pouring old stuff from flask to flask, instead of
collecting fresh and unknown material. Such are recueils of prayers and
proverbs, folk-songs and stories, riddles and satires, not forgetting
those polyglot vocabularies so common in many parts of the Eastern
world, notably in Sind and Afghánistán; and the departmental glossaries
such as the many dealing with “Tasawwuf”—the Moslem form of Gnosticism.
The excellent lexicon of the late Professor Dozy, _Supplément aux
Dictionnaires Arabes_, par R. Dozy, Leyde: E. J. Brill, 1881, was a step
in advance; but we still lack additions like Baron Adolph Von Kremer’s
_Beitrage zur Arabischen Lexicographie_ (_In commission bei Carl
Gerold’s_ Sohn, Wien, 1884.) The French, as might be expected began
early, _e.g._ M. Ruphy’s _Dictionnaire abrégé français-arabe, Paris,
Imprimerie de la Republique, An 10_; they have done good work in Algiers
and are now carrying it on in Tunis. Of these we have Marcel,
_Vocabulaire_, etc. (Paris, 1837); Bled de Braine (Paris, 1846), who to
his _Cours Synthétique_ adds a study of Maroccan and Egyptian; Professor
Cherbonneau (Paris, 1854) _Précis Historique_, and _Dialogues_, etc.,
(Alger, 1858); M. Gasselin (Paris, 1866) _Dictionnaire français-arabe_;
M. Brassier (Algiers, 1871) _Dictionnaire pratique_ also containing
Algerine and Tunisian terms; General Parmentier (_Vocabulaire
arabe-français des Principaux Termes de Geógraphie_, etc.: Paris, rue
Antoine-Dubois, 1882); and, to mention no others, the _Grammaire Arabe
Vulgaire_ (Paris, 1824) of M. Caussin de Perceval (fils) has extended
far and wide. Berggren (Upsal, 1844) published his _Guide Français-Arabe
des Voyageurs en Syrie et en Egypte_. Rowland de Bussy printed (Algiers,
1877) his _Dialogues Français-Arabes_ in the Algerian dialect. Fr. José
de Lerchundi, a respected Missioner to Tangier has imitated and even
improved upon this in his _Rudimentos del Arabe Vulgar_ (Madrid,
Rivadeneyra, 1872); and his studies of the Maghrabi dialect are most
valuable. Dr. A. Socin produced his _Arabische Sprichwörter_, etc.,
(Tubingen, 1878), and the late Wilhelm Spitta-Bey, whose early death was
so deeply lamented, left a grammar of Egyptian which would have been a
model had the author brought to his task more knowledge of Coptic in his
_Grammatik des Arabischen vulgär dialektes von Ægypten, Leipzig_, 1870.
Dr. Landberg published with Brill of Leyden and Maisonneuve, of Paris,
1883, a volume of Syrian Proverbs and promises some five others—No. 2,
Damascus and the Haurán; No. 3, Kasrawán and the Nusayriyah; No. 4,
Homs, Hamah and Halab (Aleppo), and No. 5, the Badawin of Syria. It is
evident that the process might be prolonged _ad infinitum_ by a writer
of whom I shall have something to say presently. M. Clément Huart (Jour.
Asiat. Jan. ’83), has printed notes on the dialect of Damascus: Dr. C.
Snouck Hurgronje published a collection of 77 proverbs and idioms with
lengthy notes in his _Mehkanische Sprichwörter_, etc. (Haag, Martinus
Nijhoff, 1886), after being expelled from Meccah by the Turkish
authorities who had discovered him only through a Parisian journal _Le
Temps_ (see his _Het Mekkanshe Feest, Leyden_, 1880). For the lower Najd
and upper Hijaz we have the glossary of Arabic words ably edited by
Prof. M. J. de Goeje in Mr. Charles M. Doughty’s valuable and fantastic
“Arabia Deserta” (ii. 542–690: see _The Academy_, July 28th, ’88). Thus
the local vocabularies are growing, but it will be long before the
ground is covered.
Again the East, and notably the Moslem East since the Massacre of
Damascus in 1860, although still moving slowly, shows a distinct
advance. The once secluded and self-contained communities are now shaken
by the repeated and continuous shocks of progress around them; and new
wants and strange objects compel them nilly-willy to provide vernacular
equivalents for the nomenclature of modern arts and sciences. Thus the
Orientalist, who would produce a contemporary lexicon of Persian, must
not only read up all the diaries and journals of Teheran and the
vocabularies of Yezd and Herat, he must go further a-field. He should
make himself familiar with the speech of the Iliyát or wandering
pastoral tribes and master a host of cognate tongues whose chiefs are
Armenian (Old and New), Caucasian, a modern Babel; Kurdish, Lúri
(Bakhtiyári), Balochki and Pukhtú or Afghan, besides the direct
descendants of the Zend, the Pehlevi, Dari and so forth. Even in the
most barbarous jargons he will find terms which throw light upon the
literary Iranian of the lexicons: for instance “Mádiyán” = a mare
presupposes the existence of “Narayán” = a stallion, and the latter is
preserved by the rude patois of the Baloch mountaineers. This process of
general collection would in our day best be effected after the fashion
of Professor James A. H. Murray’s “New English Dictionary on Historical
Principles.” It would be compiled by a committee of readers resident in
different parts of Persia, communicating with the Royal Asiatic Society
(whose moribund remains they might perhaps quicken) and acting in
co-operation with Russia, whom unfriends have converted from a friend to
an angry and jealous rival and who is ever so forward in the linguistic
field.
But if the model Persian dictionary have its difficulties, far harder
will be the task with Arabic which covers incomparably more ground. Here
we must begin with Spain and Portugal, Sardinia and the Balearics,
Southern Italy and Sicily; and thence pass over to Northern Africa and
the two “Soudans,” the Eastern extending far South of the Equator and
the Western nearly to the Line. In Asia, besides the vast Arabian
Peninsula, numbering one million of square miles, we find a host of
linguistic outliers, such as Upper Hindostan, the Concan, Malacca, Java
and even remote Yun-nan, where al-Islam is the dominant religion, and
where Arabic is the language of Holy Writ.
My initiation into the mysteries of Arabic began at Oxford under my
tutor Dr. W. A. Greenhill, who published a “Treatise on Small-pox and
Measles,” translated from Rhazes—Abú Bakr al-Rází (London, 1847); and
where the famous Arabist, Don Pascual de Gayangos, kindly taught me to
write Arabic leftwards. During eight years of service in Western India
and in Moslem Sind, while studying Persian and a variety of vernaculars,
it was necessary to keep up and extend a practical acquaintance with the
language which supplies all the religious and most of the metaphysical
phraseology; and during my last year at Sindian Karáchí (1849), I
imported a Shaykh from Maskat. Then work began in downright earnest.
Besides Erpenius’ (D’Erp) “Grammatica Arabica,” Richardson, De Sacy and
Forbes, I read at least a dozen Perso-Arabic works (mostly of pamphlet
form) on “Sarf Wa Nahw”—Accidence and Syntax—and learned by heart
one-fourth of the Koran. A succession of journeys and long visits at
various times to Egypt, a Pilgrimage to the Moslem Holy Land and an
exploration of the Arabic-speaking Somáli-shores and Harar-Gay in the
Galla country of Southern Abyssinia, added largely to my practice. At
Aden, where I passed the official examination, Captain (now Sir R.
Lambert) Playfair and the late Rev. G. Percy Badger, to whom my papers
were submitted, were pleased to report favourably of my proficiency.
During some years of service and discovery in Western Africa and the
Brazil my studies were necessarily confined to the “Thousand Nights and
a Night;” and when a language is not wanted for use my habit is to
forget as much of it as possible, thus clearing the brain for
assimilating fresh matter. At the Consulate of Damascus, however, in
West Arabian Midian and in Maroccan Tangier the loss was readily
recovered. In fact, of this and sundry other subjects it may be said
without immodesty that I have forgotten as much as many Arabists have
learned. But I repeat my confession that I do not know Arabic and I have
still to meet the man who does know Arabic.
Orientalists, however, are like poets and musicians, a rageous race. A
passing allusion to a Swedish student styled by others (Mekkanische
Sprichwörter etc. p. 1) “Dr. Landberg” and by himself “Doctor Count
Carlo Landberg” procured me the surprise of the following communication.
I quote it in full because it is the only uncourteous attempt at
correspondence upon the subject of The Nights which has hitherto been
forced upon me. In his introduction (p. xx.) to the Syrian _Proverbes et
Dictons_ Doctor Count Landberg was pleased to criticise, with less than
his usual knowledge, my study entitled “Proverbia Communia Syriaca”
(Unexplored Syria i. 264–294). These 187 “dictes” were taken mainly from
a MS. collection by one Hanná Misk, ex-dragoman of the British
Consulate, (Damascus), a little recueil for private use such as would be
made by a Syro-Christian _bourgeois_. Hereupon the critic absurdly
asserted that the translator _a voulu s’occuper de la langue classique
au lieu de se faire * * * l’interprète fidèle de celle du peuple_. My
reply was (The Nights, vol. viii. 148) that, as I was treating of
proverbs familiar to the better educated order of citizens, his critique
was not to the point; and this brought down upon me the following letter
under the ægis of a portentous coronet and initials blazing with or,
gules and azure.
PARIS, le _24 Févr., 1888_.
Monsieur,
J’ai l’honneur de vous adresser 2 fascicules de mes _Critica
Arabica_. Dans le vol. viii. p. 48 de votre traduction de 1001 Nuits
vous avez une note qui me regard (_sic_). Vous y dites que je ne
suis pas “Arabist.” Ce n’est pas votre jugement qui m’impressionne,
car vous n’êtes nullement à même de me juger. Votre article
contient, comme tout ce que vous avez écrit dans le domaine de la
langue arabe, des _bévues_. C’est vous qui n’êtes pas arabisant:
cela est bien connu et reconnu, et nous ne nous donnons pas même la
peine de relever toutes les innombrables erreurs dont vos
publications tourmillent. Quant à ليت vous êtes encore en erreur.
Mon étymologie est acceptée par tout le monde, et je vous renvoie à
Fleischer, Kleinre Schriften, p. 468, Leipzig. 1885, où vous
trouverez l’instruction nécessaire. Le dilettantism qui se trahit
dans tout ce que vous écrivez vous fait faire de telles erreurs.
Nous autres arabisants et professo (?) nous ne vous avons jamais et
nous ne vous pouvons jamais considérer comme arabisant. Voila ma
réponse à votre note. والسلام
Agréez, Monsieur,
l’expression de mes sentiments distingués,
COMTE LANDBERG,
Dr.-ès-lettres.
After these preliminaries I proceed to notice the article (No. 335, of
July ’86) in
_THE “EDINBURGH REVIEW,”_
and to explain its private history with the motives which begat it.
“This is the Augustan age of English criticism,” say the reviewers who
are fond of remarking that the period is one of literary appreciation
rather than of original production; that is, contemporary reviewers,
critics and monograph-writers are more important than “makers” in verse
or in prose. In fact it is their _aurea ætas_. I reply “Virgin ore, no!”
on the whole mixed metal some noble, much ignoble; a little gold, more
silver and an abundance of brass, lead and dross. There is the criticism
of Sainte-Beuve, of the late Matthew Arnold and of Swinburne; there is
also the criticism of the _Saturday Reviler_ and of the _Edinburgh
criticaster_. The golden is truth and honour incarnate: it possesses
outsight and insight: it either teaches and inspires or it comforts and
consoles, save when a strict sense of duty compels it to severity:
briefly, it is keen and guiding and creative. Let the young beginner
learn by rote what one master says of another:—“He was never provoked
into coarseness: his thrusts were made with the rapier according to the
received rules of fence; he firmly upheld the honour of his calling and
in the exercise of it was uniformly fearless, independent and
incorrupt.” The Brazen is partial, one-sided, tricksy, misleading,
immoral; serving personal and interested purposes and contemptuously
forgetful of every obligation which an honest and honourable pen owes to
the public and to itself. Such critiques bring no profit to the
reviewed. He feels that he has been written up or written down by a
literary hireling who has possibly been paid to praise or abuse him
secondarily, and primarily to exalt or debase his publisher or his
printer.
My own literary career has supplied me with many a curious study.
Writing upon subjects, say The Lake Regions of Central Africa, which
were then a type of the Unknown, I could readily trace in the
journalistic notices all the tricks and dodges of the trade. The rare
honest would confess that they could say nothing upon the subject; they
came to me therefore for information and professed themselves duly
thankful. The many dishonest had recourse to a variety of devices. The
hard worker would read-up voyages and travels treating of the
neighbouring countries, Abyssinia, the Cape and the African Coasts,
Eastern and Western; thus he would write in a kind of reflected light
without acknowledging his obligation to my volumes. Another would review
my book after the easy American fashion of hashing up the author’s
production, taking all its facts from me without disclosing that one
fact to the reader and then proceed to “butter” or “slash.” The worst,
“fulfyld with malace of froward entente,” would choose for theme not the
work but the worker, upon the good old principle “Abuse the plaintiffs
attorney.” These arts fully account for the downfall of criticism in our
day and the deafness of the public to such literary verdicts. But a few
years ago a favourable review in a first-rate paper was “fifty pounds in
the author’s pocket:” now it is not worth as many pence unless signed by
some well-known scribbling statesman or bustling reverend who caters for
the public taste. The decline and fall is well expressed in the old
lines:—
“Non est sanctior quod laudaris:
Non est vilior si vituperaris.”
“No one, now-a-days cares for reviews,” wrote Darwin as far back as
1840; and it is easy to see the whys and the wherefores. I have already
touched upon the duty of reviewing the reviewer when the latter’s work
calls for the process, despite the pretensions of modern criticism that
it must not be criticised. Although to buffet an anonym is to beat the
air still the very effort does good. A well-known and popular novelist
of the present day was a favourite butt for certain journalists who,
with the normal half-knowledge of men—
“That read too little, and that write too much”—
persistently fell foul of the points in which the author was almost
always right and the reviewer was wrong. “An eagle hawketh not at
flies:” the object of ill-natured satire despised——
“The creatures of the stall and stye,”
and persisted in contemptuous reticence, giving consent by silence to
what was easily refuted, and suffering a fond and foolish sentence to
misguide the public which it pretends to direct. “Take each man’s
censure but reserve thy judgment,” is a wise saying when silently
practised; it leads, however, to suffering in public esteem. The case in
question was wholly changed when, at my suggestion, the writer was
persuaded to catch a few of the culprits and to administer the dressing
and redressing they so richly deserved.
And now to my tale.
Mr. Henry Reeve, Editor of the _Edinburgh Review_, wrote to me shortly
before my first volume was issued to subscribers (September, ’85) asking
for advance sheets, as his magazine proposed to produce a general notice
of The Arabian Nights Entertainments. But I suspected the man whose
indiscretion and recklessness had been so unpleasantly paraded in the
shape of the Greville (Mr. Worldly Wiseman’s) Memoirs, and I had not
forgotten the untruthful and malignant articles of perfervid brutality
which during the hot youth and calm middle age of the _Edinburgh_ had
disgraced the profession of letters. My answer, which was temporising
and diplomatic, induced only a second and a more urgent application.
Bearing in mind that professional etiquette hardly justifies publicly
reviewing a book intended only for private reading and vividly
remembering the evil record of the periodical, I replied that the sheets
should be forwarded but on one condition; namely, that the reviewer
would not dwell too lovingly and longingly upon the “archaics,” which
had so excited the Tartuffean temperament of the chaste _Pall Mall
Gazette_. Mr. Henry Reeves replied (surlily) that he was not in the
habit of dictating to his staff and I rejoined by refusing to grant his
request. So he waited until five, that is one-half of my volumes had
been distributed to subscribers, and revenged himself by placing them
for review in the hands of the “Lane-Poole” clique which, as the sequel
proved could be noisy and combative as setting hens disturbed when their
nest-egg was threatened by an intruding hand.
For the clique had appropriated all right and claim to a monopoly of The
Arabian Nights Entertainments which they held in hand as a rotten
borough. The “Uncle and Master,” Mr. Edward William Lane, eponymous hero
of the house, had re-translated certain choice specimens of the
_Recueil_ and the “nephews of their uncle” resolved to make a private
gold-mine thereof. The book came out in monthly parts at half-a-crown
(1839–41), and when offered for sale in 3 vols. royal 8vo, the edition
of 5,000 hung fire at first until the high price (£3. 3s.) was reduced
to 27 shillings for the trade. The sale then went off briskly and amply
repaid the author and the publishers—Charles Knight and Co. And although
here and there some “old Tory” grumbled that new-fangled words (as
Wezeer, Kádee and Jinnee) had taken the places of his childhood’s pets,
the Vizier, the Cadi, and the Genie, none complained of the workmanship
for the all-sufficient reason that naught better was then known or could
be wanted. Its _succès de salon_ was greatly indebted to the “many
hundred engravings on wood, from original designs by William Harvey”;
with a host of quaint and curious Arabesques, Cufic inscriptions,
vignettes, head-pieces and _culs-de-lampes_. These, with the exception
of sundry minor accessories,[448] were excellent and showed for the
first time the realistic East and not the absurdities drawn from the
depths of artistical ignorance and self-consciousness—those of Smirke,
Deveria, Chasselot and Co., not to speak of the horrors of the De Sacy
edition, whose plates have apparently been used by Prof. Weil and by the
Italian versions. And so the three bulky and handsome volumes found a
ready way into many a drawing-room during the Forties, when the public
was uncritical enough to hail the appearance of these scattered chapters
and to hold that at last they had the real thing, pure and
unadulterated. No less than three reprints of the “Standard Edition,”
1859 (the last being in ’83) succeeded one another and the issue was
finally stopped, not by the author’s death (ætat 75; London, August 10,
1876: nat. Hereford, September 17, 1801), nor by the plates, which are
now the property of Messieurs Chatto and Windus, becoming too worn for
use, but simply by deficient demand. And the clique, represented by the
late Edward Lane-Poole in 1879, who edited the last edition (1883) with
a Preface by Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole, during a long run of forty-three
years never paid the public the compliment of correcting the
multitudinous errors and short-comings of the translation. Even the
lengthy and longsome notes, into which The Nights have too often been
merged, were left untrimmed. Valuable in themselves and full of
information, while wholly misplaced in a recueil of folk-lore, where
they stand like pegs behung with the contents of the translator’s
adversaria, the monographs on details of Arab life have also been
exploited and reprinted under the “fatuous” title, “Arabian (for
Egyptian) Society in the Middle Ages: Studies on The Thousand and One
Nights.” They were edited by Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole (Chatto and Windus)
in 1883.