pronounced unreadable. Goëthe, followed from afar by Emerson, had
foreseen the “inevitable increase of Oriental influence upon the
Occident,” and the eagerness with which the men of the West would apply
themselves to the languages and literature of the East. Such garbled and
mutilated, unsexed and unsouled versions and perversions like Lane’s
were felt to be survivals of the unfittest. Mr. John Payne (for whom see
my Foreword, vol. i. pp. xii.–xiii.) resolved to give the world the
first honest and complete version of the Thousand Nights and a Night. He
put forth samples of his work in the _New Quarterly Magazine_
(January-April, 1879), whereupon he was incontinently assaulted by Mr.
Reginald Stuart Poole, the then front of the monopolists, who after
drawing up a list of fifteen errata (which were not errata) in two
Nights, declared that “they must be multiplied five hundred-fold to give
the sum we may expect.” (The _Academy_, April 26, 1879; November 29,
1881; and December 7, 1881.) The critic had the courage, or rather
impudence, to fall foul of Mr. Payne’s mode and mannerism, which had
long become deservedly famous, and concludes:—“The question of English
style may for the present be dropped, as, if a translator cannot
translate, it little matters in what form his results appear. _But it
may be questioned whether an Arab edifice should be decorated with old
English wall-papers._”
Evidently I had scant reason to expect mercy from the clique: I wanted
none and I received none.
My reply to the arch-impostor, who
Spreads the light wings of saffron and of blue,
will perforce be somewhat detailed: it is necessary to answer paragraph
by paragraph, and the greater part of the thirty-three pages refers more
or less directly to myself. To begin with the beginning, it caused me
and many others some surprise to see the “Thousand Nights and a Night”
expelled the initial list of thirteen items, as if it were held unfit
for mention. _Cet article est principalement une diatribe contre
l’ouvrage de Sir Richard Burton, et dans le libre cet ouvrage n’est même
pas mentionné_, writes my French friend. This proceeding was a fair
specimen of “that impartiality which every reviewer is supposed to
possess.” But the ignoble “little dodge” presently suggested itself. The
preliminary excursus (p. 168) concerning the “Mille et Une Nuits (read
Nuit) an audacious fraud, though not the less the best story book in the
world,” affords us a useful measure of the writer’s competence in the
matter of audacity and ill-judgment. The honest and single-minded
Galland is here (let us believe through that pure ignorance which haply
may hope for “fool’s pardon”) grossly and unjustly vilified; and, by way
of making bad worse, we are assured (p. 167) that the Frenchman “brought
the Arabic manuscript from Syria”—an unfact which is surprising to the
most superficial student. “Galland was a born story-teller, in the good
and the bad sense” (p. 167) is a silly sneer of the true Lane-Poolean
type. The critic then compares most unadvisedly (p. 168) a passage in
Galland (De Sacy edit. vol. i. 414) with the same in Mr. Payne’s (i.
260) by way of proving the “extraordinary liberties which the worthy
Frenchman permitted himself to take with the Arabic”: had he troubled
himself to collate my version (i. 290–291), which is made fuller by the
Breslau Edit. (ii. 190), he would have found that the Frenchman, as was
his wont, abridged rather than amplified;[449] although, when the
original permitted exact translation, he could be literal enough. And
what doubt, may I enquire, can we have concerning “The Sleeper Awakened”
(Lane, ii. 351–376), or, as I call it, “The Sleeper and the Waker”
(Suppl. vol. i. 1–39), when it occurs in a host of MSS., not to mention
the collection of tales which Prof. Habicht converted into the Arabian
Nights by breaking the text into a thousand and one sections (Bresl.
Edit. iv. 134–189, Nights cclxxii.–ccxci.). The reckless assertions that
“the whole of the last fourteen (Gallandian) tales have nothing whatever
to do with ‘The Nights’” (p. 168); and that of the histories of Zayn
al-Asnám and Aladdin, “it is abundantly certain that they belong to no
manuscript of the Thousand and One Nights” (p. 169), have been notably
stultified by M. Hermann Zotenberg’s purchase of two volumes containing
both these bones of long and vain contention. See Foreword to my Suppl.
vol. iii. pp. viii.–xi., and Mr. W. F. Kirby’s interesting notice of M.
Zotenberg’s epoch-making booklet (vol. vi. p. 35).
“The first English edition was published (_pace_ Lowndes) within eight
years of Galland’s” (p. 170) states a mere error. The second part of
Galland (6 vols. 12mo) was not issued till 1717, or two years after the
translator’s death. Of the English editio princeps the critic tells
nothing, nor indeed has anyone as yet been able to tell us aught. Of the
dishonouring assertion (again let us hope made in simple ignorance)
concerning “Cazotte’s barefaced forgery” (p. 170), thus slandering the
memory of Jacques Cazotte, one of the most upright and virtuous of men
who ever graced the ranks of literature, I have disposed in the Foreword
to my Supplemental vol. vi. “This edition (Scott’s) was tastefully
reprinted by Messrs. Nimmo and Bain in four volumes in 1883” (p. 170).
But why is the reader not warned that the _eaux fortes_ are by Lalauze
(see suprà, p. 408), 19 in number, and taken from the 21 illustrations
in MM. Jouaust’s edit. of Galland with preface by J. Janin? Why also did
the critic not inform us that Scott’s sixth volume, the only original
part of the work, was wilfully omitted? This paragraph ends with
mentioning the labours of Baron von Hammer-Purgstall, concerning whom we
are afterwards told (p. 186) for the first time that he “was brilliant
and laborious.” Hard-working, yes! brilliant, by no means!
We now come to the glorification of the “Uncle and Master,” concerning
whom I can only say that Lane’s bitterest enemy (if the amiable
Orientalist ever had any unfriend) could not have done him more
discredit than this foolish friend. “His classical (!) translation was
at once recognised as an altogether new departure,” (p. 171) and “it was
written in such a manner that the Oriental tone of The Nights should be
reflected in the English.” (ibid.) “It aims at reproducing in some
degree the literary flavour of the original” (p. 173). “The style of
Lane’s translation is an old-fashioned somewhat Biblical language” (p.
173), and “it is precisely this antiquated ring” (of the imperfect and
mutilated “Boulak edition,” unwisely preferred by the translator) “that
Lane has succeeded in preserving.” “The measured and finished language
Lane chose for his version is eminently fitted to represent the
rhythmical tongue of the Arab” (Memoir, p. xxvii). “The translation
itself is distinguished by its singular accuracy and by the marvellous
way in which the Oriental tone and colour are retained” (ibid). The
writer has taken scant trouble to read me when he asserts that the Bulak
edit. was my text, and I may refer him for his own advantage, to my
Foreword (vol. i. p. xix), which he has wilfully ignored by stating
unfact. I hasten to plead guilty before the charge of “really
misunderstanding the design of Lane’s style” (p. 173). Much must be
pardoned to the panegyrist, the encomiast; but the idea of mentioning in
the same sentence with Biblical English, the noblest and most perfect
specimen of our prose, the stiff and bald, the vapid and turgid manner
of the Orientalist who “commences” and “concludes”—never begins and
ends; who never uses a short word if he can find a long word, who
systematically rejects terse and idiomatic Anglo-Saxon when a Latinism
is to be employed and whose pompous stilted periods are the very triumph
of the “Deadly-lively”! By arts precisely similar the learned George
Sale made the Koran, that pure and unstudied inspiration of Arabian
eloquence, dull as a law document, and left the field clear for the Rev.
Mr. Rodwell. I attempted to excuse the style-laches of Lane by noticing
the lack of study in English linguistic which distinguished the latter
part of the xviiith and the first half of the xixth centuries, when men
disdaining the grammar of their own tongue, learned it from Latin and
Greek; when not a few styled Shakespeare “silly-billy,” and when Lamb,
the essayist, wrote, “I can read, and I say it seriously, the homely old
version of the Psalms for an hour or two together sometimes, without
sense of weariness.” But the reviewer will have none of my palliative
process, he is surprised at my “posing as a judge of prose style,” being
“acquainted with my quaint perversions of the English language” (p. 173)
and, when combating my sweeping assertion that “our prose” (especially
the prose of schoolmasters and professors, of savans and Orientalists)
“was perhaps the worst in Europe,” he triumphantly quotes half a dozen
great exceptions whose eminence goes far to prove the rule.
As regards Lane’s unjustifiable excisions the candid writer tells us
everything but the truth. As I have before noted (vol. ix. 304), the
main reason was simply that the publisher, who was by no means a
business man, found the work outgrowing his limits and insisted upon its
coming to an untimely and, alas! a tailless end. This is perhaps the
principal cause for ignoring the longer histories, like King Omar bin
al-Nu’umán (occupying 371 pages in my vols. ii. and iii.); Abú Hasan and
his slave-girl Tawaddud (pp. 56, vol. v. 189–245); the Queen of the
Serpents with the episodes of Bulukiyá, and of Jánshah (pp. 98 vol. v.
298–396); The Rogueries of Dalilah the Crafty and the Adventures of
Mercury Ali (pp. 55 vol. vii. 144–209). The Tale of Harun al-Rashid and
Abu Hasan of Oman (pp. 19, vol. ix. 188–207) is certainly not omitted by
dictations of delicacy, nor is it true of the parts omitted in general
that “none could be purified without being destroyed.” As my French
friend remarks, “Few parts are so plain-spoken as the introduction, _le
cadre de l’ouvrage_, yet M. Lane was not deterred by such situation.”
And lastly we have, amongst the uncalled-for excisions, King Jali’ad of
Hind, etc. (pp. 102, vol. ix. 32–134). The sum represents a grand total
of 701 pages, while not a few of the notes are filled with unimportant
fabliaux and apologues.
But the critic has been grandly deceptive, either designedly or of
ignorance prepense, in his arithmetic. “There are _over four hundred_ of
these (anecdotes, fables, and stories) in the complete text, and Lane
_has not translated more than two hundred_” (p. 172). * * * “Adding the
omitted anecdotes to the omitted tales, it appears that Lane left out
about a third of the whole ‘Nights,’ and of that third at least
three-fourths was incompatible with a popular edition. When Mr. Payne
and Captain Burton boast of presenting the public ‘with three times as
much matter as any other version,’ they perhaps mean a third as much
again” (p. 173). * * * “Captain Burton records his opinion that Lane has
omitted half and by far the more characteristic half of the Arabian
Nights, but Captain Burton has a talent for exaggeration, and for
‘characteristic’ we should read ‘unclean.’ It is natural that he should
make the most of such omissions, since they form the _raison d’être_ of
his own translation; but he has widely overshot the mark, and the public
may rest assured that the tales omitted from the standard version (proh
pudor!) are of very slight importance in comparison with the tales
included in it” (p. 173).
What a mass of false statement!
Let us now exchange fiction for fact. Lane’s three volumes contain a
total, deducting 15 for index, of pp. 1995 (viz. 618 + 643 + 734); while
each (full) page of text averages 38 lines and of notes (in smaller
type) 48. The text with a number of illustrations represents a total of
pp. 1485 (viz. 441 + 449 + 595). Mr. Payne’s nine volumes contain a sum
of pp. 3057, mostly without breaks, to the 1485 of the “Standard
edition.” In my version the sum of pages, each numbering 41 lines, is
3156, or 1163 more than Lane’s total and 2671 more than his text.
Again, in Lane’s text the tales number 62 (viz. 35 + 14 + 13) and as has
been stated all the longest have been omitted, save only Sindbad the
Seaman. The anecdotes in the notes amount to 44½ (viz. 3½ + 35 + 6):
these are for the most part the merest outlines and include the 3½ of
volume i. viz. the Tale of Ibrahim al-Mausilí (pp. 223–24), the Tale of
Caliph Mu’áwiyah (i. pp. 521–22), the Tale of Mukhárik the Musician (i.
pp. 224–26), and the half tale of Umm ’Amr (i. p. 522). They are quoted
bodily from the “Halbat al-Kumayt” and from “the Kitáb al-Unwán fí
Makáid al-Niswán,” showing that at the early stage of his labours the
translator, who published in parts, had not read the book on which he
was working; or, at least, had not learned that all the three and a half
had been borrowed from The Nights. Thus the grand total is represented
by 106½ tales, and the reader will note the difference between 106½ and
the diligent and accurate reviewer’s “not much more than two hundred.”
In my version the primary tales amount to 171; the secondaries, &c., to
96 and the total to 267, while Mr. Payne has 266.[450] And these the
critic swells to “over four hundred!” Thus I have more than double the
number of pages in Lane’s text (allowing the difference between his 38
lines to an oft-broken page and my 41) and nearly two and a-half tales
to his one, and therefore I do _not_ mean “a third as much again.”
Thus, too, we can deal with the dishonest assertions concerning Lane’s
translation “not being absolutely complete” (p. 171) and that “nobody
desired to see the objectionable passages which constituted the bulk of
Lane’s omissions restored to their place in the text” (p. 175).
The critic now passes to The Uncle’s competence for the task, which he
grossly exaggerates. Mr. Lane had no “intimate acquaintance with
Mahommedan life” (p. 174). His “Manners and Customs of the Modern
Egyptians” should have been entitled “Modern Cairenes;” he had seen
nothing of Nile-land save what was shown to him by a trip to Philæ in
his first visit (1825–28) and another to Thebes during his second; he
was profoundly ignorant of Egypt as a whole, and even in Cairo he knew
nothing of woman-life and child-life—two thirds of humanity. I doubt if
he could have understood the simplest expression in baby language; not
to mention the many idioms peculiar to the Harem-nursery. The
characteristic of his work is geniality combined with a true affection
for his subject, but no scholar can ignore its painful superficiality.
His studies of legal theology gave him much weight with the Olema,
although, at the time when he translated The Nights, his knowledge of
Arabic was small. Hence the number of lapses which disfigures his pages.
These would have been excusable in an Orientalist working out of Egypt;
but Lane had a Shaykh ever at his elbow and he was always able to
command the assistance of the University Mosque, Al-Azhar. I need not
enter upon the invidious task of cataloguing these errors, especially as
the most glaring have been cursorily noticed in my volumes. Mr. Lane
after leaving Egypt became one of the best Arabic scholars of his day,
but his fortune did not equal his deserts. The Lexicon is a fine work
although sadly deficient in the critical sense, but after the labour of
thirty-four years (it began printing in 1863) it reached only the 19th
letter Ghayn (p. 2386). Then invidious Fate threw it into the hands of
Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole. With characteristic audacity he disdained to
seek the services of some German Professor, an order of men which,
rarely dining out and caring little for “Society,” can devote itself
entirely to letters; perhaps he hearkened to the silly charge against
the Teuton of minuteness and futility of research as opposed to “good
old English breadth and suggestiveness of treatment.” And the
consequence has been a “continuation” which serves as a standard whereby
to measure the excellence of the original work and the woful falling-off
and deficiencies of the sequel—the latter retaining of the former naught
save the covers.[451]
Of Mr. Lane’s Notes I have ever spoken highly: they are excellent and
marvellously misplaced—_non erat his locus_. The text of a story-book is
too frail to bear so ponderous a burden of classical Arabian lore, and
the annotations injure the symmetry of the book as a work of art. They
begin with excessive prolixity: in the Introduction these studies fill
27 closely printed pages to 14 of a text broken by cuts and vignettes.
In chapt. i. the proportion is pp. 20, notes: 15 text; and in chapt. ii.
it is pp. 20: 35. Then they become, under the publisher’s protest,
beautifully less; and in vol. iii. chapt. 30 (the last) they are pp. 5:
57. Long disquisitions, “On the initial Moslem formula,” “On the
Wickedness of Women,” “On Fate and Destiny,” “On Arabian Cosmogony,” “On
Slaves,” “On Magic,” “On the Two Grand Festivals,” all these being
appended to the Introduction and the first chapter, are mere _hors
d’œuvres_: such “copy” should have been reserved for another edition of
“The Modern Egyptians.” The substitution of chapters for Nights was
perverse and ill-judged as it could be; but it appears venial compared
with condensing the tales in a commentary, thus converting the Arabian
Nights into Arabian Notes. However, “Arabian Society in the Middle
Ages,” a legacy left by the “Uncle and Master”; and, like the tame and
inadequate “Selections from the Koran,” utilised by the grand-nephew,
has been of service to the _Edinburgh_. Also, as it appears three
several and distinct times in one article (pp. 166, 174, and 183), we
cannot but surmise that a main object of the critique was to advertise
the volume. Men are crafty in these days when practising the “puff
indirect.”
But the just complaint against Lane’s work is its sin of omission. The
partial Reviewer declares (pp. 174–75) that the Arabist “re-translated
The Nights in a practical spirit, omitting what was objectionable,
together with a few tales (!) that were, on the whole, uninteresting or
tautological, and enriching the work with a multitude of valuable notes.
We had now a scholarly version of the greater part of The Nights imbued
with the spirit of the East and rich in illustrative comment; and for
forty years no one thought of anything more, although Galland still kept
his hold on the nursery.” Despite this spurious apology, the critic is
compelled cautiously to confess (p. 172), “We are not sure that some of
these omissions were not mistaken;” and he instances “Abdallah the Son
of Fazil” and “Abu ’l-Hasan of Khorasan” (he means, I suppose, Abu Hasan
al-Ziyádi and the Khorasani Man (iv. 285),) whilst he suggests, “a
careful abridgment of the tale of Omar the Son of No’man” (ii. 77, etc.)
Let me add that wittiest and most rollicking of Rabelaisian skits, “Ali
the Persian and the Kurd Sharper” (iv. 149), struck-out in the very
wantonness of “respectability;” and the classical series, an Arabian
“Pilpay,” entitled “King Jali’ád of Hind and his Wazir Shimas” (iv. 32).
Nor must I omit to notice the failure most injurious to the work which
destroyed in it half the “spirit of the East.” Mr. Lane had no gift of
verse or rhyme: he must have known that the ten thousand lines of the
original Nights formed a striking and necessary contrast with the
narrative part, acting as _aria_ to _recitativo_. Yet he rendered them
only in the baldest and most prosaic of English without even the
balanced style of the French translations. He can be excused only for
one consideration—bad prose is not so bad as bad verse.
The ill-judged over-appreciation and glorification of Mr. Lane is
followed (p. 176), by the depreciation and bedevilment of Mr. John
Payne, who first taught the world what The Nights really is. We are told
that the author (like myself) “unfortunately did not know Arabic;” and
we are not told that he is a sound Persian scholar: however, “he
undoubtedly managed to pick up enough of the language (!) to understand
The Arabian Nights with the assistance of the earlier translations of
(by?) Torrens and Lane,” the former having printed only one volume out
of some fifteen. This critic thinks proper now to ignore the “old
English wall-papers,” of Mr. R. S. Poole, indeed he concedes to the
translator of Villon, a “genius for language,” a “singular robust and
masculine prose, which for the present purpose he intentionally weighted
with archaisms and obsolete words but without greatly injuring its force
or brilliancy” (p. 177). With plausible candour he also owns that the
version “is a fine piece of English; it is also, save where the
exigencies of rhyme compelled a degree of looseness, remarkably literal”
(p. 178). Thus the author is damned with faint praise by one who utterly
fails to appreciate the portentous difference between linguistic genius
and linguistic mediocrity, and the Reviewer proceeds, “a careful
collation” (we have already heard what his “careful” means) “of the
different versions with their originals leads us to the conclusion that
Mr. Payne’s version is _little less faithful than Lane’s_ in those parts
which are common to both, and is practically as close a rendering as is
desirable” (p. 178). Tell the truth, man, and shame the Devil! I assert
and am ready to support that the “Villon version” is incomparably
superior to Lane’s not only in its simple, pure and forcible English,
but also in its literal and absolute correctness, being almost wholly
free from the blunders and inaccuracies which everywhere disfigure
Torrens, and which are rarely absent from Lane. I also repeat that
wherever the style and the subject are the most difficult to treat, Mr.
Payne comes forth most successfully from the contest, thus giving the
best proof of his genius and capacity for painstaking. Of the metrical
part which makes the Villon version as superior to Lane’s as virgin gold
to German silver, the critique offers only three inadequate specimens
specially chosen and accompanied with a growl that “the verse is nothing
remarkable” (p. 177) and that the author is sometimes “led into extreme
liberties with the original” (_ibid._). Not a word of praise for
mastering the prodigious difficulties of the monorhyme!