Europe, is ignored by The Nights. I do not say it actually began:
diseases do not begin except with the dawn of humanity; and their
history, as far as we know, is simple enough. They are at first sporadic
and comparatively non-lethal: at certain epochs which we can determine,
and for reasons which as yet we cannot, they break out into epidemics
raging with frightful violence: they then subside into the endemic state
and lastly they return to the milder sporadic form. For instance,
“English cholera” was known of old: in 1831 (Oct. 26) the Asiatic type
took its place and now, after sundry violent epidemics, the disease is
becoming endemic on the Northern seaboard of the Mediterranean, notably
in Spain and Italy. So small-pox (Al-judrí, vol. i. 254) passed over
from Central Africa to Arabia in the year of Mohammed’s birth (A.D. 570)
and thence overspread the civilised world, as an epidemic, an endemic
and a sporadic successively. The “Greater Pox” has appeared in human
bones of prehistoric graves and Moses seems to mention gonorrhœa (Levit.
xv. 12). Passing over allusions in Juvenal and Martial,[186] we find
Eusebius relating that Galerius died (A.D. 302) of ulcers on the
genitals and other parts of his body; and, about a century afterwards,
Bishop Palladius records that one Hero, after conversation with a
prostitute, fell a victim to an abscess on the penis (phagedænic
shanker?). In 1347 the famous Joanna of Naples founded (æt. 23), in her
town of Avignon, a bordel whose inmates were to be medically inspected—a
measure to which England (proh pudor!) still objects. In her Statuts du
Lieu-publique d’Avignon, No. iv. she expressly mentions the _Mal vengut
de paillardise_. Such houses, says Ricord who studied the subject since
1832, were common in France after A.D. 1200; and sporadic venereals were
known there. But in A.D. 1493–94 an epidemic broke out with alarming
intensity at Barcelona, as we learn from the “Tractado llamado fructo de
todos los Sanctos contra el mal serpentino, venido de la Isla espanola,”
of Rodrigo Ruiz Días, the specialist. In Santo Domingo the disease was
common under the names Hipas, Guaynaras and Taynastizas: hence the
opinion in Europe that it arose from the mixture of European and
“Indian” blood.[187] Some attributed it to the Gypsies who migrated to
Western Europe in the xvth century:[188] others to the Moriscos expelled
from Spain. But the pest got its popular name after the violent outbreak
at Naples in A.D. 1493–4, when Charles VIII. of Anjou with a large army
of mercenaries, Frenchmen, Spaniards, and Germans, attacked Ferdinand
II. Thence it became known as the Mal de Naples and Morbus Gallicus—una
gallica being still the popular term in neo-Latin lands—and the “French
disease” in England. As early as July 1496 Marin Sanuto (Journal i. 171)
describes with details the “Mal Franzoso.” The scientific “syphilis”
dates from Fracastori’s poem (A.D. 1521) in which Syphilus the Shepherd
is struck like Job, for abusing the sun. After crippling a Pope (Sixtus
IV.[189]) and killing a King (Francis I.) the Grosse Vérole began to
abate its violence, under the effects of mercury it is said; and became
endemic, a stage still shown at Scherlievo near Fiume, where legend says
it was implanted by the Napoleonic soldiery. The Aleppo and other
“buttons” also belong apparently to the same grade. Elsewhere it settled
as a sporadic and now it appears to be dying out while gonorrhœa is on
the increase.[190]
The Nights, I have said, belongs to the days before coffee (A.D. 1550)
and tobacco (A.D. 1650) had overspread the East. The former, which
derives its name from the Káfá or Káffá province, lying south of
Abyssinia proper and peopled by the Sidáma Gallas, was introduced to
Mokha of Al-Yaman in A.D. 1429–30 by the Shaykh al-Sházili who lies
buried there, and found a congenial name in the Arabic Kahwah = old
wine.[191] In The Nights (Mac. Edit.) it is mentioned twelve times[192];
but never in the earlier tales: except in the case of Kamar al-Zaman II.
it evidently does not belong to the epoch and we may fairly suspect the
scribe. In the xvith century coffee began to take the place of wine in
the nearer East; and it gradually ousted the classical drink from daily
life and from folk-tales.
It is the same with tobacco, which is mentioned only once by The Nights
(cmxxxi.), in conjunction with meat, vegetables and fruit and where it
is called “Tábah.” Lane (iii. 615) holds it to be the work of a copyist;
but in the same tale of Abu Kir and Abu Sir, sherbet and coffee appear
to have become en vogue, in fact to have gained the ground they now
hold. The result of Lord Macartney’s Mission to China was a suggestion
that smoking might have originated spontaneously in the Old World.[193]
This is undoubtedly true. The Bushmen and other wild tribes of Southern
Africa threw their Dakhá (_cannabis indica_) on the fire and sat round
it inhaling the intoxicating fumes. Smoking without tobacco was easy
enough. The North American Indians of the Great Red Pipe Stone Quarry
and those who lived above the line where nicotiana grew, used the
kinni-kinik or bark of the red willow and some seven other
succedanea.[194] But tobacco proper, which soon superseded all materials
except hemp and opium, was first adopted by the Spaniards of Santo
Domingo in A.D. 1496 and reached England in 1565. Hence the word, which,
amongst the so-called Red Men, denoted the pipe, the container, not the
contained, spread over the Old World as a generic term with additions,
like “Tutun,”[195] for especial varieties. The change in English manners
brought about by the cigar after dinner has already been noticed; and
much of the modified sobriety of the present day may be attributed to
the influence of the Holy Herb en cigarette. Such, we know from history
was its effect amongst Moslems; and the normal wine-parties of The
Nights suggest that the pipe was unknown even when the latest tales were
written.
C.
We know absolutely nothing of the author or authors who produced our
marvellous Recueil. Galland justly observes (Epist. Dedic.), “probably
this great work is not by a single hand; for how can we suppose that one
man alone could own a fancy fertile enough to invent so many ingenious
fictions?” Mr. Lane, and Mr. Lane alone, opined that the work was
written in Egypt by one person or at most by two, one ending what the
other had begun, and that he or they had re-written the tales and
completed the collection by new matter composed or arranged for the
purpose. It is hard to see how the distinguished Arabist came to such a
conclusion: at most it can be true only of the editors and scribes of
MSS. evidently copied from each other, such as the Mac. and the Bul.
texts. As the Reviewer (Forbes Falconer?) in the “Asiatic Journal” (vol.
xxx., 1839) says, “Every step we have taken in the collation of these
agreeable fictions has confirmed us in the belief that the work called
the _Arabian Nights_ is rather a vehicle for stories, partly fixed and
partly arbitrary, than a collection fairly deserving, from its constant
identity with itself, the name of a distinct work, and the reputation of
having wholly emanated from the same inventive mind. To say nothing of
the improbability of supposing that one individual, with every license
to build upon the foundation of popular stories, a work which had once
received a definite form from a single writer, would have been
multiplied by the copyist with some regard at least to his arrangement
of words as well as matter. But the various copies we have seen bear
about as much mutual resemblance as if they had passed through the
famous process recommended for disguising a plagiarism: ‘Translate your
English author into French and again into English.’”
Moreover, the style of the several Tales, which will be considered in a
future page (§ iii.), so far from being homogeneous, is heterogeneous in
the extreme. Different nationalities show themselves; West Africa, Egypt
and Syria are all represented and, while some authors are intimately
familiar with Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo, others are equally ignorant.
All copies, written and printed, absolutely differ in the last tales and
a measure of the divergence can be obtained by comparing the Bresl.
Edit. with the Mac. text: indeed it is my conviction that the MSS.
preserved in Europe would add sundry volumes full of tales to those
hitherto translated; and here the Wortley Montagu copy can be taken as a
test. We may, I believe, safely compare the history of The Nights with
the so-called Homeric poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, a collection of
immortal ballads and old Epic formulæ and verses traditionally handed
down from rhapsode to rhapsode, incorporated in a slowly-increasing body
of poetry and finally welded together about the age of Pericles.
To conclude. From the data above given I hold myself justified in
drawing the following deductions:—
1. The framework of the book is purely Persian perfunctorily
Arabised; the archetype being the Hazár Afsánah.[196]
2. The oldest tales, such as Sindibad (the Seven Wazirs) and King
Jili’ád, may date from the reign of Al-Mansur, eighth century A.D.
3. The thirteen tales mentioned above (p. 81) as the nucleus of the
Repertory, together with “Dalilah the Crafty,”[197] may be placed in
our tenth century.
4. The latest tales, notably Kamar al-Zaman the Second and Ma’aruf
the Cobbler, are as late as the sixteenth century.
5. The work assumed its present form in the thirteenth century.
6. The author is unknown for the best reason; there never was one:
for information touching the editors and copyists we must await the
fortunate discovery of some MSS.
§ II.
THE NIGHTS IN EUROPE.
The history of The Nights in Europe is one of slow and gradual
development. The process was begun (1704–17) by Galland, a Frenchman,
continued (1823) by Von Hammer, an Austro-German, and finished by Mr.
John Payne (1882–84) an Englishman. But we must not forget that it is
wholly and solely to the genius of the Gaul that Europe owes The
“Arabian Nights’ Entertainments” over which Western childhood and youth
have spent so many spelling hours. Antoine Galland was the first to
discover the marvellous fund of material for the story-teller buried in
the Oriental mine; and he had in a high degree that art of telling a
tale which is far more captivating than culture or scholarship. Hence
his delightful version (or perversion) became one of the world’s
classics and at once made Sheherazade and Dinarzarde, Haroun Alraschid,
the Calendars and a host of other personages as familiar to the home
reader as Prospero, Robinson Crusoe, Lemuel Gulliver and Dr. Primrose.
Without the name and fame won for the work by the brilliant paraphrase
of the learned and single-minded Frenchman, Lane’s curious hash and
latinized English, at once turgid and emasculated, would have found few
readers. Mr. Payne’s admirable version appeals to the Orientalist and
the “stylist,” not to the many-headed; and mine to the anthropologist
and student of Eastern manners and customs. Galland did it and alone he
did it: his fine literary _flaire_, his pleasing style, his polished
taste and perfect tact at once made his work take high rank in the
republic of letters nor will the immortal fragment ever be superseded in
the infallible judgment of childhood. As the Encyclopædia Britannica has
been pleased to ignore this excellent man and admirable Orientalist,
numismatologist and littérateur, the reader may not be unwilling to see
a short sketch of his biography.[198]
Antoine Galland was born in A.D. 1646 of peasant parents “poor and
honest” at Rollot, a little bourg in Picardy some two leagues from
Montdidier. He was a seventh child and his mother, left a widow in early
life and compelled to earn her livelihood, saw scant chance of educating
him when the kindly assistance of a Canon of the Cathedral and President
of the Collége de Noyon relieved her difficulties. In this establishment
Galland studied Greek and Hebrew for ten years, after which the “strait
thing at home” apprenticed him to a trade. But he was made for letters;
he hated manual labour and he presently removed en cachette to Paris,
where he knew only an ancient kinswoman. She introduced him to a
priestly relative of the Canon of Noyon, who in turn recommended him to
the “Sous-principal” of the Collége Du Plessis. Here he made such
notable progress in Oriental studies, that M. Petitpied, a Doctor of the
Sorbonne, struck by his abilities, enabled him to study at the Collége
Royal and eventually to catalogue the Eastern MSS. in the great
ecclesiastical Society. Thence he passed to the Collége Mazarin, where a
Professor, M. Godouin, was making an experiment which might be revived
to advantage in our present schools. He collected a class of boys, aged
about four, and proposed to teach them Latin speedily and easily by
making them converse in the classical language as well as read and write
it.[199] Galland, his assistant, had not time to register success or
failure before he was appointed attaché-secretary to M. de Nointel named
in 1660 Ambassadeur de France for Constantinople. His special province
was to study the dogmas and doctrines and to obtain official
attestations concerning the articles of the Orthodox (or Greek)
Christianity which had then been a subject of lively discussion amongst
certain Catholics, especially Arnauld (Antoine) and Claude the Minister,
and which even in our day occasionally crops up amongst
“Protestants.”[200] Galland, by frequenting the cafés and listening to
the tale-teller, soon mastered Romaic and grappled with the religious
question, under the tuition of a deposed Patriarch and of sundry Matráns
or Metropolitans, whom the persecutions of the Pashas had driven for
refuge to the Palais de France. M. de Nointel, after settling certain
knotty points in the Capitulations, visited the harbour-towns of the
Levant and the “Holy Places,” including Jerusalem, where Galland copied
epigraphs, sketched monuments and collected antiques, such as the
marbles in the Baudelot Gallery of which Père Dom Bernard de Montfaucon
presently published specimens in his “Palæographia Græca,” etc.
(Parisiis, 1708).
In Syria Galland was unable to buy a copy of The Nights: as he expressly
states in his Epistle Dedicatory, _il a fallu le faire venir de Syrie_.
But he prepared himself for translating it by studying the manners and
customs, the religion and superstitions of the people; and in 1675,
leaving his chief, who was ordered back to Stambul, he returned to
France. In Paris his numismatic fame recommended him to MM. Vaillant,
Carcary and Giraud who strongly urged a second visit to the Levant, for
the purpose of collecting, and he set out without delay. In 1691 he made
a third journey, travelling at the expense of the Compagnie des
Indes-Orientales, with the main object of making purchases for the
Library and Museum of Colbert the magnificent. The commission ended
eighteen months afterwards with the changes of the Company, when Colbert
and the Marquis de Louvois caused him to be created “Antiquary to the
King,” Louis le Grand, and charged him with collecting coins and medals
for the royal cabinet. As he was about to leave Smyrna, he had a narrow
escape from the earthquake and subsequent fire which destroyed some
fifteen thousand of the inhabitants: he was buried in the ruins; but,
his kitchen being cold as becomes a philosopher’s, he was dug out
unburnt.[201]
Galland again returned to Paris where his familiarity with Arabic and
Hebrew, Persian and Turkish recommended him to MM. Thevenot and Bignon:
this first President of the Grand Council acknowledged his services by a
pension. He also became a favourite with D’Herbelot whose Bibliothèque
Orientale, left unfinished at his death, he had the honour of completing
and prefacing.[202] President Bignon died within the twelvemonth, which
made Galland attach himself in 1697 to M. Foucault, Councillor of State
and Intendant (governor) of Caen in Lower Normandy, then famous for its
academy: in his new patron’s fine library and numismatic collection he
found materials for a long succession of works, including a translation
of the Koran.[203] They recommended him strongly to the literary world
and in 1701 he was made a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et
Belles Lettres.
At Caen Galland issued in 1704,[204] the first part of his Mille et une
Nuits, Contes Arabes traduits en François which at once became famous as
“The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments.” Mutilated, fragmentary and
paraphrastic though the tales were, the glamour of imagination, the
marvel of the miracles and the gorgeousness and magnificence of the
scenery at once secured an exceptional success: it was a revelation in
romance, and the public recognised that it stood in presence of a
monumental literary work. France was a-fire with delight at a something
so new, so unconventional, so entirely without purpose, religious, moral
or philosophical: the Oriental wanderer in his stately robes was a
startling surprise to the easy-going and utterly corrupt Europe of the
_ancien régime_ with its indecently tight garments and perfectly loose
morals. “Ils produisirent,” said Charles Nodier, a genius in his way,
“dès le moment de leur publication, cet effet qui assure aux productions
de l’esprit une vogue populaire, quoiqu’ils appartinssent à une
littérature peu connue en France; et que ce genre de composition admît
ou plutôt exigeât des détails de moeurs, de caractère, de costume et de
localités absolument étrangers à toutes les idées établies dans nos
contes et nos romans. On fut étonné du charme qui résultait de leur
lecture. C’est que la vérité des sentimens, la nouveauté des tableaux,
une imagination féconde en prodiges, un coloris plein de chaleur,
l’attrait d’une sensibilité sans prétention, et le sel d’un comique sans
caricature, c’est que l’esprit et le naturel enfin plaisent partout, et
plaisent à tout le monde.”[205]
The Contes Arabes at once made Galland’s name and a popular tale is told
of them and him known to all reviewers who, however, mostly mangle it.
In the Biographie Universelle of Michaud[206] we find:—Dans les deux
premiers volumes de ces contes l’exorde était toujours, “Ma chère sœur,
si vous ne dormez pas, faites-nous un de ces contes que vous savez.”
Quelques jeunes gens, ennuyés de cette plate uniformité, allèrent une
nuit qu’il faisait très-grand froid, frapper à la porte de l’auteur, qui
courut en chemise à sa fenêtre. Après l’avoir fait morfondre quelque
temps par diverses questions insignifiantes, ils terminèrent en lui
disant, “Ah, Monsieur Galland, si vous ne dormez pas, faites-nous un de
ces beaux contes que vous savez si bien.” Galland profita de la leçon,
et supprima dans les volumes suivants le préambule qui lui avait attiré
la plaisanterie. This legend has the merit of explaining why the
Professor so soon gave up the Arab framework which he had deliberately
adopted.
The Nights was at once translated from the French[207] though when,
where and by whom no authority seems to know. In Lowndes’
“Bibliographer’s Manual” the English Editio Princeps is thus noticed,
“Arabian Nights’ Entertainments translated from the French, London,
1724, 12mo, 6 vols.” and a footnote states that this translation, very
inaccurate and vulgar in its diction, was often reprinted. In 1712
Addison introduced into the Spectator (No. 535, Nov. 13) the Story of
Alnaschar (= Al-Nashshár, the Sawyer) and says that his remarks on Hope
“may serve as a moral to an Arabian tale which I find translated into
French by Monsieur Galland.” His version appears, from the tone and
style, to have been made by himself, and yet in that year a second
English edition had appeared. The nearest approach to the Edit. Princeps
in the British Museum[208] is a set of six volumes bound in three and
corresponding with Galland’s first half dozen. Tomes i. and ii. are from
the fourth edition of 1713, Nos. iii. and iv. are from the second of
1712 and v. and vi. are from the third of 1715. It is conjectured that
the two first volumes were reprinted several times apart from their
subsequents, as was the fashion of the day; but all is mystery. We (my
friends and I) have turned over scores of books in the British Museum,
the University Library and the Advocates’ Libraries of Edinburgh and
Glasgow: I have been permitted to put the question in “Notes and
Queries” and in the “Antiquary”; but all our researches hitherto have
been in vain.
The popularity of The Nights in England must have rivalled their vogue
in France, judging from the fact that in 1713, or nine years after
Galland’s Edit. Prin. appeared they had already reached a fourth issue.
Even the ignoble national jealousy which prompted Sir William Jones
grossly to abuse that valiant scholar, Auquetil du Perron, could not mar
their popularity. But as there are men who cannot read Pickwick, so they
were not wanting who spoke of “Dreams of the distempered fancy of the
East.”[209] “When the work was first published in England,” says Henry
Webber,[210] “it seems to have made a considerable impression upon the
public.” Pope in 1720 sent two volumes (French? or English?) to Bishop
Atterbury, without making any remark on the work; but, from his very
silence, it may be presumed that he was not displeased with the perusal.
The bishop, who does not appear to have joined a relish for the flights
of imagination to his other estimable qualities, expressed his dislike
of these tales pretty strongly and stated it to be his opinion, formed
on the frequent descriptions of female dress, that they were the work of
some Frenchman (Petis de la Croix, a mistake afterwards corrected by
Warburton). The _Arabian Nights_, however, quickly made their way to
public favour. “We have been informed of a singular instance of the
effect they produced soon after their first appearance. Sir James
Stewart, Lord Advocate for Scotland, having one Saturday evening found
his daughters employed in reading these volumes, seized them with a
rebuke for spending the evening before the ‘Sawbbath’ in such worldly
amusement; but the grave advocate himself became a prey to the
fascination of the tales, being found on the morning of the Sabbath
itself employed in their perusal, from which he had not risen the whole
night.” As late as 1780 Dr. Beattie professed himself uncertain whether
they were translated or fabricated by M. Galland; and, while Dr. Pusey
wrote of them “Noctes Mille et Una dictæ, quæ in omnium firmè populorum
cultiorum linguas conversæ, in deliciis omnium habentur, manibusque
omnium terentur,”[211] the amiable Carlyle, in the gospel according to
Saint Froude, characteristically termed them “downright lies” and
forbade the house to such “unwholesome literature.” What a sketch of
character in two words!
The only fault found in France with the Contes Arabes was that their
style is _peu correcte_; in fact they want classicism. Yet all Gallic
imitators, Trébutien included, have carefully copied their leader and
Charles Nodier remarks:—“Il me semble que l’on n’a pas rendu assez de
justice au style de Galland. Abondant sans être prolixe, naturel et
familier sans être lâche ni trivial, il ne manque jamais de cette
élégance qui résulte de la facilité, et qui présente je ne sais quel
mélange de la naïveté de Perrault et de la bonhomie de La Fontaine.”
Our Professor, with a name now thoroughly established, returned in 1706
to Paris, where he was an assiduous and efficient member of the Société
Numismatique and corresponded largely with foreign Orientalists. Three
years afterwards he was made Professor of Arabic at the Collége de
France, succeeding Pierre Dippy; and, during the next half decade, he
devoted himself to publishing his valuable studies. Then the end came.
In his last illness, an attack of asthma complicated with pectoral
mischief, he sent to Noyon for his nephew Julien Galland[212] to assist
him in ordering his MSS. and in making his will after the simplest
military fashion: he bequeathed his writings to the Bibliothèque du Roi,
his Numismatic Dictionary to the Academy and his Alcoran to the Abbé
Bignon. He died, aged sixty-nine on February 17, 1715, leaving his
second Part of The Nights unpublished.[213]
Professor Galland was a French littérateur of the good old school which
is rapidly becoming extinct. Homme vrai dans les moindres choses (as his
Éloge stated); simple in life and manners and single-hearted in his
devotion to letters, he was almost childish in worldly matters, while
notable for penetration and acumen in his studies. He would have been as
happy, one of his biographers remarks, in teaching children the elements
of education as he was in acquiring his immense erudition. Briefly,
truth and honesty, exactitude and indefatigable industry characterised
his most honourable career.
Galland informs us (Epist. Ded.) that his MS. consisted of four volumes,
only three of which are extant,[214] bringing the work down to Night
cclxxxii., or about the beginning of “Camaralzaman.” The missing
portion, if it contained like the other volumes 140 pages, would end
that tale together with the Stories of Ghánim and the Enchanted (Ebony)
Horse; and such is the disposition in the Bresl. Edit. which mostly
favours in its ordinance the text used by the first translator. But this
would hardly have filled more than two-thirds of his volumes; for the
other third he interpolated, or is supposed to have interpolated, the
ten[215] following tales.
1. Histoire du prince Zeyn Al-asnam et du Roi des Génies.[216]
2. Histoire de Codadad et de ses frères.
3. Histoire de la Lampe merveilleuse (Aladdin).
4. Histoire de l’aveugle Baba Abdalla.
5. Histoire de Sidi Nouman.
6. Histoire de Cogia Hassan Alhabbal.
7. Histoire d’Ali Baba, et de Quarante Voleurs exterminés par une
Esclave.
8. Histoire d’Ali Cogia, marchand de Bagdad.
9. Histoire du prince Ahmed et de la fée Peri-Banou.
10. Histoire de deux Sœurs jalouses de leur Cadette.[217]