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. 256) 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 pre historic graves and Moses seems to mention
gonorrhœa (Levit. xv. 12). Passing over allusions in Juvenal and
Martial,[FN#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 in-mates
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.[FN#187] Some
attributed it to the Gypsies who migrated to Western Europe in the
xvth century:[FN#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.[FN#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.[FN#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.[FN#191] In The Nights (Mac. Edit.) it is
mentioned twelve times[FN#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.[FN#193] This is
un-doubtedly 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.[FN#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,”[FN#195] for
special 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.[FN#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. 78) as the nucleus
of the Repertory, together with “Dalilah the Crafty,”[FN#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.[FN#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.[FN#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.”[FN#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.[FN#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.[FN#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.[FN#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,[FN#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 admit 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 que résultait
du 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.”[FN#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[FN#206] we find:—Dans les deux premiers volumes de ces
contes l’exorde était toujours, “Ma chère sur, 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 insignificantes, 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[FN#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[FN#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.”[FN#209]
“When the work was first published in England,” says Henry
Webber,[FN#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,”[FN#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 elegance 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[FN#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.[FN#213]