burton--1001-nights--sample

idiom; and one and all degrade a chef d’oeuvre of the highest anthropological
and ethnographical interest and importance to a mere fairybook,
a nice present for little boys.
After nearly a century had elapsed, Dr. Jonathan Scott (LL.D.
H.E.I.C.’s S., Persian Secretary to the G. G. Bengal; Oriental Professor,
etc., etc.), printed his “Tales, Anecdotes, and Letters, translated
from the Arabic and Persian,” (Cadell and Davies, London, A.D.
1800); and followed in 1811 with an edition of “The Arabian Nights’
Entertainments” from the MS. of Edward Wortley Montague (in 6
vols., small 8vo, London: Longmans, etc.). This work he (and he only)
describes as “Carefully revised and occasionally corrected from the
Arabic.” The reading public did not wholly reject it, sundry texts were
founded upon the Scott version and it has been imperfectly reprinted
(4 vols., 8vo, Nimmo and Bain, London, 1883). But most men, little
recking what a small portion of the original they were reading, satisfied
themselves with the Anglo French epitome and metaphrase. At length
in 1838, Mr. Henry Torrens, B.A., Irishman, lawyer (“of the Inner
Temple”) and Bengal Civilian, took a step in the right direction; and
began to translate, “The Book of the Thousand Nights and One
Night,” (1 vol., 8vo, Calcutta: W. Thacker and Co.) from the Arabic of
the Aegyptian (!) MS. edited by Mr. (afterwards Sir) William H. Macnaghten.
The attempt, or rather the intention, was highly creditable;
the copy was carefully moulded upon the model and offered the best
example of the verbatim et literatim style. But the plucky author knew
little of Arabic, and least of what is most wanted, the dialect of Egypt
and Syria. His prose is so conscientious as to offer up spirit at the
shrine of letter; and his verse, always whimsical, has at times a manner
of Hibernian whoop which is comical when it should be pathetic.
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