burton--1001-nights--sample

intentional; and, as a friend advises me to state, not exaggerating the
vulgarities and the indecencies which, indeed, can hardly be exaggerated.
For the coarseness and crassness are but the shades of a
picture which would otherwise be all lights. The general tone of The
Nights is exceptionally high and pure. The devotional fervour often
rises to the boiling point of fanaticism. The pathos is sweet, deep and
genuine; tender, simple and true, utterly unlike much of our modern
tinsel. Its life, strong, splendid and multitudinous, is everywhere
flavoured with that unaffected pessimism and constitutional melancholy
which strike deepest root under the brightest skies and which
sigh in the face of heaven: —
Vita quid est hominis? Viridis floriscula mortis;
Sole Oriente oriens, sole cadente cadens.
Poetical justice is administered by the literary Kází with exemplary
impartiality and severity; “denouncing evil doers and eulogising deeds
admirably achieved.” The morale is sound and healthy; and at times we
descry, through the voluptuous and libertine picture, vistas of a transcendental
morality, the morality of Socrates in Plato. Subtle corruption
and covert licentiousness are utterly absent; we find more real “vice” in
many a short French roman, say La Dame aux Camelias, and in not a
few English novels of our day than in the thousands of pages of the
Arab. Here we have nothing of that most immodest modern modesty
which sees covert implication where nothing is implied, and “improper”
allusion when propriety is not outraged; nor do we meet with
the Nineteenth Century refinement; innocence of the word not of the
thought; morality of the tongue not of the heart, and the sincere
homage paid to virtue in guise of perfect hypocrisy. It is, indeed, this
unique contrast of a quaint element, childish crudities and nursery
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