of Lane and Habicht and Torrens and Von Hammer represented but imperfectly the great corpus of Eastern folk-lore which Captain Burton has undertaken to render into English, without regard to the susceptibilities of those who, not having bought the book, are, therefore, in no way concerned in what is the affair of him and his subscribers.  The best part of two centuries have passed away since Antoine Galland first turned some of the tales into French, and got stigmatised as a forger for his pains.  Never was there such a sensation as when he printed his translations.  For weeks he had been pestered by troops of roysterers rousing him out of bed, and refusing to go until the shivering Professor recited one of the Arab stories to the crowd under his window.  Nor has the interest in them in any way abated.  Thousands of copies pass every year into circulation, and any one who has ever stood in the circle around the professional storyteller of the East must have noticed how often he draws on this deathless collection.  The camel-driver listens to them as eagerly as did his predecessors ages ago.  The Badawi laughs in spite of himself, though next moment he ejaculates a startling “Astaghfaru’llah” for listening to the light mention of the sex whose name is never heard amongst the Nobility of the Desert.  Or if the traveller is a scholar and a gentleman, he will pull out his book for amusement of the company squatted round the camp fire, as did Captain Burton many a time and oft in the course of his Eastern wanderings.

To Captain Burton the preparation of these volumes must have been a labour of love.  He began them in conjunction with his friend Steinhaeuser, soon after his return from the Mecca pilgrimage, more than thirty years ago, and he has been doing something to them ever since.  In the swampy jungles of West Africa a tale or two has been turned into English, or a poem has been versified during the tedium of official life in the dank climate of Brazil.  From Sind to Trieste the manuscript has formed part and parcel of his baggage and though, in the interval, the learned author has added many a volume to the shelf-full which he has written, the “Thousand Nights and a Night” have never been forgotten.  And now when he nears the end of his labours it seems as if we had never before known what the beauteous Shahrazad told the King who believed not in the constancy of women.  Captain Burton seems the one sober man among drunkards.  We have all the old company though they appear in dresses so entirely new that one scans the lines again and again before the likeness is quite recognised.  However, Tajal-Mulook will no doubt be as knightly as ever when his turn comes, for the Barber is garrulous, after the old fashion, and the three Shaykhs relate their experiences with the Jinns, the gazelles, and mules as vividly as they have done any time these thousand years or more.  King Yoonan and the Sage Dooban are here, and so are King Sindibad and his falcon,