[FN#465] Of course, the coincidences could not possibly have been accidental, for both translators were supposed to take from the four printed Arabic editions.  We shall presently give a passage by Burton before Payne translated it, and it will there be seen that the phraseology of the one translator bears no resemblance whatever to that of the other.  And yet, in this latter instance, each translator took from the same original instead of from four originals.  See Chapter xxiii.

[FN#466] At the same time the Edinburgh Review (July 1886) goes too far.  It puts its finger on Burton’s blemishes, but will not allow his translation a single merit.  It says, “Mr. Payne is possessed of a singularly robust and masculine prose style. ..  Captain Burton’s English is an unreadable compound of archaeology and slang, abounding in Americanisms, and full of an affected reaching after obsolete or foreign words and phrases.”

[FN#467] “She drew her cilice over his raw and bleeding skin.” [Payne has “hair shirt."]—­“Tale of the Ensorcelled Prince.”  Lib.  Ed., i., 72.

[FN#468] “Nor will the egromancy be dispelled till he fall from his horse.” [Payne has “charm be broken."]—­“Third Kalendar’s Tale.”  Lib.  Ed., i., 130.  “By virtue of my egromancy become thou half stone and half man.” [Payne has “my enchantments."]—­“Tale of the Ensorcelled Prince.”  Lib.  Ed., i., 71.

[FN#469] “The water prisoned in its verdurous walls.”—­“Tale of the Jewish Doctor.”

[FN#470] “Like unto a vergier full of peaches.” [Note.—­O.E. “hortiyard” Mr. Payne’s word is much better.]—­“Man of Al Zaman and his Six Slave Girls.”

[FN#471] “The rondure of the moon.”—­“Hassan of Bassorah.” [Shakespeare uses this word, Sonnet 21, for the sake of rhythm.  Caliban, however, speaks of the “round of the moon.”]

[FN#472] “That place was purfled with all manner of flowers.” [Purfled means bordered, fringed, so it is here used wrongly.] Payne has “embroidered,” which is the correct word.—­“Tale of King Omar,” Lib.  Ed., i., 406.

[FN#473] Burton says that he found this word in some English writer of the 17th century, and, according to Murray, “Egremauncy occurs about 1649 in Grebory’s Chron.  Camd.  Soc. 1876, 183.”  Mr. Payne, however, in a letter to me, observes that the word is merely an ignorant corruption of “negromancy,” itself a corruption of a corruption it is “not fit for decent (etymological) society.”

[FN#474] A well-known alchemical term, meaning a retort, usually of glass, and completely inapt to express a common brass pot, such as that mentioned in the text.  Yellow copper is brass; red copper is ordinary copper.

[FN#475] Fr. ensorceler—­to bewitch.  Barbey d’Aurevilly’s fine novel L’Ensorcelee, will be recalled.  Torrens uses this word, and so does Payne, vol. v., 36.  “Hath evil eye ensorcelled thee?”

[FN#476] Lib.  Ed., ii., 360.

[FN#477] Swevens—­dreams.