Did ever tale-teller compare with Shahrazad?  Who does not sympathise with the Trader who killed the invisible son of the jinni?  Who has not dreamt of the poor fisherman and the pot that was covered with the seal of King Solomon?  The story of Duban, who cured King Yunon of leprosy and was sent home on the royal steed reads like a verse out of Esther,[FN#439] and may remind us that there is no better way of understanding the historical portions of the Bible than by studying The Arabian Nights.  King Yunan richly deserved the death that overtook him, if only for his dirty habit of wetting his thumb when turning over the leaves of the book.[FN#440] What a rare tale is that of the Ensorcelled Prince, alias The Young King of the Black Isles, who though he sat in a palace where fountains limbecked water “clear as pearls and diaphanous gems,” and wore “silken stuff purfled with Egyptian gold,” was from his midriff downwards not man but marble!  Who is not shocked at the behaviour of the Three Ladies of Baghdad!  In what fearful peril the caliph and the Kalendars placed themselves when, in spite of warning, they would ask questions!  How delightful are the verses of the Nights, whether they have or have not any bearing upon the text!  Says the third Kalendar, apropos of nothing: 

   “How many a weal trips on the heels of ill
    Causing the mourner’s heart with joy to thrill.”

What an imbecile of imbeciles was this same Kalendar when he found himself in the palace with the forty damsels, “All bright as moons to wait upon him!” It is true, he at first appreciated his snug quarters, for he cried, “Hereupon such gladness possessed me that I forgot the sorrows of the world one and all, and said, ’This is indeed life!’” Then the ninny must needs go and open that fatal fortieth door!  The story of Nur al-Din Ali and his son Badr al-Din Hasan has the distinction of being the most rollicking and the most humorous in the Nights.  What stupendous events result from a tiff!  The lines repeated by Nur al-Din Ali when he angrily quitted his brother must have appealed forcibly to Burton: 

Travel! and thou shalt find new friends for old ones left behind;
   toil! for the sweets of human life by toil and moil are found;
The stay at home no honour wins nor ought attains but want; so
   leave thy place of birth and wander all the world around.[FN#441]

As long as time lasts the pretty coquettish bride will keep on changing her charming dresses; and the sultan’s groom (poor man! and for nothing at all) will be kept standing on his head.  The moribund Nur al-Din turns Polonius and delivers himself of sententious precepts.  “Security,” he tells his son, “lieth in seclusion of thought and a certain retirement from the society of thy fellows....  In this world there is none thou mayst count upon. ...so live for thyself, nursing hope of none.  Let thine own faults distract thine attention from the faults of other men.[FN#442] Be cautious, kind, charitable, sober, and economical.”  Then the good old man’s life “went forth.”  This son, when, soon after, confronted with misfortune, gives utterance to one of the finest thoughts in the whole work: