Chapter 2

It may be permitted me also to note that this translation is a natural
outcome of my Pilgrimage to Al-Medinah and Meccah. Arriving at Aden in
the (so-called) winter of 1852, I put up with my old and dear friend,
Steinhaeuser, to whose memory this volume is inscribed; and, when
talking over Arabia and the Arabs, we at once came to the same
conclusion that, while the name of this wondrous treasury of Moslem
folk-lore is familiar to almost every English child, no general reader
is aware of the valuables it contains, nor indeed will the door open to
any but Arabists. Before parting we agreed to “collaborate” and produce
a full, complete, unvarnished, uncastrated copy of the great original,
my friend taking the prose and I the metrical part; and we corresponded
upon the subject for years. But whilst I was in the Brazil, Steinhaeuser
died suddenly of apoplexy at Berne in Switzerland and, after the fashion
of Anglo-India, his valuable MSS. left at Aden were dispersed, and very
little of his labours came into my hands.

Thus I was left alone to my work, which progressed fitfully amid a host
of obstructions. At length, in the spring of 1879, the tedious process
of copying began and the book commenced to take finished form. But,
during the winter of 1881-82, I saw in the literary journals a notice of
a new version by Mr. John Payne, well known to scholars for his prowess
in English verse, especially for his translation of “The Poems of Master
Francis Villon, of Paris.” Being then engaged on an expedition to the
Gold Coast (for gold), which seemed likely to cover some months, I wrote
to the “Athenæum” (Nov. 13, 1881) and to Mr. Payne, who was wholly
unconscious that we were engaged on the same work, and freely offered
him precedence and possession of the field till no longer wanted. He
accepted my offer as frankly, and his priority entailed another delay
lasting till the spring of 1885. These details will partly account for
the lateness of my appearing, but there is yet another cause.
Professional ambition suggested that literary labours, unpopular with
the vulgar and the half-educated, are not likely to help a man up the
ladder of promotion. But common sense presently suggested to me that,
professionally speaking, I was not a success; and, at the same time,
that I had no cause to be ashamed of my failure. In our day, when we
live under a despotism of the lower “middle-class” Philister who can
pardon anything but superiority, the prizes of competitive services are
monopolised by certain “pets” of the _Médiocratie_, and prime favourites
of that jealous and potent majority—the Mediocrities who know “no
nonsense about merit.” It is hard for an outsider to realise how perfect
is the monopoly of commonplace, and to comprehend how fatal a
stumbling-stone that man sets in the way of his own advancement who
dares to think for himself, or who knows more or who does more than the
mob of gentlemen-employés who know very little and who do even less.

Yet, however behindhand I may be, there is still ample room and verge
for an English version of the “Arabian Nights’ Entertainments.”

Our century of translations, popular and vernacular, from (Professor
Antoine) Galland’s delightful abbreviation and adaptation (A.D. 1704),
in no wise represent the eastern original. The best and latest, the Rev.
Mr. Foster’s, which is diffuse and verbose, and Mr. G. Moir Bussey’s,
which is a re-correction, abound in gallicisms of style and idiom; and
one and all degrade a chef-d’œuvre of the highest anthropological and
ethnographical interest and importance to a mere fairy-book, 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 Ægyptian (!) 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. Lastly he printed only one volume
of a series which completed would have contained nine or ten.