The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, vol 16 - Sir Richard Francis Burton (uplifting books for women txt) 📗

la tendance qui les caract�rise g�neralement, d’abr�ger et de condenser la narrative ” (loc. cit. p. 7: see also p. 14).

 

[FN#453] Here I would by no means assert that the subject matter of The Nights is exhausted: much has been left for future labourers. It would be easy indeed to add another five volumes to my sixteen as every complete manuscript contains more or less of novelty. Dr. Pertsch, the learned librarian of Saxe-Gotha, informs me that no less than two volumes are taken up by a variant of Judar the Egyptian (in my vol. vi. 213) and by the History of Zahir and Ali. For the Turkish version in the Biblioth�que Nationale see M. Zotenberg (pp. 21-23). The Rich MS.

in the British Museum abounds in novelties, of which a specimen was given in my Prospectus to the Supplemental Volumes.

 

In the French Scholar’s “Al� al-D�n” (p. 45) we find the MSS. of The Nights divided into three groups. No. i. or the Asian (a total of ten specified) are mostly incomplete and usually end before the half of the text. The second is the Egyptian of modern date, characterised by an especial style and condensed narration and by the nature and ordinance of the tales, by the number of fables and historiettes, and generally by the long chivalrous Romance of Omar bin al-Nu’um�n. The third group, also Egyptian, differs only in the distribution of the stories.]

 

[FN#454] My late friend, who brought home 3,000 copies of inscriptions from the so-called Sinai which I would term in ancient days the Peninsula of Paran. and in our times the Peninsula of Tor.

 

[FN#455] See M. Zotenberg, pp. 4, 26.

 

[FN#456] M. Zotenberg (p. 5) wrote la seconde moitie du xive.

Si�cle, but he informed me that he has found reason to antedate the text.

 

[FN#457] I regret the necessity of exposing such incompetence and errors which at the time when Lane wrote were venial enough; his foolish friend, however, by unskilful and exaggerated pretensions and encomiums, compels me to lay the case before the reader.

 

[FN#458] This past tense, suggesting that an act is complete, has a present sense in Arabic and must be translated accordingly.

 

[FN#459] Quite untrue: the critic as usual never read and probably never saw the subject of his criticism. In this case I may invert one of my mottoes and write, “To the foul all things”

 

End of the Project Gutenberg Etext of Supplemental Nights, Volume 16 by Sir Richard F. Burton.