ABSTRACT
The Arabian Nights were of course originally spoken and written in Arabic, and this translation has been made direct from the Arabic. It is no secret (as a Persian would say) that Arabic is a Semitic language; its structure and the character of its vocabulary and idiom differ considerably from English, as is most strikingly illustrated by the comparative poverty of Arabic in connective particles. Earlier translators of the Arabian Nights have almost without exception been so mes merized by the stylistic peculiarities of Arabic that they have
not hesitated to imitate them slavishly in their versions, a thing they would probably have scorned to do, and been soundly schooled to avoid, were their task Homer or Hero dotus or Horace or Livy. Not content with inventing a strange Eurasian sort of English, that was the more readily accepted because it seemed profanely to echo the Old Testament in the Authorized Version-and for a good reason, the Semitic ori ginal of those Scriptures-they went farther than they needed to have done and, being caught up in the eddies of the Gothic Revival, imported into their diction all the bogus flummery of Ye Olde Englysshe. So we gaze with awe and wonder upon the curious eccentricities of John Payne, that erudite and painstaking antiquarian, a gifted scholar of many parts, who makes the youthful jackanapes Aladdin speak like this.
