retain the whole apparatus: nothing more ill advised than Dr.
Jonathan Scott's strange device of garnishing The Nights with
fancy head pieces and tail pieces or the splitting up of
Galland's narrative by merely prefixing "Nuit," etc., ending
moreover, with the ccxxxivth Night: yet this has been done,
apparently with the consent of the great Arabist Sylvestre de
Sacy (Paris, Ernest Bourdin). Moreover, holding that the
translator's glory is to add something to his native tongue,
while avoiding the hideous hag like nakedness of Torrens and the
bald literalism of Lane, I have carefully Englished the
picturesque turns and novel expressions of the original in all
their outlandishness; for instance, when the dust cloud raised by
a tramping host is described as "walling the horizon." Hence
peculiar attention has been paid to the tropes and figures which
the Arabic language often packs into a single term; and I have
never hesitated to coin a word when wanted, such as "she snorted
and sparked," fully to represent the original. These, like many
in Rabelais, are mere barbarisms unless generally adopted; in
which case they become civilised and common currency.

Despite objections manifold and manifest, I have preserved the
balance of sentences and the prose rhyme and rhythm which
Easterns look upon as mere music. This "Saj'a," or cadence of the
cooing dove, has in Arabic its special duties. It adds a sparkle
to description and a point to proverb, epigram and dialogue; it
corresponds with our "artful alliteration" (which in places I
have substituted for it) and, generally, it defines the
boundaries between the classical and the popular styles which
jostle each other in The Nights. If at times it appear strained
and forced, after the wont of rhymed prose, the scholar will