two hundred Nights, and thus made room for Sir William Hay
Macnaghten's Edition (4 vols. royal 4to) of 1839-42. This
("Mac."), as by far the least corrupt and the most complete, has
been assumed for my basis with occasional reference to the
Breslau Edition ("Bres.") wretchedly edited from a hideous
Egyptian MS. by Dr. Maximilian Habicht (1825-43). The Bayrut Text
"Alif-Leila we Leila" (4 vols. at. 8vo, Beirut, 1881-83) is a
melancholy specimen of The Nights taken entirely from the Bulak
Edition by one Khalil Sarkis and converted to Christianity;
beginning without Bismillah, continued with scrupulous castration
and ending in ennui and disappointment. I have not used this
missionary production.

As regards the transliteration of Arabic words I deliberately
reject the artful and complicated system, ugly and clumsy withal,
affected by scientific modern Orientalists. Nor is my sympathy
with their prime object, namely to fit the Roman alphabet for
supplanting all others. Those who learn languages, and many do
so, by the eye as well as by the ear, well know the advantages of
a special character to distinguish, for instance, Syriac from
Arabic, Gujrati from Marathi. Again this Roman hand bewitched may
have its use in purely scientific and literary works; but it
would be wholly out of place in one whose purpose is that of the
novel, to amuse rather than to instruct. Moreover the devices
perplex the simple and teach nothing to the learned. Either the
reader knows Arabic, in which case Greek letters, italics and
"upper case," diacritical points and similar typographic oddities
are, as a rule with some exceptions, unnecessary; or he does not
know Arabic, when none of these expedients will be of the least
use to him. Indeed it is a matter of secondary consideration what