system we prefer, provided that we mostly adhere to one and the
same, for the sake of a consistency which saves confusion to the
reader. I have especially avoided that of Mr. Lane, adopted by
Mr. Payne, for special reasons against which it was vain to
protest: it represents the debased brogue of Egypt or rather of
Cairo; and such a word as Kemer (ez-Zeman) would be utterly un-
pronounceable to a Badawi. Nor have I followed the practice of my
learned friend, Reverend G. P. Badger, in mixing bars and acute
accents; the former unpleasantly remind man of those hateful
dactyls and spondees, and the latter should, in my humble
opinion, be applied to long vowels which in Arabic double, or
should double, the length of the shorts. Dr. Badger uses the
acute symbol to denote accent or stress of voice; but such
appoggio is unknown to those who speak with purest articulation;
for instance whilst the European pronounces Mus-cat', and the
Arab villager Mas'-kat; the Children of the Waste, "on whose
tongues Allah descended," articulate Mas-kat. I have therefore
followed the simple system adopted in my "Pilgrimage," and have
accented Arabic words only when first used, thinking it
unnecessary to preserve throughout what is an eyesore to the
reader and a distress to the printer. In the main I follow
"Johnson on Richardson," a work known to every Anglo-Orientalist
as the old and trusty companion of his studies early and late;
but even here I have made sundry deviations for reasons which
will be explained in the Terminal Essay. As words are the
embodiment of ideas and writing is of words, so the word is the
spoken word; and we should write it as pronounced. Strictly
speaking, the e-sound and the o-sound (viz. the Italian o-sound
not the English which is peculiar to us and unknown to any other
tongue) are not found in Arabic, except when the figure Imalah