This work he (and he only) describes as "Carefully revised and
occasionally corrected from the Arabic." The reading public did
not wholly reject it, sundry texts were founded upon the Scott
version and it has been imperfectly reprinted (4 vole., 8vo,
Nimmo and Bain, London, 1883). But most men, little recking what
a small portion of the original they were reading, satisfied
themselves with the Anglo French epitome and metaphrase. At
length in 1838, Mr. Henry Torrens, B.A., Irishman, lawyer ("of
the Inner Temple") and Bengal Civilian, took a step in the right
direction; and began to translate, "The Book of the Thousand
Nights and One Night," (1 vol., 8vo, Calcutta: W. Thacker and
Co.) from the Arabic of the AEgyptian (!) MS. edited by Mr.
(afterwards Sir)William H. Macnaghten. The attempt, or rather the
intention, was highly creditable; the copy was carefully moulded
upon the model and offered the best example of the verbatim et
literatim style. But the plucky author knew little of Arabic, and
least of what is most wanted, the dialect of Egypt and Syria. His
prose is so conscientious as to offer up spirit at the shrine of
letter; and his verse, always whimsical, has at times a manner of
Hibernian whoop which is comical when it should be pathetic.
Lastly he printed only one volume of a series which completed
would have contained nine or ten.

That amiable and devoted Arabist, the late Edward William Lane
does not score a success in his "New Translation of the Tales of
a Thousand and One Nights" (London: Charles Knight and Co.,
MDCCCXXXIX.) of which there have been four English editions,
besides American, two edited by E. S. Poole. He chose the
abbreviating Bulak Edition; and, of its two hundred tales, he has
omitted about half and by far the more characteristic half: the