however unscrupulous he might have been about casting down and
building up in order to humour the dead level of Gallican bon
gout, could, as is shown by his "Aladdin," trans- late literatim
and verbatim when the story-stuff is of the right species and
acceptable to the average European taste. But, as generally
happens in such cases, his servile suite went far beyond their
master and model. Petis de la Croix ("Persian and Turkish
Tales"), Chavis and Cazotte ("New Arabian Nights"), Dow ("Inayatu
llah") and Morell ("Tales of the Genii"), with others manifold
whose names are now all but forgotten, carried out the Gallandian
liberties to the extreme of licence and succeeded in producing a
branchlet of literature, the most vapid, frigid and insipid that
can be imagined by man,--a bastard Europeo-Oriental,
pseudo-Eastern world of Western marionettes garbed in the gear
which Asiatic are (or were) supposed to wear, with sentiments and
opinions, manners and morals to match; the whole utterly lacking
life, local colour, vraisemblance, human interest. From such
abortions, such monstrous births, libera nos, Domine!

And Scott out-gallanded Galland:--

Diruit, aedificat, mutat quadrata rotundis.

It is hard to quote a line which he deigned textually to
translate. He not only commits felony on the original by
abstracting whole sentences and pages ad libitum, but he also
thrusts false goods into his author's pocket and patronises the
unfortunate Eastern story-teller by foisting upon him whatever
he, the "translator and traitor," deems needful. On this point no
more need be said: the curious reader has but to compare any one