former of the rest of Camaralzaman and (though not in the same
order) of four of the tales supposed to have been contained in
the latter, to show that Dom Chavis made his copy from a text
identical with that used by the French savant. In the notes to
his edition of the Arabic text of Aladdin, M. Zotenberg gives a
number of extracts from this MS., from which it appears that it
is written in a very vulgar modern Syrian style and abounds in
grammatical errors, inconsistencies and incoherences of every
description, to say nothing of the fact that the Syrian
ecclesiastic seems, with the characteristic want of taste and
presumption which might be expected from the joint-author of "Les
Veillees Persanes," to have, to a considerable extent, garbled
the original text by the introduction of modern European phrases
and turns of speech a la Galland. For the rest, the MS. contains
no note or other indication, on which we can found any opinion as
to the source from which the transcriber (or arranger) drew his
materials; but it can hardly be doubted, from internal evidence,
that he had the command of some genuine text of the Nights,
similar to, if not identical with, that of Galland, which he
probably "arranged" to suit his own (and his century's) distorted
ideas of literary fitness. The discovery of the interpolated
tales contained in this MS. (which has thus presumably lain
unnoticed for a whole century, under, as one may say, the very
noses of the many students of Arabic literature who would have
rejoiced in such a find) has, by a curious freak of fortune, been
delayed until our own day in consequence of a singular mistake
made by a former conservator of the Paris Bibliotheque, the
well-known Orientalist, M. Reinaud, who, in drawing up the
Catalogue of the Arabic MSS. in the collection described (or
rather misdescribed) it under the following heading: