REMARKS ON THE ARABIAN NIGHTS, AND ARABÍAN TALES IN GENERAL. A QUESTION highly interesting to the progress of morals and the cause of truth, is the utility of that species of fiction which is supported by supernatural aid; and, if it have been, or may hereafter be, useful, what ought to be its limits? That fables or tales of this kind seize, hurry forward, and enrapture the undisciplined imagination of youth, there can be no doubt; and that they therefore tend to awaken curiosity, which otherwise might continue dormant, is highly probable: but it is no less certain that they likewise have a tendency to accustom the mind rather to wonder than to inquire; and to seek a solution of difficulties in occult causes, instead of seriously resorting to facts. The true answer to this difficult question seems to be, that in the progress of mind, ignorance will continually find cause to wonder; and will therefore be incessantly impelled to utter its admiration, and to relate its wild conjec VOL. VI. NO. XXXV. tures. To blame it for not being more enlightened, would perhaps be as absurd as to reproach an infant for not being able to demonstrate a theorem in Euclid. Such tales, consequently, must be written, and will be read. Between the moral utility, however, of fables built on the marvellous, and of those which originate in true pictures of life and manners, there can be no comparison. It is indeed so necessary to mingle resemblances of man as he really is, in every fabulous narrative, that the wildness of romance has only become attractive in consequence of this mixture. Accustomed as we are to consider the Arabians frequently as a wandering and wild, and but seldom as a schooled and scientific people, we receive such tales from them as the genuine produce of the partial advances which they have made in knowledge; though, were they the works of Europeans, we should regard them as the indolent resources of 1 ON THE ARABIAN NIGHTS, authors, who were either unwilling, A full century has now elapsed, If those eastern tales were presented to the European public at a season which seems to have been peculiarly favourable for their reception, there was, however, still more in their character than in the circumstances of the time, to recommend them to that eager and general interest which they immediately commanded among all classes of readers. The style in which they were written, and the artifice by which they were interwoven toge. ther, were, if not absolutely new, yet though the stories in Ovid's books of strange and uncommon. For almeans which, at least in slightness Metamorphoses be connected by and insufficiency for the purpose of compacting parts into a whole, bear some resemblance to the slender thread by which the narratives of feebly and awkardly held together; the Thousand and One Nights are and although Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the multiplicity of broktogether in the Orlando Furioso, en adventures strangely jumbled and, almost equally, the half Gothic, half-classical fabric of Spenser's Fairy Queen, betray a truly oriential unskilfulness in the art of arrangement: yet, works, the more passionate readers with these of the Arabian Nights Entertainments were, for the most part, little acquainted; and, where there was respects, a small difference in strucso much novelty in so many other ture was, by the effect of association, naturally increased greatly above its real magnitude. bited in those tales were, at the The manners and customs exhisingular than the artlessness of their same time, much more strange and connexion, or the tedious copiousness of narrative which distinguished them. Beauties, cooped up together by scores, or perhaps hundreds, in a haram, all for the amusement of one man, and he often indifferent, feeble, old, and fitter to repose in the grave or the hospital than to riot on the nuptial couch: festive entertainments, unenlivened by the the cheering influence of wine: sprightly gaieties of the fair sex, or like their husbands, and men arwives wearing drawers and trousers rayed in loose robes like their wives, yet at the same time cherishing, as so many goats, each a venerable length of beard: pastry-cooks making such a figure in society, as if the perfection of human art were displayed in the composition of a cream-tart or a pye: the art of writing esteemed, singly, a qualifi cation fitting those skilled in it for the most dignified offices in civil life, as if the smallest possible portion of intellect were not adequate to the formation of the letters in the alphabet, and the joining of these into words and lines: ablutions performed, many times a day, and, at every different time, as scrupulously as Swift's Strephon washed himself, when he was to mount the bed of his angel-Chloe: prayers repeated by all ranks, with serious devotion, almost as often in the day as our men of fashion call upon their Maker in contemptuous scorn, or in idle merriment: the code of religion almost as frequently and fondly quoted, as our professed wits introduced slily into their conversation fresh repartees from Joe Miller, or original anecdotes from the Telltale: judicial astrology constituting the great rule of human life, and every man and woman, as surely as they come into the world, having their fortunes subjected to the capricious influence of this or that star: all these phænomena are so remote from the customs and manners of Europe, that, when exhibited as entering into the ordinary system of human affairs, they could not fail to confer, in our eyes, a considerable share of amusive novelty on the characters and events with which they are connected. Yet it is probable that the machinery contributed, more than any other particular in their character, to obtain to the Arabian Nights Entertainments, the preference over most of the other works of imagination which were common in Europe at the time of their first appearance. Magicians, genies, fairies, lamps, rings, and other talismans, dance in such profusion through those volumes, as could not but make the reader wonder and stare, who was acquainted only with witches mounted on broomsticks, and with little viewless elves, dancing occasionally by moon-light, in small circles on the green, or, in their greatest splendour and festivity, only lighting up, for their midnight re vels, the deserted hall of some ruinous castle. It has been observed by Dr. Hawkesworth, that these tales please, because even their machinery, wild and wonderful as it is, has its laws, and the magicians and enchanters perform nothing but what was to be naturrally expected from such beings, after we had once granted them existence, and dignified them with power. But I rather suppose that the very contrary is the truth of the fact. It is surely the strangeness, the unknown nature, the anomalous character of the supernatural agents here employed, that enables them to operate so powerfully on our hopes, fears, curiosity, sympathies, and, in short, on all the feelings of our hearts. We see men and women, who possess qualities to recommend them to our favour, subjected to the influence of beings whose good or ill will, power or weakness, attention or neglect, are regulated by motives and circumstances which we cannot comprehend; and hence we naturally tremble for their fate, with the same anxious concern, as we should for a friend wandering, in a dark night, amidst torrents and precipices, or preparing to land on a strange island, while he knew not whether he should be received, on the shore, by cannibals waiting to tear him piece-meal, and devour him, or by gentle beings, disposed to cherish him with fond hospitality. Give the human agents you employ qualities to command good will and esteem; let their manners be natural, and their sentiments the genuine effusions of the human heart, in such circumstances as those they are placed in; and then, perhaps, the more singular their adventures, the wilder the scenes in which they are exposed, the more capricious the beings to whose power they are subjected, and the more seemingly inadequate the means by which all the changes in their fate are accomplished; so much the more irresistibly will they engage, and transport, and chain down the attention, and sway the passions of the spectator or reader. Beside the advantages which they seem to derive from the strangeness of their texture, and from the novelty and marvellous nature of the objects which they exhibit,those eastern tales possess great real merit of another kind. At times, amidst all their florid verbosity, like other oriental compositions, they afford pleasing descriptions of external nature. The strongest workings of the human heart are often displayed in them, with a masterly hand. Being a collection, they contain a medley of comic, tragic, and heroic adventures, the very number and variety of which must necessarily give them considerable power to please. And I know not if even the gold, jewels, pearls, rubies, emeralds, the bales of rich stuffs, and superb pellices, the crouded kans, luxurious gardens, and apartments beyond description sumptuous, which are so liberally lavished through those tales, and so ostentatiously described wherever they occur, have not insensibly a greater influence in dazzling and amusing the mind of the reader, than perhaps the pupil of taste will be willing to allow.-Such are the tales which I remember to have eagerly preferred, in the days of childish credulity, to the Seven Wonders of the World, the Adventures of Jack the Giant-killer, the Story of the Seven Wise Masters, and even to the History of the Nine Worthies; and such seem to be the more striking peculiarities in their character, by which they have pleased, and still continue to please, almost all ages, all ranks, and all different capacities. flourished about the æra of the revival of letters, to try their proficiency, by producing forgeries in the names of their favourite Greeks or Romans, with which they now and then actually deceived one another. It had been usual, too, among the sophists of antiquity, to compose declamations and epistles in the names of celebrated personages, the incidents of whose lives afforded them suitable materials: and it is well known what critical hardiness and acumen the doughty Bentley displayed, in detecting the forgery of the epistles of Phalaris. The letters of the Turkish Spy, the Castle of Otranto, the poems of Rowley, and perhaps of Ossian, not to name innumerable other works of the same cast, are proof that the literati of the present age have not lost either the spirit or the power of literary imposition. But the character of the Arabian tales is so truly oriental, they bear so many marks which no European hand could have impressed, and carry in them so much of that internal evidence which enforces conviction still more powerfully than the strongest external testimony, that one could hardly have thought it possible for men of learning to remain long in doubt about their authenticity, had not a writer no less eminent than Dr. Beattie expressed himself uncertain whether they were translated or invented by M. Galland. However, the doctor's doubts were probably soon removed; for, besides the king of France's library, in which the originals have been long deposited, the authenticity of these tales has been fully proved by colonel Capper; and an Arabic copy of them is now in the hands of the learned Dr. White, of Oxford. It was once even said, that the British public might sooner or later be favoured with a translation of them from the original language by the doctor's pen; in which they would display more of a genuine oriental cast, and retain more of their native graces, than in the version of Galland; who, as is common with his countrymen on similar occasions, has given too Literary imposition has been frequently attempted with great success; and it was doubted by many, for some time after the publication of the Arabian Nights Entertainments, that, though represented as compositions of the east, they had been actually invented in Europe. Examples have not been wanting to justify this suspicion. It was usual among the classical scholars who |