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Orientalist M. Caussin de Perceval, although the latter could not have been acquainted with it at the time (1806) he published his well-known edition and continuation of Galland’s translation, in the eighth and ninth volumes of which, by the by, he gives a correct version of the tales so fearfully garbled by Chavis and Cazotte in their so-called translation as well nigh to defy recognition and to cause Orientalists in general to deny the possibility of their having been derived from an Oriental source until the discovery of the actual Arabic originals so barbarously maltreated[1]
- ↑ I cannot agree with my friend Sir R. F. Burton in his estimate of these tales, which seem to me, even in Caussin de Perceval’s correcter rendering and in his own brilliant and masterly version, very inferior, in style, conduct and diction, to those of “the old Arabian Nights,” whilst I think “Chavis and Cazotte’s Continuation” utterly unworthy of republication, whether in part or “in its entirety.” Indeed, I confess the latter version seems to me so curiously and perversely and unutterably bad that I cannot conceive how Cazotte can have perpetrated it and can only regard it as a bad joke on his part. As Caussin de Perceval remarks, it is evident that Shawish (whether from ignorance or carelessness) must, in many instances, have utterly misled his French coadjutor (who had no knowledge of Arabic) as to the meaning of the original, whilst it is much to be regretted that a writer of exquisite genius and one of the first stylists of the 18th century, such as the author of the Diable Amoureux, (a masterpiece to be ranked with Manon Lescaut and Le Neveu de Rameau,) should have stooped to the
