intellect, the imagination, or the emotions of mankind must be appealed to, and which are everywhere essentially the same, simply because man is everywhere essentially the same, must be complied with. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that the affinities and resemblances between any two great intellects of the same class, or even of different classes, are still more striking and numerous than their diversities. It is with minds as with faces and persons: the latter may be distinguished from one another by the most obvious peculiarities, and yet must be referred to the same class by resemblances still more obvious. What two writers can be more diverse than Milton and Pope? and yet from both, the critic might adduce endless examples in illustration of all the principal laws and conditions which every poet must observe; of the proprieties which must belong to poetical composition in general, or to those varieties of it to which each of these great writers more especially addicted himself. In one and all who comply with the essential conditions above adverted to, we may look for points of similarity far more striking and numerous than those by which they are distinguished from one another. Whatever diversities of form such writers may exhibit, from original differences of mental structure, or the various modes of thought and feeling to which circumstances have habituated them, and which render their original characteristics still more strong and deep, essential identity will still be seen. The face may be different, but it is still human. Thus in the compositions of all great genius there will, as has been often truly said, be nature; but nature in two different senses; there will be that nature which is common to all men, which obeys the laws of general criticism, and to which the heart of universal humanity in all ages has so readily responded; and there will also be the nature of the individual; nature as modified by the peculiarities of each man's mental structure and by the circumstances under which his intellect has been developed. If a man observe the first of these, we say that he possesses taste; if even in naturally following the second, he violate the first, we say that he is destitute of taste; for it makes little difference in our judgment whether his error be the involuntary result of an ill-constructed or viciously cultivated intellect, or whether it is caused by ambition, wilfulness, vanity, or affectation. Thus we pronounce the extravagancies of Jeremy Taylor, and the ambitious finery of men of no genius at all, gross deviations alike from true taste; though the one be, often at least, honest errors, and the other wilful and impudent offences.

Similar obervations apply to the diversities of national literature. But while essential unity is still preserved, the circumstantial variety is found, as might rationally be expected, to range within wider limits. We expect to find not only what is

common to man, and what is peculiar to the individual, but what is characteristic of the tribe or nation, and which is the result of the peculiar, and, to other nations, strange and novel circumstances under which the intellect has been developed, and its habits and associations formed. These circumstances are much more numerous, and much more powerful in different nations than they can possibly be in different individuals of the same nation, however different their profession, occupation, or rank in life. We are to take into account not only the original diversities of mind, which are as numerous as minds themselves, and the circumstances which variously mould any two minds of the same tribe or nation, but the immensely greater differences produced by the difference of race, religion, customs, manners, dress, natural scenery, and national or local traditions. Hence the diversities of style observed in two writers of the same kind in different countries, are much greater than those found in two writers of the same kind in the same country. The combined influence of all the circumstances to which we have referred, and which determine the national modes of thought and expression, issues in what is called the national taste; and he who is true to this (that is, he who is so far natural), and yet preserves the general characteristics of human nature, ought no more to be charged with want of taste because he does not write as we do, than ought Milton or Pope, because the one does not write like the other. It is our part to make the requisite allowance for the circumstances under which the author has written; and so far from charging him with a want of taste because he does not comply with the conditions of our national taste, we ought rather to charge it upon him, if we found him doing so. This is, indeed, a difficult lesson, and comparatively few can receive it; but it is nevertheless that catholic spirit of criticism, which it behoves all to cultivate who would form not merely a charitable but a true judgment of the merits of foreign writers. To practise it, however, requires a little philosophy, a comprehensive knowledge not merely of human nature in general, but of the diversities of form it is capable of assuming, a resolute determination not to yield to the first shock of prejudice, nor to be offended at modes of thought and expression which appear to us strange merely because we are unaccustomed to them; it implies also some little familiarity with the customs, manners, modes of social life, and natura scenery from which illustrations are borrowed. He who enters upon the study of foreign literature in such a philosophic spirit as this will rarely find his patience unrewarded. What was at first obscure will become plain; what seemed absurd will be found not destitute of grace and beauty; expressions which appeared bald and unmeaning are seen often to conceal some subtle humor under an appearance of extreme naiveté; metaphors which dis

gusted from their monstrous extravagance are viewed with tolerance, either as still harmonising with the national laws of tastealthough we may justly flatter ourselves that we live under better -or because perceived to be monstrous in our eyes only because we are unfamiliar to them.-In reality they may be no bolder than many in our own language. There is a constant tendency in all classes of figurative expressions to lose their intensity by use; and hence there are in every language multitudes of tropes which though originally of the most daring character, have past into common expressions, and in the same manner, it is perceived that what at first appeared loose and unconnected is not so in reality, and that though the transitions in the order of thought may be more subtle than we should expect to find amongst our own writers, still they are there. Improbabilities of fiction again are tolerated when it is recollected that they must assume a very different appearance to those to whom the supernatural in its most extravagant forms is matter of belief, and not simply of imagination; and a further allowance is made when we call to mind that we do not deem the creations of our elder poets destitute of beauty because they deal with warlocks and fairies, though we may admit that we cannot read them with that vivid interest which they inspired in our superstitious forefathers.*

The further we go from home-the more distant the nations whose literature is submitted to us, the more striking do the diversities of national taste appear, and the more necessary that catholic spirit of criticism on which we have been insisting. When we once get beyond the limits of the European family of nations, it is impossible to proceed a step without its aid: without it almost every composition will be laid down with disgust. In the perusal of no literature is it more imperiously necessary than in the perusal of that of the oriental nations. Separated from us by so wide an interval of race and language, living in climates and amidst scenery so different from our own, under governments and laws so strikingly dissimilar, with domestic and social

In many of the notes,' says our editor, I endeavor to show, by extracts from esteemed Arabic histories and scientific and other writings, chiefly drawn from MSS. in my possession, as well as by assertions and anecdotes that I have heard, and conduct that I have witnessed, during my intercourse with Arabs, that the most extravagant relations in this work are not in general regarded, even by the educated classes of that people, as of an incredible nature. This is a point which I deem of much importance to set the work in its proper light before my countrymen. I have resided in a land where genii are still firmly believed to obey the summons of the magician or the owner of a talisman, and to act in occurrences of every day; and I have listened to stories of their deeds related as facts by persons of the highest respectability, and by some who would not condescend to read the tales of 'The Thousand and One Nights' merely because they are fictions, and not written in the usual polished style of literary compositions.

institutions, costume and manners entirely different, it is by no means surprising that national taste should assume a totally distinct form; that their literature should abound in allusions and figures as novel to us as are the objects and the scenery in which they originate-in maxims and proverbs as strange as the institutions and habits in which they took their rise-and in modes of speech bearing the impress of the manners and feelings of those who utter them.

Of all the productions of oriental genius none have been made so familiar to the European mind as that which stands at the head of this article, recommended to us by an entirely new translation from the hand of one of the first Arabic scholars of the day, by every advantage of form and typography, and by unrivalled pictorial embellishments. The old version, insufficient as it was, has long been the delight of Europe, but it must now inevitably yield to this vigorous successor. Indeed, we may be allowed to express our surprise that it could ever have become so popular. We are free to confess that until Mr. Lane's translation was put into our hands, we never could get through more than a few of the Thousand and One Nights;' the generality of them appeared to us inexpressibly tedious. This we now attribute, in no small degree, to the very qualities in the old version by which, in the opinion of many, the original had been improved. The fact is, the original was in a great degree lost; the peculiarities of the oriental style were not to be found; peculiarities, which tend so much to relieve the intelligent reader, and give the work an appearance of naturalness. Nothing was left to relieve the tedium of the endless series of monstrous portents and childish superstitions. In short, it was an injudicious exhibition of the substance of oriental fictions in a European dress. Incongruity was the natural consequence; and thus what in Mr. Lane's version often appears only natural in relation to the writer, and under all the given circumstances, seems in the older version, unmitigated absurdity. So much depends upon a foreign literature appearing in its native costume. In Mr. Lane's case the full peculiarities of the eastern style are preserved, and we could almost imagine_an_oriental addressing us, only in English instead of Arabic. In Galland's version these peculiarities are often entirely lost, and the consequence is we merely have an absurd story insipidly told. The full meaning of what has just been said can be understood only by those who will take the pains to compare a few pages of the two versions together. This will at once disclose the differences to which we advert more clearly than any attempt to enumerate them. One of these points, however, we may mention by way of example. Every one knows that one of the most common pecuiarities of the oriental style consists of a simple reference to some external action, object, or circumstance as the representation

and index of some feeling, habit, or moral quality, leaving the inference to be drawn by the sagacity of the reader. Galland often thinks needful to translate these graphic symbols into their literal and unfigurative meaning, or to amplify and overlay them with a diffuse interpretation. By this means, one of the chief and most characteristic features of the original is lost or diminished, and a brief apologue expanded into tediousness. The difference may no doubt in part be owing to the fact that Mr. Lane has translated from a much better MS., but it cannot be wholly or even chiefly attributed to this circumstance.

The defects of Galland's version were copied of course into the English, which was mere translation from the French. Under no circumstances would the French language be particularly adapted to convey the force of the original; but a still further version from it was certainly not likely to diminish its defects. In truth our version did not deserve to be called a translation at all. It was merely a translation of a translation, and that not a good

one.

With respect to the assertion that M. Galland's version had improved the original by extinguishing many of its characteristic features, and adapting it to European taste, we must be allowed to say again, that we think this any thing but an improvement. European taste may be better abstractedly than the oriental, but it by no means follows that an oriental fiction in a European dress will be the better for being so exhibited, any more than it follows that because good wine may be better than good beer, the beer will be improved by mixing it with the wine. Pope has given us almost a new poem in his version of Homer, but no one ever supposes that Homer is improved by it. The translator is pardoned only from the impossibility of adequately representing the old Grecian in his majestic simplicity. But on the subject of M. Galland's defects, we must permit Mr. Lane to speak for himself.

My undertaking to translate anew the tales of The Thousand and One Nights' implies an unfavorable opinion of the version which has so long amused us; but I must express my objections with respect to the latter in plain terms, and this I shall do by means of a few words on the version of Galland, from which it is derived; for to him alone its chief faults are to be attributed. I am somewhat reluctant to make this remark, because several persons, and among them some of deserved and high reputation as Arabic scholars, have pronounced an opinion that his version is an improvement upon the original. That the • Thousand and One Nights' may be greatly improved, I most readily admit; but as confidently do I assert that Galland has excessively perverted the work. His acquaintance with Arab manners and customs was insufficient to preserve him always from errors of the grossest description; and by the style of his version, he has given to the whole