56, Burton says:
"The most familiar book in England, next to the Bible, it is one of the
least known, the reason being that about one-fifth is utterly unfit for
translation, and the most sanguine Orientalist would not dare to render
more than three-quarters of the remainder, [142] consequently the reader
loses the contrast--the very essence of the book--between its brilliancy
and dulness, its moral putrefaction and such pearls as:

'Cast the seed of good works on the least fit soil;
Good is never wasted, however it may be laid out.'

And in a page or two after such divine sentiment, the ladies of Baghdad
sit in the porter's lay, and indulge in a facetiousness which would have
killed Pietro Aretino before his time." [143] When the work entitled
A Thousand Nights and a Night was commenced, no man knows. There were
Eastern collections with that title four centuries ago, laboured by the
bronzed fingers of Arab scribes; but the framework and some of the tales
must have existed prior even to the Moslem conquest. It has been noticed
that there are resemblances between the story of Shahryar and that of
Ahasuerus as recorded in Esther. In both narratives the King is offended
with his Queen and chooses a new wife daily. Shahryar has recourse to
the scimitar, Ahasuerus consigns wife after wife to the seclusion of his
harem. Shahryar finds a model consort in Shahrazad, Ahasuerus in Esther.
Each queen saves a multitude from death, each king lies awake half
the night listening to stories. [144] While many of the stories in
The Arabian Nights are ancient, some, as internal evidence proves, are
comparatively recent. Thus those of Kamar-al-Zaman II. and Ma'aruf the
Cobbler belong to the 16th century; and no manuscript appears to be
older than 1548. The most important editions are the Calcutta, the
Boulac [145] and the Breslau, all of which differ both in text and the
order of the stories. The Nights were first introduced into Europe by
Antoine Galland, whose French translation appeared between 1704 and
1717. Of the Nights proper, Galland presented the public with about a
quarter, and he added ten tales [146] from other Eastern manuscripts.
An anonymous English edition appeared within a few years. The edition
published in 1811 by Jonathan Scott is Galland with omissions and
additions, the new tales being from the Wortley Montague MS. now in the
Bodleian. In 1838, Henry Torrens began a translation direct from the
Arabic, of which,