n,
giving a _resume_ of Mr. Zotenberg's work, published at Paris in 1888,
and which contains the Arab text of the story of Aladdin, along with
an exhaustive notice of certain manuscripts of the "Thousand and One
Nights," and of Galland's translation.
The fourth and fifth volumes of Burton's "Supplemental Nights" contain
certain new stories from an Arabic manuscript of the "Nights" in seven
volumes, brought to Europe by Edward Wortley Montague, Esq., and
bought at the sale of his library by Dr. Joseph White, Professor of
Hebrew and Arabic at Oxford, from whom it passed into the hands of Dr.
Jonathan Scott, who sold it to the Bodleian Library, at Oxford, for
fifty pounds.
Wortley Montague's manuscript contains many additional tales not
included in the Calcutta, Boulak, or Breslau editions, and these
additional stories Burton has now translated. It is uncertain how or
where Wortley Montague obtained his copy of the 'Thousand and One
Nights.' Dr. White had at one time intended to translate the whole
lot, but this was never accomplished. Jonathan Scott did, however,
translate some of the stories, which were published in the sixth
volume of his 'Arabian Nights Entertainment' in A.D. 1811, but the
work was badly and incompletely done. It has now been thoroughly
revised and put into better form by Burton in these two volumes.
In Appendix I. to Volume V. there is a catalogue of the contents of
the Wortley Montague MS., which is very interesting, as it contains
not only a description of the manuscript itself, but also a complete
list of the tales making up the "Thousand and One Nights," many of
which are, of course, to be found in the "Nights" proper.
These two supplemental volumes contain 25 principal and 31 subordinate
stories, or 56 in all. Some of them are very amusing, especially the
tales of the Larrikins, while the whole add to our knowledge of this
vast repertoire of tales from the East, which has been gradually
brought to the notice of Europe during the last one hundred and
eighty-five years.
Burton's sixth supplemental volume contains certain stories taken from
a book of Arabian tales, a continuation of the 'Arabian Nights
Entertainment,' brought out by Dom Chavis, a Syrian priest, and
eventually teacher of Arabic at the University of Paris, and Mr.
Jacques Cazotte, a well-known French _litterateur,_ unfortunately and
unjustly guillotined in Paris on the 25th September, 1792, at the time
of the Revolution.
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