le later) of vying with
the _Arabian Nights_, substitutes for the genuine local colour
and speech the _fade_ jargon of French eighteenth-century
"sensibility"--_autels_ and _flammes_ and all the rest of the trumpery.
But it does worse still--it tries to be instructive, and informs us of
the difference between male and female _dives_ and _peris_, of the
custom of suttee, and of the fact that there are many professional
singers and dancers among Indian girls. This is simply intolerable.[232]

[Sidenote: The large proportion of Eastern Tales.]

[Sidenote: _Les Voyages de Zulma._]

The great prominence of the Eastern Tale, indeed, in this collection is
likely to be one of the most striking things in it to a new-comer. He
would know, of course, that such tales are not uncommon in contemporary
English; he would certainly be acquainted with Addison's, Johnson's,
Goldsmith's experiments in them, perhaps with those of Hawkesworth and
others.[233] He could see for himself that the "accaparation" by France
of the peerless _Arabian Nights_ themselves must have led to a still
greater fancy for them there; and he might possibly have heard the
tradition (which the present writer[234] never traced to its source, or
connected with any real evidence either way) that no less a person than
Lesage assisted Galland in his task. But though the _Nights_ themselves
form the most considerable single group in the _Cabinet_, the united
bulk of their congeners or imitations occupies a still larger space.
There are the rather pale and "moon-like" but sometimes not
uninteresting _Thousand and One Days_, and the obviously and rather
foolishly pastiched _Thousand and One Quarters of an Hour_. There are
Persian Tales--origin of a famous and characteristic jibe at "Namby
Pamby" Philips--and Turkish Tales which are a fragment of one of the
numerous versions of the _Seven Sages_ scheme. The just mentioned
_Adventures of Abdallah_ betray their source and their nature at once;
the hoary fables of Bidpai and Lokman are modernised to keep company
with these "fakings," and there are more definitely literary attempts to
follow. _Les Voyages de Zulma_, again an incomplete thing which actually
tails off towards its failure of an end, shows some ingenuity in its
conception, but suffers, even in the beginning, from that mixing of
kinds which has been pointed out and reprobated. An attempt is made to
systematise the fairy idea by representing these gracious creatur