Page:Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp.djvu/40

xxx (besides being, as appears from the extracts given. far inferior both in style and general correctness,) is shown by the editor to be full of modern European phrases and turns of speech and to present so many suspicious peculiarities that it would be difficult, having regard, moreover, to the doubtful character and reputation of the Syrian monkish adventurer who styled himself Dom Denis Chavis, to resist the conviction that his MS. was a forgery, i.e. professedly a copy of a genuine Arabic text, but in reality only a translation or paraphrase in that language of Galland’s version,—were it not that the Baghdad MS. (dated before the commencement, in 1704, of Galland’s publication and transcribed by a man—Mikhaïl Sebbagh—whose reputation, as a collaborator of Silvestre de Sacy and other distinguished Orientalists, is a sufficient voucher for the authenticity of the copy in the Bibliothèque Nationale,) contains a text essentially identical with that of Shawish. Moreover, it is evident, from a comparison with Galland’s rendering and making allowance for the latter’s system of translation, that the Arabic version of Aladdin given him by Hanna must either have been derived from the Baghdad text or from some other practically identical source, and it is