Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 2.djvu/27

ai s. vin. JULY 12, 1913.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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THE ' ARABIAN NIGHTS ENTERTAIN- MENTS.'

4 *THE world knows nothing of its greatest men," and still less, if that were possible, does it know of those who have contributed most to its youthful pleasure and enjoyment. What does it really know of Robert Samber, who was the first to introduce Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood to an English audience ? The translator of Madame d'Aulnoy's fairy tales, ' The Fair One with the Golden Locks,' 'The Yellow Dwarf,' and many others that delighted six genera- tions of childhood, and formed the stock-in- trade of Planche and the extravaganza writers of old Lyceum days, is nameless. But he is no worse off than the writer who seized the opportunity presented by the publication of Galland's translation of ' The

Thousand and One Nights ' in Paris to transfer to London those immortal tales. Fifty-eight years ago the name of this benefactor was asked for in these columns (1 S. xii. 148), and the question remains un- answered yet. It was probably that of some hack who was unknown beyond the limits of Grub Street, but what a hack ! A hack who knew the secret of that antiseptic quality which enables dead-and-gone stories to " smell sweet, and blossom in the dust " centuries after their authors have been forgotten. The language adopted by the translator is as nervous and limpid as that of Swift or Defoe, and there is not a reader who would consent to give up one of its quaint archaisms. The querist to whom I have referred indicated " the excellent English version, that of our schoolboy days," and the Editor, with somewhat unusual density (with bated breath be it spoken), replied that his correspondent should have given the date of the edition perused by him in his schoolboy days. There is, or was, for I have no knowledge of the youthful tastes of the present day, but one version of ' The Arabian Nights ' known to the school- boy world, and that was the one from which the poet drew his inspiration when on

Many a sheeny summermorn, Adovvn the Tigris I was borne, By Bagdat's shrines of fretted gold, High-walled gardens green and old ; True Mussulman was I and sworn, For it was in the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid.

The bibliography of the first English translation of ' The Arabian Nights ' is rather obscure. According to Brunet (' Manuel du Libraire,' ed. 1862, tome iii. col. 1716), Galland's translation of 'The Thousand and One Nights ' appeared in Paris in twelve duodecimo volumes between the years 1704 and 1717. But the English translator did not wait for the completion of the work before he entered on his task. The earliest mention of the translation that I have been able to discover is contained in an advertisement of ' Books newly Publish'd,' which is printed on the last page of the first edition of ' The Diverting Works of the Countess d'Anois,' printed in 1707 for several publishers, among whom was Andrew Bell at the Cross Keys and Bible in Cornhill. The advertisement simply runs : " Arabian Nights Entertainments. Six Parts in 3 Vol. in Twelves. Price 3s. a Volume." I cannot find a reference to this issue, which was probably the first, in the late Mr. Arber'p ' Term Catalogues,' but in the third volume of that work, at p. 592, Easter and Trin.,