Page:The Perfumed Garden - Burton - 1886.djvu/245

 Rh which are often charming, wanting neither in poetry nor originality, nor in descriptive talent, not even in a certain elevation of thought, and bearing an undeniable stamp of originality. We may cite as an example the "Chapter of Kisses," which is found neither in our translation nor in the other two texts which we have examined, and which we have borrowed.

In our character of Gauls, we must not complain about the obscenities which are scattered about, as if on purpose to excite grosser passions; but what we must deprecate are the tedious expansions, whole pages full of verbiage, which disfigure the work, and are like the reverse of the medal. The author has felt this himself, as at the conclusion of his work he requests the reader to pardon him in consideration of the good intention which has guided his pen. In presence of the qualities of first rank, which must be acknowledged to exist in the book, we should have preferred that it had not contained these defects; we should have liked, in one word, to see it more homogeneous and more earnest, and more particularly so if one considers that the circumstances which we are pointing out raises doubts as to the veritable origin of the new matters which have been discovered, and which might easily be taken for interpolations due to the fancy of one or more of the copyists through whose hands the work passed before we received it.

Everyone knows, in fact, the grave inconveniences attaching to manuscripts, and the services rendered by the art of printing to science and literature by disposing of them. No copy leaves the hands of the copyist complete and perfect, particularly if the writer is an Arab, the least scrupulous of all. The Arab copyist not only