Page:The Perfumed Garden - Burton - 1886.djvu/250

 234 been able, for some reason or other, to revise them until it was too late.

The new matter introduced has compelled us to make modifications in the notes of the translator, and to add new notes for the better elucidation of the subjects which have not been treated before. We have been, with respect to these notes, as careful as we were with respect to the text, endeavouring to respect as much as possible the personal work of the translator.

Now that the reader has all the necessary information about the French edition of the Cheikh Nefzaoui's work, he will permit us to make, in conclusion, a few remarks upon the ensemble of the book.

There are found in it many passages which are not attractive. The extraordinary ideas displayed—for instance those about medicines and concerning the meanings of dreams—clash too directly with modern thought not to awaken in the reader a feeling more of boredom than of pleasure.

The work is certainly encumbered with a quantity of matter which cannot but appear ridiculous in the eyes of the civilized modern reader; but we should not have been justified in weeding it out. We were bound to keep it intact as we had received it from our translator. We have held with the Italian proverb, Traduttore, traditore, that a work loses sufficient of its originality by being conveyed from its own tongue into another, and we hope that the plan we have adopted will meet with general approval. Those oddities are, moreover, instructive, as they make us acquainted with the manner and character of the Arab under a peculiar aspect, and not only of the Arab who was contemporary with our author, but also with the Arab of our own day. The latter is, in fact,