es, which seem to me, even in Caussin de Perceval's
corrector rendering and in his own brilliant and masterly version, very
inferior, in style, conduct and diction, to those of "the old Arabian
Nights," whilst I think "Chavis and Cazotte's Continuation" utterly
unworthy of republication, whether in part or "in its entirety." Indeed,
I confess the latter version seems to me so curiously and perversely and
unutterably bad that I cannot conceive how Cazotte can have perpetrated
it and can only regard it as a bad joke on his part. As Caussin de
Perceval remarks, it is evident that Shawish (whether from ignorance or
carelessness) must, in many instances, have utterly misled his French
coadjutor (who had no knowledge of Arabic) as to the meaning of the
original, whilst it is much to be regretted that a writer of exquisite
genius and one of the first stylists of the 18th century, such as the
author of the Diable Amoureux, (a masterpiece to be ranked with Manon
Lescaut and Le Neveu de Rameau,) should have stooped to the commission
of the flagrant offences against good taste and artistic morality which
disfigure well nigh every line of the so-called "Sequel to the 1001
Nights." "Far be it" (as the Arabs say) that we should do so cruel a
wrong to so well and justly beloved a memory as that of Jacques Cazotte
as to attempt to perpetuate the remembrance of a literary crime which
one can hardly believe him to have committed in sober earnest! Rather
let us seek to bury in oblivion this his one offence and suffer kind
Lethe with its beneficent waters to wash this "adulterous blot" from his
else unsullied name.]

[Footnote 9: Lit. "Servants" (ibad) i.e. of God.]

[Footnote 10: i.e. he who most stands in need of God's mercy.]

[Footnote 11: Kebikej is the name of the genie set over the insect
kingdom. Scribes occasionally invoke him to preserve their manuscripts
from worms.-Note by M. Zotenberg.]

[Footnote 12: Galland calls him "Hanna, c'est... dire Jean Baptiste,"
the Arabic Christian equivalent of which is Youhenna and the Muslim
Yehya, "surnomme Diab." Diary, October 25, 1709.]

[Footnote 13: At this date Galland had already published the first six
(of twelve) volumes of his translation (1704-5) and as far as I can
ascertain, in the absence of a reference copy (the British Museum
possessing no copy of the original edition), the 7th and 8th volumes
were either published or in the press. Vol. viii. was certainly
published before