The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, vol 16, Sir Richard Francis Burton [novels to read for beginners TXT] 📗
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542-690: see The Academy, July 28th, ‘88). Thus the local vocabularies are growing, but it will be long before the ground is covered.
Again the East, and notably the Moslem East since the Massacre of Damascus in 1860, although still moving slowly, shows a distinct advance. The once secluded and self-contained communities are now shaken by the repeated and continuous shocks of progress around them; and new wants and strange objects compel them nilly-willy to provide vernacular equivalents for the nomenclature of modern arts and sciences. Thus the Orientalist, who would produce a contemporary lexicon of Persian, must not only read up all the diaries and journals of Teheran and the vocabularies of Yezd and Herat, he must go further a-field. He should make himself familiar with the speech of the Iliy�t or wandering pastoral tribes and master a host of cognate tongues whose chiefs are Armenian (Old and New), Caucasian, a modern Babel, Kurdish, L�ri (Bakhtiy�ri), Balochki and Pukht� or Afghan, besides the direct descendants of the Zend, the Pehlevi, Dari and so forth. Even in the most barbarous jargons he will find terms which throw light upon the literary Iranian of the lexicons: for instance “M�diy�n” = a mare presupposes the existence of “Naray�n” = a stallion, and the latter is preserved by the rude patois of the Baloch mountaineers. This process of general collection would in our day best be effected after the fashion of Professor James A. H. Murray’s “New English Dictionary on Historical Principles.” It would be compiled by a committee of readers resident in different parts of Persia, communicating with the Royal Asiatic Society (whose moribund remains they might perhaps quicken) and acting in co-operation with Russia, whom unfriends have converted from a friend to an angry and jealous rival and who is ever so forward in the linguistic field.
But if the model Persian dictionary have its difficulties, far harder will be the task with Arabic, which covers incomparably more ground. Here we must begin with Spain and Portugal, Sardinia and the Balearics, Southern Italy and Sicily; and thence pass over to Northern Africa and the two “Soudans,” the Eastern extending far South of the Equator and the Western nearly to the Line.
In Asia, besides the vast Arabian Peninsula, numbering one million of square miles, we find a host of linguistic outliers, such as Upper Hindostan, the Concan, Malacca, Java and even remote Yun-nan, where al-Islam is the dominant religion, and where Arabic is the language of Holy Writ.
My initiation into the mysteries of Arabic began at Oxford under my tutor Dr.
W. A. Greenhill, who published a “Treatise on Small-pox and Measles,”
translated from Rhazes —Ab� Bakr al-R�z� (London, 1847), and where the famous Arabist, Don Pascual de Gayangos, kindly taught me to write Arabic leftwards.
During eight years of service in Western India and in Moslem Sind, while studying Persian and a variety of vernaculars it was necessary to keep up and extend a practical acquaintance with the language which supplies all the religious and most of the metaphysical phraseology; and during my last year at Sindian Kar�ch� (1849), I imported a Shaykh from Maskat. Then work began in downright earnest. Besides Erpenius’ (D’Erp) “Grammatica Arabica,” Richardson, De Sacy and Forbes, I read at least a dozen Perso-Arabic works (mostly of pamphlet form) on “Serf Wa Nahw”—Accidence and Syntax—and learned by heart one-fourth of the Koran. A succession of journeys and long visits at various times to Egypt, a Pilgrimage to the Moslem Holy Land and an exploration of the Arabic-speaking Som�li-shores and Harar-Gay in the Galla country of Southern Abyssinia, added largely to my practice. At Aden, where I passed the official examination, Captain (now Sir. R. Lambert) Playfair and the late Rev. G. Percy Badger, to whom my papers were submitted, were pleased to report favourably of my proficiency. During some years of service and discovery in Western Africa and the Brazil my studies were necessarily confined to the “Thousand Nights and a Night”; and when a language is not wanted for use my habit is to forget as much of it as possible, thus clearing the brain for assimilating fresh matter. At the Consulate of Damascus, however, in West Arabian Midian and in Maroccan Tangier the loss was readily recovered. In fact, of this and sundry other subjects it may be said without immodesty that I have forgotten as much as many Arabists have learned. But I repeat my confession that I do not know Arabic and I have still to meet the man who does know Arabic.
Orientalists, however, are like poets and musicians, a rageous race. A passing allusion to a Swedish student styled by others (Mekkanische Sprichw�rter, etc., p.1) “Dr. Landberg,” and by himself “Doctor Count Carlo Landberg”
procured me the surprise of the following communication. I quote it in full because it is the only uncourteous attempt at correspondence upon the subject of The Nights which has hitherto been forced upon me.
In his introduction (p. xx.) to the Syrian Proverbes et Dictons Doctor Count Landberg was pleased to criticise, with less than his usual knowledge, my study entitled “Proverbia Communia Syriaca” (Unexplored Syria, i. 264-269).
These 187 “dictes” were taken mainly from a MS. collection by one Hann� Misk, ex-dragoman of the British Consulate (Damascus), a little recueil for private use such as would be made by a Syro Christian bourgeois. Hereupon the critic absurdly asserted that the translator a voulu s’occuper de la langue classique au lieu de se faire * l’interpr�te fid�le de celle du peuple. My reply was (The Nights, vol. viii. 148) that, as I was treating of proverbs familiar to the better educated order of citizens, his critique was not to the point; and this brought down upon me the following letter under the �gis of a portentous coronet and initials blazing with or, yules and azure.
Paris, le 24 F�vr., 1888.
Monsieur,
J’ai l’honneur de vous adresser 2 fascicules de mes Critica Arabica. Dans le vol. viii. p. 48 de votre traduction de 1001 Nuits vous avez une note qui me regard (sic). Vous y cites que je ne suds pas “Arabist.” Ce n’est pas votre jugement qui m’impressionne, car vous n’�tes nullement � m�me de me juger.
Votre article contient, comme tout ce que vous avez �crit dans le domaine de la langue arabe, des b�vues. C’est vous qui n’�tes pas arabisant: cela est bien connu et reconnu, et nous ne nous donnons pas m�me la peine de relever toutes les innombrables erreurs don’t vos publications fourmillent. Quant �
“Sah�fah” vous �tes encore en erreur. Mon �tymologie est accept�e par tout le monde et je vous renvoie � Fleischer, Kleinre Schriften, p. 468, Leipzig, 1885, o� vous trouverez [‘instruction n�cessaire. Le dilettantism qui se trahit dans tout ce que vous �crivez vous fait faire de telles erreurs. Nous autres arabisants et professo (?) nous ne vous avons jamais et nous ne vous pouvons jamais consid�rer comme arabisant. Voila ma r�ponse � votre note.
Agr�ez, Monsieur,
l’expression de mes sentiments distingu�s, Comte Lasdberg,
Dr.-�s-lettres.
After these preliminaries I proceed to notice the article (No. 335, of July ‘86) in
The “Edinburgh Review”
and to explain its private history with the motives which begat it.
“This is the Augustan age of English criticism,” say the reviewers, who are fond of remarking that the period is one of literary appreciation rather than of original production that is, contemporary reviewers, critics and monograph-writers are more important than “makers” in verse or in prose. In fact it is their aurea �tas. I reply “Virgin ore, no!” on the whole mixed metal, some noble, much ignoble; a little gold, more silver and an abundance of brass, lead and dross. There is the criticism of Sainte Beuve, of the late Matthew Arnold and of Swinburne, there is also the criticism of the Saturday Reviler and of the Edinburgh criticaster. The golden is truth and honour incarnate: it possesses outsight and insight: it either teaches and inspires or it comforts and consoles, save when a strict sense of duty compels it to severity: briefly, it is keen and guiding and creative. Let the young beginner learn by rote what one master says of another:—“He was never provoked into coarseness: his thrusts were made with the rapier according to the received rules of fence, he firmly upheld the honour of his calling, and in the exercise of it was uniformly fearless, independent and incorrupt.” The Brazen is partial, one-sided, tricksy, misleading, immoral; serving personal and interested purposes and contemptuously forgetful of every obligation which an honest and honourable pen owes to the public and to itself. Such critiques bring no profit to the reviewed. He feels that he has been written up or written down by a literary hireling who has possibly been paid to praise or abuse him secondarily, and primarily to exalt or debase his publisher or his printer.
My own literary career has supplied me with many a curious study. Writing upon subjects, say The Lake Regions of Central Africa which were then a type of the Unknown I could readily trace in the journalistic notices all the tricks and dodges of the trade. The rare honest would confess that they could say nothing upon the subject, they came to me therefore for information and professed themselves duly thankful. The many dishonest had recourse to a variety of devices. The hard worker would read-up voyages and travels treating of the neighboring countries, Abyssinia, the Cape and the African Coasts Eastern and Western; thus he would write in a kind of reflected light without acknowledging his obligation to my volumes. Another would review my book after the easy American fashion of hashing up the author’s production, taking all its facts from me with out disclosing that one fact to the reader and then proceed to “butter” or “slash.” The worst, “fulfyld with malace of froward entente,” would choose for theme not the work but the worker, upon the good old principle “Abuse the plaintiff’s attorney.” These arts fully account for the downfall of criticism in our day and the deafness of the public to such literary verdicts. But a few years ago a favourable review in a first-rate paper was “fifty pounds in the author’s pocket”: now it is not worth as many pence unless signed by some well-known scribbling statesman or bustling reverend who caters for the public taste. The decline and fall is well expressed in the old lines:—
“Non est sanctior quod laudaris:
Non est vilior si vituperaris.”
“No one, now-a-days, cares for reviews,” wrote Darwin as far back as 1849; and it is easy to see the whys and the wherefores. I have already touched upon the duty of reviewing the reviewer when the latter’s work calls for the process, despite the pretensions of modern criticism that it must not be criticised.
Although to buffet an anonym is to beat the air, still the very effort does good. A well-known and popular novelist of the present day was a favourite butt for certain journalists who, with the normal half-knowledge of men—
“That read too little, and that write too much”—
persistently fell foul of the points in which the author was almost always right and the reviewer was wrong. “An eagle hawketh not at flies;” the object of ill-natured satire despised—
“The creatures of the stall and stye,”
and persisted in contemptuous reticence, giving consent by silence to what was
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