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Not only does he fail to reproduce agreeably the poetry of the Nights, but he shows himself incapable of properly appreciating it. Notice, for example, his remark on the lovely poem of the Fakir at the end of the story of "Abu Al-Hasan and Abu Ja'afer the Leper," the two versions of which we gave on a preceding page. Burton calls it "sad doggerel," and, as he translates it, so it is.
What an array of figures beautiful, revolting, sly, fatuous, witty, brave, pusillanimous, mean, generous meets the eye as we recall one by one these famous stories; beautiful and amorous, but mercurial ladies with henna scented feet and black eyes often with a suspicion of kohl and more than a suspicion of Abu Murreh in them peeping cautiously through the close jalousies of some lattice; love sick princes overcoming all obstacles; executioners with blood-dripping scimitars; princesses of blinding beauty and pensive tenderness, who playfully knock out the "jaw-teeth" of their eunuchs while "the thousand-voiced bird in the coppice sings clear;" hideous genii, whether of the amiable or the vindictive sort, making their appearance in unexpected moments; pious beasts nay, the very hills praising Allah and glorifying his vice-gerent; gullible saints, gifted scoundrels; learned men with camel loads of dictionaries and classics, thieves with camel loads of plunder; warriors, zanies, necromancers, masculine women, feminine men, ghouls, lutists, negroes, court poets, wags the central figure being the gorgeous, but truculent, Haroun Al Rashid, who is generally accompanied by Ja'afer and Masrur, and sometimes by the abandoned but irresistible Abu Nowas.
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