"Another speciality of Captain Burton's edition is the notes. He is celebrated for sowing the bottom of his pages with curiously illuminating remarks, and he has here carried out his custom in a way to astonish. He tells us that those who peruse his notes in addition to those of Lane would be complete proficients in the knowledge of Oriental practices and customs. Lane begins with Islam, from Creation to the present day, and has deservedly won for his notes the honour of a separate reprint. Captain Burton's object in his annotations is to treat of subjects which are completely concealed from the multitude. They are utterly and entirely esoteric, and deal with matters of which books usually know nothing. Indeed, he has been assured by an Indian officer who had been forty years in the East, that he was entirely ignorant of the matters revealed in these notes. Without these marvellous elucidations, the 'Arabian Nights' would remain only half understood, but by their aid we may know as much of the Moslems as the Moslems know of themselves."
Whitehall Review, September 17th, 1885.
"The publication of the first volume of Captain Burton's translation of the 'Alf Layla' enriches the world of Oriental investigation with a monument of labour and scholarship and of research. The book is advisedly, and even inevitably, printed for private circulation, and is intended, as Captain Burton says in his preface, only for the eyes of such persons as are seriously students of Oriental life and manners, and are desirous of making a more complete acquaintance with the great masterpieces of Eastern literature than has hitherto been possible, except to finished Arabic scholars. In the name of the whole world of Oriental scholarship, we offer our heartfelt thanks and congratulations to Captain Burton upon the appearance of this first volume; and we look forward with the keenest interest for its successors."
Nottingham Journal, September 19th, 1885.
"To scholars and men who have sufficient love of the soul of these sweet stories to discern the form in its true proportions, the new edition will be welcome. From an Oriental point of view the work is masterly to a degree. The quatrains and couplets, reading like verses from Elizabethan mantels, and forming a perfect rosary of Eastern love, the constant succession of brilliant pictures, and the pleasure of meeting again our dear old friend Shahrázád, all these combine to give a unique charm and interest to this 'perfect expositor' of the mediæval Moslem mind."