"Everything comes to him who waits—even the long-promised, eagerly expected 'Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights,' by Richard F. Burton. It is a whole quarter of a century since this translation of one of the most famous books of the world was contemplated, and we are told it is the natural outcome of the well-known pilgrimage to Medinah and Mecca. Of Captain Burton's fitness for the task who can doubt? It was during that celebrated journey to the Tomb of the Prophet that he proved himself to be an Arab—indeed, he says, in a previous state of existence he was a Bedouin. Did he not for months at a stretch lead the life of a Son of the Faithful, eat, drink, sleep, dress, speak, pray, like his brother devotees, the sharpest eyes failing to pierce his disguise? He knows the ways of Eastern men—and women—as he does the society of London or Trieste. How completely at home he is with his adopted brethren he showed at Cairo, when, to the amazement of some English friends who were looking on at the noisy devotions of some 'howling' Dervishes, he suddenly joined the shouting, gesticulating circle, and behaved as if to the manner born. He has qualified as a 'howler,' he holds a diploma as a master Dervish, and he can initiate disciples. Clearly, to use a phrase of Arabian story, it was decreed by Allah from the beginning—and fate and fortune have arranged—that Captain Burton should be the one of all others to confer upon his countrymen the boon of the genuine unsophisticated 'Thousand Nights and a Night.' In the whole of our literature no book is more widely known. It is spread broadcast like the Bible, Bunyan, and Shakespeare: yet although it is in every house, and every soul in the kingdom knows something about it, nobody knows it as it really exists. We have only had what translators have chosen to give—selected, diluted, and abridged transcripts. And of late some so-called 'original' books have been published, containing minor tales purloined bodily from the 'Nights.'"
Whitehall Review, May 24th, 1886.
"The sixth volume of Sir Richard Burton's 'Arabian Nights,' which has just been issued to subscribers, is one of the most interesting of the series to Anglo-Orientalists. For it contains that story—or set of stories—which is, perhaps, of all the tales of the 'Arabian Nights,' the dearest to legend-loving mankind, whether Oriental or Occidental—the story of the voyages of 'Sindbad the Sailor,' or of 'Sindbad the Seaman,' as Sir Richard Burton prefers to call him. Perhaps the only tale which at all competes in popularity with the wandering record of the 'Eastern Odysseus' is the story of 'Ali Baba,' and that, unfortunately, does not belong to the 'Arabian Nights' at all, and can only, as far as we know, be traced to a modern Greek origin. Lovers of the story of 'Sindbad the Sailor' will be pleased to learn that their old friend remains to all intents and purposes the same in Sir Richard's literal Translation as he was in the fanciful adaptation of Galland, and the more accurate rendering of Lane. He does not 'suffer a sea change,' but remains, what he has always been, the most wonderful wanderer in the whole range and region of romance. Sir Richard Burton's sixth volume contains, besides, that story of the 'Seven Viziers,' which in so many forms is a favourite in all the languages of the East."
The Bat, July 7th, 1886.
"As regards his translation, however, Captain Burton is certainly felicitous in the manner in which he has Englished the picturesque turns of the original. One great improvement in this version over that of Mr. Lane will be found in the fact that the verses so freely interspersed throughout the 'Nights' are here rendered in metre, and that an attempt also has often been made to preserve the assonants and the monorhyme of the Arabic. Mr. Lane frankly stated that he omitted the greater part of the poetry as tedious, and, through the loss of measure and rhyme, 'generally intolerable to the reader,' as, in truth, the specimens inserted mostly proved to be on account of the bald literalism of the rendering. Captain Burton has naturally inserted the poetry with the rest; and has often shown much skill in doing into English verse the rippling couplets of the original. Take as an instance, the verses which Mr. Lane renders:—
'Tell him who is oppressed with anxiety that anxiety will not last.
As happiness passeth away, so passeth away anxiety.'
"Almost equally literal, and certainly more poetical, is Captain Burton, who gracefully turns this:—
'Tell whoso hath sorrow, Grief never shall last;
E'en as Joy hath no morrow, so Woe shall go past.'