[153]. Here begins the Sindibad-namah, the origin of Dolopathos (thirteenth century by the Trouvère Harbers); of the “Seven Sages” (John Holland in 1575); the “Seven Wise Masters” and a host of minor romances. The Persian Sindibád-Námah assumed its present shape in A.D. 1375: Professor Falconer printed an abstract of it in the Orient. Journ. (xxxv. and xxxvi. 1841), and Mr. W. A. Clouston reissued the “Book of Sindibad,” with useful notes in 1884. An abstract of the Persian work is found in all edits. of The Nights; but they differ greatly, especially that in the Bresl. Edit. xii. pp. 237–377, from which I borrow the introduction. According to Hamzah Isfahání (ch. xli.) the Reguli who succeeded to Alexander the Great and preceded Sapor caused some seventy books to be composed, amongst which were the Liber Maruc, Liber Barsínas, Liber Sindibad, Liber Shimás, etc., etc., etc.
[154]. Eusebius De Præp. Evang. iii. 4, quotes Prophesy concerning the Egyptian belief in the Lords of the Ascendant whose names are given ἐν τοῖς ἀλμενιχιακοῖς: in these “Almenichiaka” we have the first almanac, as the first newspaper in the Roman “Acta Diurna.”
[155]. “Al-Mas’údi,” the “Herodotus of the Arabs,” thus notices Sindibad the Sage (in his Murúj etc., written about A.D. 934). “During the reign of Kurúsh (Cyrus) lived Al-Sindibad who wrote the Seven Wazirs, etc.” Al-Ya’akúbi had also named him circ. A.D. 880. For notes on the name Sindibad, see Sindbad the Seaman, Night dxxxvi. I need not enter into the history of the “Seven Sages,” a book evidently older than The Nights in present form; but refer the reader to Mr. Clouston, of whom more in a future page.
[156]. Evidently borrowed from the Christians, although the latter borrowed from writers of the most remote antiquity. Yet the saying is the basis of all morality and in few words contains the highest human wisdom.
[157]. It is curious to compare the dry and business-like tone of the Arab style with the rhetorical luxuriance of the Persian: p. 10 of Mr. Clouston’s “Book of Sindibad.”
[158]. In the text “Isfídáj,” the Pers. Isped (or Saféd) áb, lit. = white water, ceruse used for women’s faces suggesting our “Age of Bismuth,” Blanc Rosati, Crême de l’Impératrice, Perline, Opaline, Milk of Beauty, etc., etc., etc.
[159]. Commentators compare this incident with the biblical story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife and with the old Egyptian romance and fairy tale of the brothers Anapon and Saton dating from the fourteenth century, the days of Pharaoh Ramses Miamun (who built Pi-tum and Ramses) at whose court Moses or Osarsiph is supposed to have been reared (Cambridge Essays 1858). The incident would often occur, e.g. Phædra-cum-Hippolytus; Fausta-cum-Crispus and Lucinian; Asoka’s wife and Kunála, etc., etc. Such things happen in every-day life, and the situation has recommended itself to the folklore of all peoples.
[160]. Another version of this tale is given in the Bresl. Edit. (vol. viii. pp. 273–8: Night 675–6). It is the “Story of the King and the Virtuous Wife” in the Book of Sindibad. In the versions Arabic and Greek (Syntipas) the King forgets his ring; in the Hebrew Mishlé Sandabar his staff, and his sandals in the old Spanish Libro de los Engannos et los Asayamientos de las Mugeres.
[161]. One might fancy that this is Biblical, Bathsheba and Uriah. But such “villanies” must often have occurred in the East, at different times and places, without requiring direct derivation. The learned Prof. H. H. Wilson was mistaken in supposing that these fictions “originate in the feeling which has always pervaded the East unfavourable to the dignity of women.” They belong to a certain stage of civilisation when the sexes are at war with each other; and they characterise chivalrous Europe as well as misogynous Asia; witness Jankins, clerk of Oxenforde; while Æsop’s fable of the Lion and the Man also explains their frequency.
[162]. The European form of the tale is “Toujours perdrix,” a sentence often quoted but seldom understood. It is the reproach of M. l’Abbé when the Count (proprietor of the pretty Countess) made him eat partridge every day for a month; on which the Abbé says, “Always partridge is too much of a good thing!” Upon this text the Count speaks. A correspondent mentions that it was told by Horace Walpole concerning the Confessor of a French King who reproved him for conjugal infidelities. The degraded French (for “toujours de la perdrix” or “des perdrix”) suggests a foreign origin. Another friend refers me to No. x. of the “Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles” (compiled in A.D. 1432 for the amusement of the Dauphin, afterwards Louis XI.) whose chief personage “un grand seigneur du Royaulme d’Angleterre,” is lectured upon fidelity by the lord’s mignon, a “jeune et gracieux gentil homme de son hostel.” Here the partridge became pastés d’anguille. Possibly Scott refers to it in Redgauntlet (chapt. iv.); “One must be very fond of partridge to accept it when thrown in one’s face.” Did not Voltaire complain at Potsdam of “toujours perdrix” and make it one of his grievances? A similar story is that of the chaplain who, weary of the same diet, uttered “grace” as follows:—