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music the multiform progressions of the various keys inform the unity of the unchanging gamut with limitless variations of combination and effect, so the play of sentiment and circumstance in the Arabian tales perpetually induces in the rigid scale of their ornaments fresh permutations of shifting colour and new harmonies of phantasy and expression.
The grace of pathos that hallows so many of its pages constitutes perhaps the chief charm of the collection, although the other features whose presence should contribute to the unity of a great romantic work are no less conspicuous, when the occasion calls for their display. What can be more poignant in its sad simplicity than The Mad Lover or The Lovers of the Benou Udhreh,[1] more dramatic in its almost tragic intensity than The Scavenger and the Noble Lady of Baghdad, more engaging, in its homely pathos, than the story of the forlorn royal children in Jerusalem and their adventures with the rascal Bedouin and the kind simple-souled stoker?[2] Where shall we find a more fervid conte bleu of devotion than The Apples of Paradise[3] or The Devout Prince or “legendes dorées” more instinct with the austere poetry of asceticism than The Pious Black Slave,[4] The Ferryman and the
- ↑ Vol. VI. p. 208.
- ↑ Vol. II. pp. 57–73.
- ↑ Cf. the mediæval legend of St. Dorothy.
- ↑ Remarkable as affording the only instance of a black being favourably mentioned in the work. The African slave is commonly held up to execration in Arabian fiction as a monster of brutality and perfidy, lustfulness and ingratitude, and examples of this view of the negro character abound in the Thousand and One Nights.
