But the critic has been grandly deceptive, either designedly or of ignorance prepense in his arithmetic. "There are over four hundred of these (anecdotes, fables, and stories) in the complete text, and Lane has not translated more than two hundred" (p. 172). * * * "Adding the omitted anecdotes to the omitted tales, it appears that Lane left out about a third of the whore 'Nights,' and of that third at least three-fourths was incompatible with a popular edition. When Mr. Payne and Captain Burton boast of presenting the public 'with three times as much matter as any other version,' they perhaps mean a third as much again" (p. 173). * * * "Captain Burton records his opinion that Lane has 'omitted half and by far the more characteristic half of the Arabian Nights,' but Captain Burton has a talent for exaggeration, and for 'characteristic' we should reed 'unclear.' It is natural that he should make the most of such omissions, since they form the raison d'être of his own translation; but he has widely overshot the mark, and the public may rest assured that the tales omitted from the standard version (proh pudor!) are of very slight importance in comparison with the tales included in it" (p. 173). What a mass of false statement! Let us now exchange fiction for fact. Lane's three volumes contain a total, deducting 15 for index, of pp. 1995 (viz. 618 + 643 + 734); while each (full) page of text averages 38 lines and of notes (in smaller type) 48. The text with a number of illustrations represents a total of pp. 1485 (viz. 441 + 449 + 595). Mr. Payne's nine volumes contain a sum of pp. 3057, mostly without breaks, to the 1485 of the "Standard edition." In my version the sum of pages, each numbering 41 lines, is 3156, or 1163 more than Lane's total and 2671 more than his text.