These bévues, which give us the fairest measure for the Reviewer's competence to review, are followed (p. 189) by a series of obsolete assertions. "The highest authority on this point (the date) is the late Mr. Lane, who states his unqualified conviction that the tales represent the social life of mediaerval Egypt, and he selects a period approaching the close of the fifteenth century as the probable date of collection, though some of the tales are, he believes, rather later" (p. 189). Mr. Lane's studies upon the subject were painfully perfunctory. He distinctly states (Preface, p. xii.) that "the work was commenced and completed by one man," or at least that "one man completed what another commenced." With a marvellous want of critical acumen he could not distinguish the vast difference of style and diction, treatment and sentiments, which at once strikes every intelligent reader, and which proves incontestably that many hands took part in the Great Saga-book. He speaks of "Galland's very imperfect MS.," but he never took the trouble to inspect the three volumes in question which are still in the Bibliothèque Nationale. And when he opines that "it (the work) was most probably not commenced earlier than the fifteenth century of our era" (Pref. p. xiii.) M. Hermann Zotenberg, judging from the style of writing, would attribute the MS. to the beginning[FN#456] of the xivth century. The French Savant has printed a specimen page in his Histoire d'Alâ al-Dîn (p. 6; see my Suppl. vol. iii., Foreword p. ix.); and now, at the request of sundry experts, he is preparing for publication other proofs which confirm his opinion. We must correct Lane's fifteenth century to thirteenth century --a difference of only 200 years.[FN#457]