_There will be 10 volumes at a guinea a piece, each to be paid for on delivery. Subscribers may count on the first three volumes being printed in March next. Captain Burton pledges himself to furnish copies to all subscribers who address themselves to him; and he also undertakes not to issue, nor to allow the issue of a cheaper Edition. One thousand copies will be printed; the whole Manuscript will be ready before going to press in February, and the ten volumes will be issued within Eighteen Months._
_The Student of Arabic who reads_ “THE NIGHTS” _with this version, will not only be competent to join in any conversation, to peruse the popular books and newspapers, and to write letters to his friends, he will also find in the notes a repertoire of those Arabian Manners and Customs, Beliefs and Practices, which are not discussed in popular works_.
_The 10 volumes will be handsomely bound in black and gold._
_No subscriptions will be received until the work is done, and then at Coutts’ Bank, Strand, London._
_Subscribers who apply directly are preferred._
_The author will pay carriage of volumes all over the United Kingdom. A London address is requested._
And, lastly, after some delay, came the subjoined cutting from the _Daily Tribune_, New York.
“It has already been announced that the first instalment of Captain Burton’s new translation of the Arabian Nights may be expected this autumn. I am indebted to a friend of his for some details which have not yet, I think, been made public. There is still room for a translation of the Arabian Nights. All or nearly all the popular editions, of which there are hundreds, are but renderings, more or less imperfect, from Professor Galland’s French version, which is itself an abridgment from the original, and turns a most valuable ethnographical work into a mere collection of fairy tales. Moreover, these English translations abound in Gallicisms, and their style offers but a painful contrast to the French of the seventeenth century. Some years since a Mr. Torrens undertook a complete translation from the original, but his work did not go beyond a single volume, or fifty tales out of the 1,001. Then came Mr. Lane in 1839, whose success was but moderate. In his three large and (in the 1839 edition) beautifully illustrated volumes, he has given not more than half the tales. He used the Cairo Arabic edition, which is itself an abridgment, and took all kinds of liberties with the text, translating verse into prose, and excising everything that was not ‘strictly proper.’