We should be sorry to believe that this good old life of
story-telling and story-hearing had utterly gone out. It belonged to an
age that only very foolish men and very vulgar men laugh at without
blushing.
"We of the nineteenth century" have a certain way of our own, however,
of enjoying that most rarely fascinating class of literary productions
known as _stories_,--a critical, perhaps over-intellectual, way,--but
still sufficing, it is comfortable to know, to keep the story at very
near its ancient dignity in the realm of letters. Perhaps it is a true
sign of the perfect story, that it ministers at once to these two
unsympathizing mental appetites, and pleases completely, not only the
man, but his--by this aide--ever-so-great-grandfather, the child.
Everybody thinks first of the "Arabian Nights' Entertainments," when we
fall into such remarks as these,--that marvellous treasure, from which
the dreams of little boys have been furnished forth, and the pages of
great scholars gemmed with elegant illustration, ever since it was
first opened to Western eyes. With this book the title which Mr. Curtis
has so happily selected for his translation invites us to compare it;
and it is not too much praise to say that it can well stand the
comparison,--we mean as a selection of stories fascinating to old and
young.
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