interjections in particular, "Tut a figge," "What a goodyere," and the like, resemble the inarticulate cries of childhood, and come most appropriate in a literature after a New Birth.
And the book which North has clothed in this style has greater claims to artistic unity than most collections of Oriental tales. With happy tact, he did not translate the second part of Doni (Trattati diversi), which contains a farrago of Oriental tales culled from all quarters, which produce the same bewildering effect as most of the Oriental collections. North, by confining himself to the first part of the Moral Philosophies, corresponding to the first chapter of the original Sanskrit,[1] has given a certain amount of consistency to his version of Bidpai which is lacking in all the others. Three-quarters of the book represent the intrigues of the wily Dimna against the simple-minded Senesba.
Here I must stop. One who edits a "find" cannot hope to be trusted about its artistic merits.
- ↑ It must not be supposed that our book contains only one-thirteenth of the original. The first chapter is exceptionally long, so that our version represents about one-fourth of the original Sanskrit, and rather more than a third of the Arabic version, from which most of the European representatives come.
