Artistic prose takes us to the novel, and here it is clear that Islam has’furnished the world with one of its classics; for the Arabian Nights, though of little honour in their own country, enjoy popularity all over Europe, rather world.
They consist of an accumulation of tales from many sources; some going back to remote antiquity; in other cases the tale can be shown to be comparatively modern.
They are properly the possession of storytellers, entertainers by hereditary profession, who recite them usually to illiterate audiences; and they form one volume only in a whole literature of the type.
No other volume of which has been found attractive in Europe, though attempts have been made to import some of them.
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The inability to plan literary works of art on a great scale is no less apparent here than elsewhere.
For that reason the literature has produced few proverbial characters of fiction such as abound in the literature of Europe; for a certain amount of space is required for the display of notable qualities of the mind or heart, and none of their tales are sufficiently long to provide it.
In the literature of Persia, on which Professor Browne has written such admirable volumes, the racial talent for the conception of fiction on a great scale has displayed itself.
It is true that some of the Arabic romances are voluminous, occupying over a thousand pages; but such works have little unity of design, consisting rather of endless repetitions of similar situations.
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Several of them contain just about the same historical nucleus as the Arabian Nights, viz., the names of one or two historical personages, with their correct location in space, if not in time.