MEMOIR OF FLEISCHER. 513 



"Arabian Nights," require complete mastery of tbe whole domain of 

 Arabic-Mohammedan life, for a thorough understanding of all the 

 dififlculties that grow out of the language and the subject-matter. Of 

 this master^' the essay testifies abundantly, as it does of the unerring 

 philological tact of the critic, whose emendations by no means are the 

 ha[)py suggestions of an ingenious mind, but rather the results of wide 

 linguistic and historical knowledge, and of intimate acquaintance with 

 the habits of copyists and the manner of transmitting manuscripts. 



For obvious reasons, it is not easy — and so far as I am concerned it 

 is at this moment not possible — to trace the impression made by the 

 two essays wben first published ; but their success shows that it must 

 have been deep and lasting. The same complete mastery of the sub- 

 ject is displayed by Fleischer's next works : AWs One Hundred Prorerbs 

 (1837), a description of the Arabic, Persian, and Turkish manuscri])ts 

 in the Gakilogus Librorum M8S. Bihl. Civit. Lipsiensis (1838), and the 

 completion of Habicht's edition of the Arabian Nights (vols, ix-xir, 

 184:2-'43). But the character of the subjects treated in these works was 

 not calculated to confer controlling influence upon them. Likewise his 

 edition in 1847 of Mirza Mohammed Ibrahim's Grammar of the modern 

 Persian Language (2d edition, 1875), merely strengthened the impression 

 derived from AWs Proverbs, that this scholar had as wide an acquain- 

 tance with Persian as with Arabic. Thus, directly or indirectly, it 

 must be due to these two short essays that Fleischer, as early as the 

 fourth decade of this century, was freely acknowledged by all, except- 

 ing perhaps the immediate followers of Hammer, as the chief of Ger- 

 man orientalists. In fact, from that time on for a period of nearly half 

 a century, he became the chosen guide of all Germans and many 

 foreigners, desirous of thorough disciplining in Arabic-Mohammedan 

 philologJ^ The impression created by these two works was so strong, 

 because they are an exemplification of the true philological method for 

 which the Germans, after the death of Eeiske, the vir incomparabilis, 

 once more had to resort to the Frenchman De Sacy, — a method which 

 is nothing less than the use of common sense, coupled on the one hand 

 with faithful, untiring efforts to attain to the greatest possible complete- 

 ness and to scrupulous accuracy in the collecting and sifting of the 

 material handed down to us, and forbidding, on the other hand, all ar- 

 bitrariness, however ingenious, as well as all superficiality, however 

 grandiose. This definition by no means puts an interdict upon clever- 

 ness on the part of the philologist thus gifted. It merely provides that 

 cleverness must manifest itseliin mastering the details acquired, not in 

 si)eciously hiding the imperfections of scientific research and then sat- 

 isfying one's (!onscience by a perfunctory though minute adherence to a 

 traditional method. That Fleischer realized in himself this ideal of a 

 philologist perhaps best marks his importance in the history of science ; 

 his example as well as his precept have made it possible for all to gain a 

 knowledge of the correct method to be used in our department of rc- 

 H. Mis. 224 33 



