JAMES RIDLEY

James Ridley (1736-1765) was an English author. He was educated at university College, Oxford, and served as a chaplain in the British army. Apart from two novels (The history of James Lovegrove, Esquire, 1761; The schemer, or the universal satirist, by that great philosopher Helter van Scelter, 1763) he published one of the main pastiches of the Thousand and one nights, the Tales of the genii (2 vols., 1764). This collection was translated into German and French.

The fragments:

The cycle Tales of the genii (1764) was published under the pseudonym ‘Sir Charles Morell’, British Ambassador in Bombay. After the fashion of the 18th century, it was allegedly a translation of a Persian manuscript compiled by a certain Imam Horam, allegedly ‘compared with the French and Spanish editions, published at Paris and Madrid’. The stories are impregnated with a strong religious flavour, but are otherwise rather trivial, showing little cohesion and composition. They are akin rather to Hamilton’s fancies than, for instance, Cazotte’s. In the framing story Sir Charles Morell tells about his discussions with Horam, a Persian sage on a visit to England, about religion, deploring his rejection of the Christian faith. Horam, having travelled through Europe, expresses his surprise at the ‘magnificence of the Popish religion’, but also at the ‘superstitions’ and ‘absurdities’ in Europe, ‘where I was warned by my master to expect the most rational customs, and the purest light of virtue and religion’. In Europe ‘ceremony seems to possess the seat of moral duties’, and ‘the fervour of devotion was buried in the unmeaning gestures of its votaries’. Having studied sciences and society in Europe, Horam returns to India, where he becomes a tutor of the Moghul prince. The prince turns against him, however, and Horam is sent into exile. The stories were conceived with the purpose of ‘disguising the true doctrine of morality under the delightful allegories of romantic enchantment’. Pike Conant comments rather acrimoniously: ‘The disguise is thin, though the “enchantment” is plentiful. Incantations, genii, sudden transformations, flowery valleys, crystal palaces, deserts, volcanoes, shipwrecks, are all lavishly employed. The attempt to accumulate horrors results once in unconscious humour: the description of the “horrid” sorcerer, who lurks in his lurid den, cherishing “his tube burning with the foetid herb tobacco, filling the cave with its poisonous odour.” But the narratives, in general, are tedious, and the continual moralizing is anything but “delightful.”’ (pp. 102-103) This harsh judgement is supported by Ros Ballaster, who summarizes Ridley’s intentions to claim ‘that the age of the genii and of Islamic belief will soon be surmounted by the advanced morality of Christianity, but that these tales will provide the necessary moral base for the deeper spirituality of the Christian West.’(p. 299) In Ridley’s anti-Catholic view, Christianity implies English Protestantism. For his ‘enchantment’, Ridley makes ample use of the models provided by the Thousand and one nights, both on the level of concept and structure, and on the level of motifs etc.

Tales of the genii; or, the delightful lessons of Horam, the son of Asmar, by Sir Charles Morell, C. Cooke, London s.d. [1764], (Early English Books Online), vol. 1, pp. 6-78.