The Life of Sir Richard Burton, by Thomas Wright

389 (return)
[ Persian Portraits, 1887. "My friend Arbuthnot's pleasant booklet, Persian Portraits," A. N. Lib. Ed. x., 190.]

391 (return)
[ In Kalidasa's Megha Duta he is referred to as riding on a peacock.]

393 (return)
[ The reader will recall Mr. Andrew Lang's witty remark in the preface to his edition of the Arabian Nights.]

395 (return)
[ The hand of Burton betrays itself every here and there. Thus in Part 3 of the former we are referred to his Vikram and the Vampire for a note respecting the Gandharva-vivaha form of marriage. See Memorial Edition, p. 21.]

396 (return)
[ This goddess is adored as the patroness of the fine arts. See "A Hymn to Sereswaty," Poetical Works of Sir William Jones, Vol. ii., p. 123; also The Hindoo Pantheon, by Major Moor (Edward FitzGerald's friend).]

399 (return)
[ The Hindu women were in the habit, when their husbands were away, of braiding their hair into a single lock, called Veni, which was not to be unloosed until their return. There is a pretty reference to this custom in Kalidasa's Megha Duta.]

402 (return)
[ Richard Monckton Milnes, born 1809, created a peer 1863, died 1885. His life by T. Wemyss Reid appeared in 1891.]

403 (return)
[ Burton possessed copies of this work in Sanskrit, Mar'athi Guzrati, and Hindustani. He describes the last as "an unpaged 8vo. of 66 pages, including eight pages of most grotesque illustrations." Burton's A. N., x., 202; Lib. Ed., viii., 183.]

406 (return)
[ The book has several times been reprinted. All copies, however, I believe, bear the date 1886. Some bear the imprint "Cosmopoli 1886."

407 (return)
[ See Chapter xxxii. It may be remembered also that Burton as good as denied that he translated The Priapeia.]

408 (return)
[ A portion of Miss Costello's rendering is given in the lovely little volume "Persian Love Songs," one of the Bibelots issued by Gay and Bird.]

409 (return)
[ Byron calls Sadi the Persian Catullus, Hafiz the Persian Anacreon, Ferdousi the Persian Homer.]

412 (return)
[ That is in following the Arabic jingles. Payne's translation is in reality as true to the text as Burton's.]

413 (return)
[ By W. A. Clouston, 8vo., Glasgow, 1884. Only 300 copies printed.]

415 (return)
[ Copies now fetch from £30 to £40 each. The American reprint, of which we are told 1,000 copies were issued a few years ago, sells for about £20.]

416 (return)
[ He had intended to write two more volumes dealing with the later history of the weapon.]

419 (return)
[ Burton read German, but would never speak it. He said he hated the sound.]

420 (return)
[ We cannot say. Burton was a fair Persian scholar, but he could not have known much Russian.]

422 (return)
[ This essay will be found in the 10th volume of Burton's Arabian Nights, and in the eighth volume (p. 233) of the Library Edition.]

423 (return)
[ Mr. Payne's account of the destruction of the Barmecides is one of the finest of his prose passages. Burton pays several tributes to it. See Payne's Arabian Nights, vol. ix.]

425 (return)
[ Lady Burton's edition, issued in 1888, was a failure. For the Library Edition, issued in 1894, by H. S. Nichols, Lady Burton received, we understand, £3,000.]

426 (return)
[ Duvat inkstand, dulat fortune. See The Beharistan, Seventh Garden.]

427 (return)
[ Mr. Arbuthnot was the only man whom Burton addressed by a nickname.]

430 (return)
[ Abu Mohammed al Kasim ibn Ali, surnamed Al-Hariri (the silk merchant), 1054 A. D. to 1121 A. D. The Makamat, a collection of witty rhymed tales, is one of the most popular works in the East. The interest clusters round the personality of a clever wag and rogue named Abu Seid.]

431 (return)
[ The first twenty-four Makamats of Abu Mohammed al Kasim al Hariri, were done by Chenery in 1867. Dr. Steingass did the last 24, and thus completed the work. Al Hariri is several times quoted in the Arabian Nights. Lib. Ed. iv., p. 166; viii., p. 42.]

434 (return)
[ See Notes to Judar and his Brethren. Burton's A. N., vi., 255; Lib. Ed., v., 161.]

435 (return)
[ Burton's A. N. Suppl., vi., 454; Lib. Ed., xii., 278. Others who assisted Burton were Rev. George Percy Badger, who died February 1888, Mr. W. F. Kirby, Professor James F. Blumhardt, Mr. A. G. Ellis, and Dr. Reinhold Rost.]

437 (return)
[ This work consists of fifty folk tales written in the Neapolitan dialect. They are supposed to be told by ten old women for the entertainment of a Moorish slave who had usurped the place of the rightful Princess. Thirty-one of the stories were translated by John E. Taylor in 1848. There is a reference to it in Burton's Arabian Nights, Lib. Ed., ix., 280.]

440 (return)
[ Ought there not to be notices prohibiting this habit in our public reference libraries? How many beautiful books have been spoilt by it!

441 (return)
[ The joys of Travel are also hymned in the Tale of Ala-al-Din. Lib. Ed., iii., 167.]

442 (return)
[ Cf. Seneca on Anger, Ch. xi. "Such a man," we cry, "has done me a shrewd turn, and I never did him any hurt! Well, but it may be I have mischieved other people."

443 (return)
[ Payne's Version. See Burton's Footnote, and Payne vol. i., p. 93.]

If thou demand fair play of Fate, therein thou dost it wrong; and blame
it not, for 'twas not made, indeed, for equity.
Take what lies ready to thy hand and lay concern aside, for troubled
days and days of peace in life must surely be.]

445 (return)
[ Burton's A. N., ii., 1; Lib. Ed., i., 329; Payne's A. N., i., 319.]

446 (return)
[ Payne has—"Where are not the old Chosroes, tyrants of a bygone day? Wealth they gathered, but their treasures and themselves have passed away." Vol. i., p. 359.]

447 (return)
[ To distinguish it from date honey—the drippings from ripe dates.]

449 (return)
[ Burton's A. N., v., 189; Lib. Ed., iv., 144; Payne's A. N., iv., 324.]

450 (return)
[ Burton's A. N., vi., 213; Lib. Ed., v., 121; Payne's A. N., vi., 1.]

451 (return)
[ Burton's A. N., ix., 304; Lib. Ed., vii., 364; Payne's A. N., ix., 145.]

452 (return)
[ Burton's A. N., ix., 134; Lib. Ed., viii., 208; Payne's A. N., viii., 297.]

453 (return)
[ Burton's A. N., ix., 165; Lib. Ed., vii., 237; Payne's A. N., viii., 330.]

454 (return)
[ Burton's A. N., viii., 264 to 349; ix., 1 to 18; Lib. Ed., vii., 1 to 99; Payne's A. N., viii., 63 to 169.]

455 (return)
[ Burton's A. N., vol. x., p. 1; Lib. Ed., vol. viii., p. 1; Payne's A. N., vol. ix., p. 180.]

456 (return)
[ Satan—See Story of Ibrahim of Mosul. Burton's A. N., vii., 113; Lib. Ed., v., 311; Payne's A. N., vi., 215.]

458 (return)
[ "Queen of the Serpents," Burton's A. N., v., 298; Lib. Ed., iv., 245; Payne's A. N., v., 52.]

459 (return)
[ Burton's A. N., vi., 160; Lib. Ed., v., 72; Payne's A. N., v., 293.]

460 (return)
[ See Arabian Nights. Story of Aziz and Azizeh. Payne's Translation; also New Poems by John Payne, p. 98.]

462 (return)
[ Burton's A. N., ii., p. 324-5; Lib. Ed., ii., p, 217; Payne, ii., p. 247.]

463 (return)
[ The reader may like to compare some other passages. Thus the lines "Visit thy lover," etc. in Night 22, occur also in Night 312. In the first instance Burton gives his own rendering, in the second Payne's. See also Burton's A. N., viii., 262 (Lib. Ed., vi., 407); viii., 282 (Lib. Ed., vii., 18); viii., 314 (Lib. Ed., vii., 47); viii., 326 (Lib. Ed., vii., 59); and many other places.]

464 (return)
[ Thus in the story of Ibrahim and Jamilah [Night 958:, Burton takes 400 words—that is nearly a page—verbatim, and without any acknowledgement. It is the same, or thereabouts, every page you turn to.]

465 (return)
[ Of course, the coincidences could not possibly have been accidental, for both translators were supposed to take from the four printed Arabic editions. We shall presently give a passage by Burton before Payne translated it, and it will there be seen that the phraseology of the one translator bears no resemblance whatever to that of the other. And yet, in this latter instance, each translator took from the same original instead of from four originals. See Chapter xxiii.]

466 (return)
[ At the same time the Edinburgh Review (July 1886) goes too far. It puts its finger on Burton's blemishes, but will not allow his translation a single merit. It says, "Mr. Payne is possessed of a singularly robust and masculine prose style... Captain Burton's English is an unreadable compound of archaeology and slang, abounding in Americanisms, and full of an affected reaching after obsolete or foreign words and phrases."

467 (return)
[ "She drew her cilice over his raw and bleeding skin." [Payne has "hair shirt."]—"Tale of the Ensorcelled Prince." Lib. Ed., i., 72.]

468 (return)
[ "Nor will the egromancy be dispelled till he fall from his horse." [Payne has "charm be broken."]—"Third Kalendar's Tale." Lib. Ed., i., 130. "By virtue of my egromancy become thou half stone and half man." [Payne has "my enchantments."]—"Tale of the Ensorcelled Prince." Lib. Ed., i., 71.]

469 (return)
[ "The water prisoned in its verdurous walls."—"Tale of the Jewish Doctor."

470 (return)
[ "Like unto a vergier full of peaches." [Note.—O.E. "hortiyard" Mr. Payne's word is much better.]—"Man of Al Zaman and his Six Slave Girls."

471 (return)
[ "The rondure of the moon."—"Hassan of Bassorah." [Shakespeare uses this word, Sonnet 21, for the sake of rhythm. Caliban, however, speaks of the "round of the moon."]

472 (return)
[ "That place was purfled with all manner of flowers." [Purfled means bordered, fringed, so it is here used wrongly.] Payne has "embroidered," which is the correct word.—"Tale of King Omar," Lib. Ed., i., 406.]

473 (return)
[ Burton says that he found this word in some English writer of the 17th century, and, according to Murray, "Egremauncy occurs about 1649 in Grebory's Chron. Camd. Soc. 1876, 183." Mr. Payne, however, in a letter to me, observes that the word is merely an ignorant corruption of "negromancy," itself a corruption of a corruption it is "not fit for decent (etymological) society."

474 (return)
[ A well-known alchemical term, meaning a retort, usually of glass, and completely inapt to express a common brass pot, such as that mentioned in the text. Yellow copper is brass; red copper is ordinary copper.]

475 (return)
[ Fr. ensorceler—to bewitch. Barbey d'Aurevilly's fine novel L'Ensorcelee, will be recalled. Torrens uses this word, and so does Payne, vol. v., 36. "Hath evil eye ensorcelled thee?"

478 (return)
[ Burton, indeed, while habitually paraphrasing Payne, no less habitually resorts, by way of covering his "conveyances," to the clumsy expedient of loading the test with tasteless and grotesque additions and variations (e.g., "with gladness and goodly gree," "suffering from black leprosy," "grief and grame," "Hades-tombed," "a garth right sheen," "e'en tombed in their tombs," &c., &c.), which are not only meaningless, but often in complete opposition to the spirit and even the letter of the original, and, in any case, exasperating in the highest degree to any reader with a sense of style.]

480 (return)
[ Or Karim-al-Din. Burton's A. N., v., 299; Lib. Ed., iv., 246; Payne's A. N., v. 52.]

481 (return)
[ Le Fanu had carefully studied the effects of green tea and of hallucinations in general. I have a portion of the correspondence between him and Charles Dickens on this subject.]

484 (return)
[ "The Story of Janshah." Burton's A. N., v., 346; Lib. Ed., iv., 291.]

485 (return)
[ One recalls "Edith of the Swan Neck," love of King Harold, and "Judith of the Swan Neck," Pope's "Erinna," Cowper's Aunt.]

490 (return)
[ Burton's A. N., x., 199; Lib. Ed., viii., 174; Payne's A. N., ix., 370.]

491 (return)
[ The writer of the article in the Edinburgh Review (no friend of Mr. Payne), July 1886 (No. 335, p. 180.), says Burton is "much less accurate" than Payne.]

494 (return)
[ Still, as everyone must admit, Burton could have said all he wanted to say in chaster language.]

495 (return)
[ Arbuthnot's comment was: "Lane's version is incomplete, but good for children, Payne's is suitable for cultured men and women, Burton's for students."

499 (return)
[ Of course, all these narratives are now regarded by most Christians in quite a different light from that in which they were at the time Burton was writing. We are all of us getting to understand the Bible better.]

502 (return)
[ Any praise bestowed upon the translation (apart from the annotations) was of course misplaced—that praise being due to Mr. Payne.]

503 (return)
[ Lady Burton's surprise was, of course, only affected. She had for long been manoeuvering to bring this about, and very creditably to her.]

521 (return)
[ This was no solitary occasion. Burton was constantly chaffing her about her slip-shod English, and she always had some piquant reply to give him.]

525 (return)
[ This remark occurs in three of his books, including The Arabian Nights.]

527 (return)
[ One arch now remains. There is in the British Museum a quarto volume of about 200 pages (Cott. MSS., Vesp., E 26) containing fragments of a 13th Century Chronicle of Dale. On Whit Monday 1901, Mass was celebrated within the ruins of Dale Abbey for the first time since the Reformation.]

528 (return)
[ The Church, however, was at that time, and is now, always spoken of as the "Shrine of Our Lady of Dale, Virgin Mother of Pity." The Very Rev. P. J. Canon McCarthy, of Ilkeston, writes to me, "The shrine was an altar to our Lady of Sorrows or Pieta, which was temporarily erected in the Church by the permission of the Bishop of Nottingham (The Right Rev. E. S. Bagshawe), till such time as its own chapel or church could be properly provided. The shrine was afterwards honoured and recognised by the Holy See." See Chapter xxxix.]

531 (return)
[ Preface to The City of the Saints. See also Wanderings in West Africa, i., p. 21, where he adds, "Thus were written such books as Eothen and Rambles beyond Railways; thus were not written Lane's Egyptians or Davis's Chinese."

532 (return)
[ The general reader will prefer Mrs. Hamilton Gray's Tour to the Sepulchres of Etruria, 1839; and may like to refer to the review of it in The Gentleman's Magazine for April, 1841.]

535 (return)
[ The recent speeches (July 1905) of the Bishop of Ripon and the letters of the Rev. Dr. Barry on this danger to the State will be in the minds of many.]

536 (return)
[ Burton means what is now called the Neo-Malthusian system, which at the time was undergoing much discussion, owing to the appearance, at the price of sixpence, of Dr. H. Allbutt's well-known work The Wife's Handbook. Malthus's idea was to limit families by late marriages; the Neo-Malthusians, who take into consideration the physiological evils arising from celibacy, hold that it is better for people to marry young, and limit their family by lawful means.]

537 (return)
[ This is Lady Burton's version. According to another version it was not this change in government that stood in Sir Richard's way.]

539 (return)
[ We are not so prudish as to wish to see any classical work, intended for the bona fide student, expurgated. We welcome knowledge, too, of every kind; but we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that in much of Sir Richard's later work we are not presented with new information. The truth is, after the essays and notes in The Arabian Nights, there was nothing more to say. Almost all the notes in the Priapeia, for example, can be found in some form or other in Sir Richard's previous works.]

540 (return)
[ Decimus Magnus Ausonius (A.D. 309 to A.D. 372) born at Burdegala (Bordeaux). Wrote epigrams, Ordo Nobilium Urbium, short poems on famous cities, Idyllia, Epistolae and the autobiographical Gratiarum Actio.]

541 (return)
[ Among the English translations of Catullus may be mentioned those by the Hon. George Lamb, 1821, and Walter K. Kelly, 1854 (these are given in Bohn's edition), Sir Theodore Martin, 1861, James Cranstoun, 1867, Robinson Ellis, 1867 and 1871, Sir Richard Burton, 1894, Francis Warre Cornish, 1904. All are in verse except Kelly's and Cornish's. See also Chapter xxxv. of this work.]

548 (return)
[ Burton's book, Etruscan Bologna, has a chapter on the contadinesca favella Bolognese, pp. 242-262.]

551 (return)
[ Of the Translation of The Novels of Matteo Bandello, 6 vols. Published in 1890.]

552 (return)
[ Mr. Payne had not told Burton the name of the work, as he did not wish the news to get abroad prematurely.]

553 (return)
[ She very frequently committed indiscretions of this kind, all of them very creditable to her heart, but not to her head.]

558 (return)
[ Mr. Watts-Dunton, need we say? is a great authority on the Gypsies. His novel Aylwin and his articles on Borrow will be called to mind.]