whither the _aura popularis_ sets. The organ of Christian Chivalry is
now universally known to Society as “The Gutter Gazette;” to the public
as “The Purity-Severity Paper,” and the “Organ of the Social Pruriency
Society,” and to its colleagues of the Press as “The Dirt-Squirt.” In
the United States fulsomely to slander a man is “to Pall Mall Gazette
him:” “Just like your _Pall Mall Gazette_,” said an American to me when
describing a disreputable print “over the water.” And Mr. Stead, now
self-constituted coryphæus of the Reptile Press in Great Britain, has
apparently still to learn that lying and slandering are neither
Christian nor chivalrous.
The diminutive _Echo_ of those days (October 13 and 14, ’85) followed
suit of the _Pall Mall Gazette_ and caught lightly the sounds as they
fell from the non-melliferous lips of the charmer who failed to charm
wisely. The precious article begins by informing me that I am “always
eager after the sensational,” and that on this occasion I “cater for the
prurient curiosity of the wealthy few,” such being his synonym for
“readiness to learn.” And it ends with the following comical
colophon:—“Captain Burton may possibly imitate himself (?) and challenge
us (!) to mortal combat for this expression of opinion.” If so, the
writer of these lines will imitate himself (?) and take no notice of
such an epistle. The poor scribe suggests the proverbial “Miss Baxter,
who refused a man before he axed her.” And what weapon could I use,
composing-stick or dung-fork upon an anonymous correspondent of the
hawkers’ and newsboys’ “Hecker,” the favourite ha’porth of East London?
So I left him to the tender mercies of Gaiety (October 14, ’84):—
The _Echo_ is just a bit wild
Its “par.” is indeed, a hard hitter:
In fact, it has not drawn it mild;
’Tis a matter of “Burton and bitter.”
I rejoice to subjoin that the _Echo_ has now (1888) made a name for
decent and sensible writing, having abandoned the “blatant” department
to the _Star_ (see, for the nonsense about a non-existent Alderman
Waterlow its issue of Sept. 6, ’88).
In the opinions of the Press will be found a selection from half a
century of laudatory notices to which the few curious touching such
matters will turn, while those who misjudged my work are duly
acknowledged in this paper. Amongst friends I would specify, without
invidious distinction, _The Bat_ (September 29, ’85), who on this
occasion and sundry others sturdily defended me, showing himself a bird
of “light and leading.” To the _St. James’s Gazette_ (September 12,
’85), the _Whitehall Review_ (September 17), the _Home News_ (September
18), and the _Nottingham Journal_ (September 19), I am also indebted for
most appreciative and intelligent notices. My cordial thanks are
likewise due to the Editor and especially to “Our London Correspondent”
of the _Lincoln Gazette_ (October 10 and November 2, ’85, not to notice
sundry minor articles): the articles will be reprinted almost entire
because they have expressed my meaning as though it came from my own
mouth. I have quoted Mr. J. Addington Symonds _in extenso_: if England
now possess a writer who can deliver an authoritative judgment on
literary style it is this _littérateur_. Of the journals which profess
letters _The Academy_ has ever been my friend and I have still the
honour of corresponding with it: we are called “faddists” probably from
our “fad” of signing our articles and thus enabling the criticised to
criticise the critic.
I now turn to another of my unfriends, amongst whom is and long has been
_THE “SATURDAY REVIEW.”_
This ancient dodderer, who has seen better days, deigned favour me with
six notices (January 2 and March 27, ’86; April 30, June 4, August 14,
’87; and July 21, ’88), of which No. i., dealing with my first and
second volumes, is written after the facile American fashion making the
book review itself; that is supply to the writer all the knowledge and
familiarity with the subject which he parades before an incurious and
easily gullible public. This especial form of dishonesty has but lately
succeeded to and ousted the classical English critique of Jeffrey,
Macaulay, and the late Mr. Abraham Hayward, which was mostly a handy peg
for the contents of the critic’s noddle or note book. The Saturnine
article opens characteristically.
Abroad we English have the character of being the most prudish of
nations; we are celebrated as having Bowdlerized for our babes and
sucklings even the immortal William Shakspeare; but we shall
infallibly lose this our character should the Kamashastra Society
flourish. Captain Burton has long been known as a bold explorer; his
pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, disguised in the dress and taking on
him the manners and customs of a True Believer, was a marvel of
audacity; but perhaps he may be held now to have surpassed himself,
for he has been bold enough to lay before his countrymen a literal
and unexcised translation of _The Arabian Nights_.
The writer is kind enough to pat me upon the back for “picturesque and
fluent English” and to confess that I have successfully imitated the
rhyming cadence of the original. But _The Saturday_ would not be _The
Saturday_ without carping criticism, wrong-headedness and the _culte_ of
the commonplace, together with absolute and unworthy cruelty to weaker
vessels. The reviewer denounces as “too conceited to be passed over
without comment” the good old English “whenas” (for when, vol. ii. 130),
the common ballad-term “a plump of spearmen” (ii. 190) and a “red cent”
(i. 321), the only literal rendering of “Fals ahmar” which serves to
show the ancient and noble pedigree of a slang term supposed to be
modern and American. Moreover this Satan even condemns fiercely the sin
of supplying him with “useful knowledge.” The important note (ii. 45)
upon the normal English mispronunciation of the J in Jerusalem, Jesus,
Jehovah, a corruption whose origin and history are unknown to so many
and which was, doubtless, a surprise to this Son of King “We,” is damned
as “uninteresting to the reader of the _Arabian Nights_.” _En revanche_,
three mistakes of mine (“p. 43” for “p. 45”) in vol. ii., index; “King
Zahr Shah” for King Suleyman Shah (ii. 285) and the careless confusion
of the Caliphs Al-Muntasir and Al-Mustansir (ii. 817, note i.) were
corrected and I have duly acknowledged the correction. No. i. article
ends with Saturnine geniality and utterly ignoring a bye-word touching
dwellers in glass houses:—
Finally, we mark with regret that Captain Burton should find no more
courteous terms to apply to the useful work of a painstaking
clergyman than those where in his note he alludes to “Missionary
Porter’s miserable Handbook.”
As Mr. Missionary Porter has never ceased to malign me, even in his last
Edition of Murray’s “miserable Handbook,” a cento of Hibernian blunders
and hashed Bible, I have every reason to _lui rendre la pareille_.
The second article (March 27, ’86), treating of vol. iii., opens with
one of those plagiaristic commonplaces, so dear to the soul of _The
Saturday_, in its staid and stale old age as in its sprightly youth.
“There is particularly one commodity which all men, therein nobly
disregarding their differences of creed and country, are of a mind that
it is better to give than to receive. That commodity is good advice. We
note further that the liberality with which this is everywhere offered
is only to be equalled (he means ‘to be equalled only’) by the niggard
reception at most times accorded to the munificent donation; in fact the
very goodness of advice—given apparently militates against its due
appreciation in (by?) the recipient.” The critic then proceeds to fit
his _ipse dixit_ upon my case. The sense of the sentiment is the reverse
of new: we find in _The Spectator_ (No. dxii.), “There is nothing we
receive with so much reluctance as good advice,” etc.; but Mr.
_Spectator_ writes good English and his plagiarist does not. Nor is the
dictum true. We authors who have studied a subject for years, are, I am
convinced, ready enough to learn, but we justly object to sink our
opinions and our judgment in those of a counsellor who has only
“crammed” for his article. Moreover, we must be sure that he can fairly
lay claim to the three requisites of an adviser—capacity to advise
rightly, honesty to advise truly and courtesy to advise decently. Now
the _Saturday Review_ has neither this, that, nor the other
qualification. Indeed his words read like subtle and lurking irony by
the light of those phenomenal and portentous vagaries which ever and
anon illuminate his opaque pages. What correctness can we expect from a
journal whose tomahawk-man, when scalping the corpse of Matthew Arnold,
deliberately applies the term “sonnet” to some thirty lines in heroic
couplets? His confusion of Dr. Jenner, the Vaccinator, with Sir William
Jenner, the President of the R. C. of Physicians, is one which passes
all comprehension. And what shall we say of this title to pose as an
Aristarchus (November 4th, ’82)? “Then Jonathan Scott, LL.D. Oxon,
assures the world that he intended to re-translate the Tales given by
Galland (!); but he found Galland so adequate on the whole (!!) that he
gave up the idea and now reprints Galland with etchings by M. Lalauze,
giving a French view of Arab life. Why Jonathan Scott, LL.D., should
have thought to better Galland while Mr. Lane’s version is in existence,
and has just been reprinted, it is impossible to say.” In these wondrous
words Jonathan Scott’s editio princeps with engravings from pictures by
Smirke and printed by Longmans in 1811 is confounded with the imperfect
reprint by Messieurs Nimmo and Bain, in 1883; the illustrations being
borrowed from M. Adolphe Lalauze, a French artist (nat. 1838), a master
of _eaux fortes_, who had studied in Northern Africa and who
maroccanized the _mise-en-scène_ of “The Nights” with a marvellous
contrast of white and negro nudities. And such is the Solomon who
fantastically complains that I have disdained to be enlightened by his
“modest suggestions.” _Au reste_ the article is not bad simply because
it borrows—again Americanicè—all its matter from my book. At the
tail-end, however, comes the normal sting: I am guilty of not explaining
“Wuzú” (lesser ablution), “Ghusl” (greater ablution) and “Zakát” (legal
alms which constitute a poor-rate) proving that the writer never read
vol. iii. He confidently suggests replacing “Cafilah,” “by the
better-known word _Caravan_,” as if it were my speciality (as it is his)
to hunt-out commonplaces: he grumbles about “interrogation-_points à
l’Espagnole_ upside-down” (¿) which still satisfies me as an excellent
substitute to distinguish the common Q(uestion) from A(nswer); and he
seriously congratulates me upon my discovering a typographical error on
the fly-leaf.
No. iii. (August 14, ’86, handling vols. vi. vii. and viii.) is free
from the opening pretensions and absurdities of No. ii. and it is made
tolerably safe by the familiar action of scissors and paste. But—desinit
in piscem—it ends fishily; and we find, after saturnine fashion _in
cauda venenum_. It scolds me for telling the English public what it even
now ignores, the properest way of cooking meat (à propos of kabábs) and
it “trembles to receive vols. ix. and x. for truly (from a literary
point of view, of course, we mean) there seems nothing of which the
translator might not be capable”—_capable de tout_, as said Voltaire of
Habbakuk and another agnostic Frenchman of the Prophet Zerubbabel. This
was indeed high praise considering the _Saturday’s_ sympathy with and
affection for the dead level, for the average man; but as an augury of
ill it was a brutum fulmen. No. iv. (August 30, ’87) was, strange to
say, in tone almost civil and ended with a touch simulating approval:—
“The labours of a quarter of a century,” writes the translator in
_L’Envoi_, are now brought to a close, and certainly no one could
have been found better suited by education and taste to the task of
translating the ‘Nights’ than is the accomplished author of the
‘Pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina.’ His summing up of the contents and
character of ‘The Thousand and One Nights’ in the Terminal Essay is
a masterpiece of careful analysis, and we cannot do better than
conclude our notice with a paragraph that resumes with wonderful
effect the boundless imagination and variety of the picture that is
conjured up before our eyes:—
“Viewed as a _tout ensemble_ in full and complete form, they are a
drama of Eastern life, and a Dance of Death made sublime by faith
and the highest emotions, by the certainty of expiation and the
fulness of atoning equity, where virtue is victorious, vice is
vanquished, and the ways of Allah are justified to man. They are a
panorama which remains ken-speckle upon the mental retina. They form
a phantasmagoria in which archangels and angels, devils and goblins,
men of air, of fire, of water, naturally mingle with men of earth;
where flying horses and talking fishes are utterly realistic; where
King and Prince must meet fishermen and pauper, lamia and cannibal;
where citizen jostles Badawi, eunuch meets knight; the Kazi hob-nobs
with the thief.... The work is a kaleidoscope where everything falls
into picture; gorgeous palaces and pavilions; grisly underground
caves and deadly wolds; gardens fairer than those of the Hesperid;
seas dashing with clashing billows upon enchanted mountains; valleys
of the Shadow of Death; air-voyages and promenades in the abysses of
the ocean; the duello, the battle, and the siege; the wooing of
maidens and the marriage rite. All the splendour and squalor, the
beauty and baseness, the glamour and grotesqueness, the magic and
the mournfulness, the bravery and the baseness of Oriental life are
here.”
And now, after the _Saturday Review_ has condescended severely and
sententiously to bepreach me, I must be permitted a trifling return in
kind. As is declared by the French, an objectionable people which
prefers _la gloire_ to “duty,” and even places “honour” before
“honesty,” the calling of the Fourth Estate is _un sacerdoce_, an
Apostolate: it is a high and holy mission whose ends are the diffusion
of Truth and Knowledge and the suppression of Ignorance and Falsehood.
“Sacrilege,” with this profession, means the breaking of its two great
commandments and all sins of commission and omission suggested and
prompted by vain love of fame, by sordid self-esteem or by ignoble
rancour. What then shall we say of a paper which, professedly
established to “counteract the immorality of _The Times_,” adds to
normal journalistic follies, offences and mistakes an utter absence of
literary honour, systematic misrepresentation, malignity and absolute
ruffianism? Let those who hold such language exaggerated glance at my
_pièce justicative_, the _Saturday’s_ article (June 28, 88) upon Mr.
Hitchman’s “Biography of Sir Richard Burton.” No denizen of Grub Street
in the coarse old day of British mob-savagery could have produced a more
damning specimen of wilful falsehood, undignified scurrility and brutal
malevolence, in order to gratify a well-known pique, private and
personal. The “Saturday Reviler”—there is, I repeat, much virtue in a
soubriquet—has grown only somewhat feebler, not kindlier, not more
sympathetic since the clever author of “In Her Majesty’s Keeping” styled
this Magister Morum “the benignant and judicious foster-parent of
literature”; and since Darwin wrote of it (ii. 260) “One cannot expect
fairness in a reviewer;” nor has it even taken to heart what my friend
Swinburne declared (anent its issue of December 15, ’83) “clumsy and
shallow snobbery can do no harm.” Like other things waxing obsolete it
has served, I hasten to confess, a special purpose in the world of
letters. It has lived through a generation of thirty years in the
glorification of the mediocrities and in pandering to the impish taint
of poor human nature, the ungenerous passions of those who abhor the
novel, the original, the surprising, the startling, and who are only too
glad to witness and to assist in the Procrustes’ process of trimming and
lengthening out thoughts and ideas and diction that rise or strive to
rise above the normal and vulgar plane. This virtual descendant of the
ancestral Satirist, after long serving as a spawning-ground to envy,
hatred and malice, now enters upon the decline of an unworthy old age.
Since the death of its proprietor, Mr. Beresford-Hope, it has been
steadily going down hill as is proved by its circulation, once 15,000,
and now something nearer 5,000 than 10,000. It has become a poor shadow
of its former self—preserving the passive ill-will but lacking the power
of active malevolence—when journalists were often compelled to decline
correspondence upon its misjudgments and to close to complainants their
columns which otherwise would have been engrossed by just and reasonable
protestations. The “young lions” of its prime (too often behanged with a
calf-skin on their recreant limbs) are down among the dead and the
jackal-pack which has now taken up the howling could no longer have
caused Thackeray to fear or can excite the righteous disgust of that
votary of “fair-play”—Mr. John Bright.
And now, before addressing myself to another Reviewer, I would be
allowed a few words upon two purely personal subjects; the style chosen
for my translation and my knowledge of the Arabian language and
literature.
I need hardly waste time to point out what all men discern more or less
distinctly, how important are diction and expression in all works of
fancy and fiction and how both branches, poetic and prosaic, delight in
beauty adorned and allow in such matters the extreme of liberty. A long
study of Galland and Torrens, Lane and Payne, convinced me that none of
these translators, albeit each could claim his special merit, has
succeeded in preserving the local colouring of the original. The
Frenchman had gallicised and popularised the general tone and tenor to
such extent that even the vulgar English versions have ever failed to
throw off the French flavour. Torrens attempted literalism laudably and
courageously enough; but his execution was of the roughest, the nude
verbatim; nor did his familiarity with Arabic, or rather with Egyptian,
suffice him for the task. Lane, of whom I have already spoken, and of
whom I shall presently be driven by his imprudent relatives and
interested friends to say more, affected the latinised English of the
period, flat and dull, turgid and vapid as that of Sale’s Koran; and his
style proved the most insufficient and inadequate attire in which an
Oriental romance of the Middle Ages could be arrayed. Payne was
perfectly satisfactory to all cultivated tastes, but he designedly
converted a romantic into a classical work: none ignores its high merits
regarded merely as strong and vital English, but it lacks one thing
needful—the multiform variety of The Nights. The original Arabic text
which in the first thirteen tales (Terminal Essay, p. 80) must date from
before the XIIIth century at the latest (since Galland’s MS. in the
Bibliothèque Nationale has been assigned to the early XIVth) is highly
composite: it does not disdain local terms, bye-words and allusions
(some obsolete now and forgotten), and it borrows indiscriminately from
Persian (_e.g._ Sháhbandar), from Turkish (as Khátún) and from Sanscrit
(for instance Brahman). As its equivalent, in vocabulary I could devise
only a somewhat archaical English whose old-fashioned and sub-antique
flavour would contrast with our modern and every-day speech, admitting
at times even Latin and French terms, such as _res scibilis_ and
_citrouille_. The mixture startled the critics and carpers to whom its
object had not been explained; but my conviction still remains that it
represents, with much truth to nature, the motley suit of the
Arabo-Egyptian. And it certainly serves one purpose, too often neglected
by writers and unnoticed by reviewers. The fluent and transparent styles
of Buckle and Darwin (the modern Aristotle who has transformed the face
of Biological Science) are instruments admirably fitted for their
purpose: crystal-clear, they never divert even a bittock of the reader’s
brain from the all-important sense underlying the sound-symbols. But in
works of imagination man wants a treatment totally different, a style
which, by all or any means, little mattering what they be, can avoid the
imminent deadly risk of languor and monotony and which adds to fluency
the allurement of variety, of surprise and even of disappointment, when
a musical discord is demanded.
Again, my estimate of a translator’s office has never been of the low
level generally assigned to it even in the days when Englishmen were in
the habit of englishing every important or interesting work published on
the continent of Europe. We cannot expect at this period of our
literature overmuch from a man who, as Messieurs Vizetelly assure their
_clientèle_, must produce a version for a poor £20. But at his best the
traducteur while perfectly reproducing the matter and the manner of his
original, works upon two lines. His prime and primary object is an
honest and faithful copy, adding naught to the sense nor abating aught
of its peculiar cachet whilst he labours his best to please and edify
his readers. He has however, or should have, another aim wherein is
displayed the acme of hermeneutic art. Every language can profitably
lend something to and borrow somewhat from its neighbours, near or far,
an epithet, a metaphor, a turn of phrase, a naïve idiom; and the
translator of original mind will not neglect the frequent opportunities
of enriching his mother tongue with alien and novel ornaments, which
will justly be accounted barbarisms until formally adopted and
naturalised. Such are the “peoples” of Kossuth and the useful “lengthy,”
an American revival of a good old English term. Nor will my modern
versionist relegate to a foot-note, as is the malpractice of his banal
brotherhood, the interesting and often startling phases of his foreign
author’s phraseology and dull the text with its commonplace English
equivalent—thus doing the clean reverse of what he should do. It is
needless to quote instances concerning this phase of “Bathos:” they
abound in every occidental translation of every Oriental work,
especially the French, such as Baron de Slane’s honest and conscientious
“Ibn Khaldún.” It was this grand ideal of a translator’s duty that made
Eustache Deschamps, a contemporary poet, write of his English brother
bard:—
“GRAND TRANSLATOUR, NOBLE _GEOFFROY CHAUCIER_.”
Here,
“The firste finder of our faire langage”
is styled a “Socrates in philosophy, a Seneca in morals, an Angel in
conduct and a great Translator,” which apparent anti-climax has
scandalised not a little inditers of “Lives” and “Memoirs.” The title is
given simply because Chaucer translated (using the best and highest
sense of the term) into his English tongue and its linguistic
peculiarities, the thoughts and ideas of his foreign models—the very
letter and spirit of Petrarch and Boccaccio.