(all?) sentiments of chivalry, for he is never weary of recording
disparaging estimates of women, and apparently delights in discovering
evidence of ‘feminine devilry’” (p. 184). This _argumentum ad feminam_
is sharpish practice, much after the manner of the Christian “Fathers of
the Church” who, themselves vehemently doubting the existence of souls
non-masculine, falsely and foolishly ascribed the theory and its
consequences to Mohammed and the Moslems. And here the Persian proverb
holds good “Harf-i-kufr kufr níst”—to speak of blasphemy is not
blasphemous. Curious readers will consult the article “Woman” in my
Terminal Essay (x. 192), which alone refutes this silly scandal. I never
pretended to understand woman, and, as Balzac says, no wonder man fails
when He who created her was by no means successful. But in The Nights we
meet principally Egyptian maids, matrons and widows, of whose “devilry”
I cannot speak too highly, and in this matter even the pudibund Lane is
as free-spoken as myself. Like the natives of warm, damp and malarious
lowlands and river-valleys adjacent to rugged and healthy uplands, such
as Mazanderán, Sind, Malabar and California, the passions and the sexual
powers of the females greatly exceed those of their males, and hence a
notable development of the crude form of polyandry popularly termed
whoredom. Nor have the women of the Nile-valley improved under our rule.
The last time I visited Cairo a Fellah wench, big, burly and boisterous,
threatened one morning, in a fine new French avenue off the Ezbekiyah
Gardens, to expose her person unless bought off with a piastre. And
generally the condition of womenkind throughout the Nile-valley reminded
me of that frantic outbreak of debauchery which characterised
Afghanistan during its ill-judged occupation by Lord Auckland, and Sind
after the conquest by Sir Charles Napier.
“Captain Burton actually depends upon the respectable and antiquated
D’Herbelot for his information” (p. 184). This silly skit at the two
great French Orientalists, D’Herbelot and Galland, is indeed worthy of a
clique which, puff and struggle however much it will, can never do a
tithe of the good work found in the _Bibliothèque Orientale_. The book
was issued in an unfinished state; in many points it has been
superseded, during its life of a century and a half, by modern studies,
but it is still a mine of facts, and a revised edition would be a boon
to students. Again, I have consulted Prof. Palmer’s work, and the
publications of the Palæographical Society (p. 184); but I nowhere find
proofs that the Naskhi character (vol. i. 128) so long preceded the
Cufic which, amongst vulgar Moslems, is looked upon like black letter in
Europe. But Semitic epigraphy is only now entering upon its second stage
of study, the first being mere tentative ignorance: about 80 years ago
the illustrious De Sacy proved, in a learned memoir, the non-existence
of letters in Arabia before the days of Mohammed. But Palmer,[455]
Halevy, Robertson Smith, Doughty and Euting have changed all that, and
Herr Eduard Glaser of Prague is now bringing back from Sana’á some 390
Sabæan epigraphs—a mass of new-old literature.
And now, having passed in review, and having been much scandalised by
“the extravagant claims of the complete translations over the Standard
Version”—a term which properly applies only to the Editio princeps, 3
vols. 8vo.—the _Edinburgh_ delivers a parting and insolent sting. “The
different versions, however, have each its proper destination—Galland
for the nursery, Lane for the library, Payne for the study, and Burton
for the sewers” (p. 184). I need hardly attempt to precise the ultimate
and well-merited office of his article: the gall in that ink may enable
it hygienically to excel for certain purposes the best of “curl-papers.”
Then our critic passes to the history of the work, concerning which
nothing need be said: it is bodily borrowed from Lane’s Preface (pp.
ix.–xv.), and his Terminal Review (iii. 735–47) with a few unimportant
and uninteresting details taken from Al-Makrízí, and probably from the
studies of the late Rogers Bey (pp. 191–92). Here the cult of the Uncle
and Master emerges most extravagantly. “It was Lane who first brought
out the importance of the ‘Arabian Nights’ as constituting a picture of
Moslem life and manners” (p. 192); thus wholly ignoring the claims of
Galland, to whom and whom alone the honour is due. But almost every
statement concerning the French Professor involves more or less of
lapse. “It was in 1704 that Antoine Galland, sometime of the French
embassy at Constantinople, but then professor at the Collège de France,
presented the world with the contents of an Arab Manuscript which he had
brought from Syria, and which bore the title of ‘The Thousand Nights and
One Night’” (p. 167), thus ignoring the famous _Il a fallu le faire
venir de Syrie_. At that time (1704) Galland was still at Caen in the
employ of “L’intendant Fouquet”; and he brought with him no MS., as he
himself expressly assures us in Preface to his first volume. Here are
two telling mistakes in one page, and in the next (p. 168) we find “As a
professed translation Galland’s ‘Mille et une Nuits’ (N.B. the Frenchman
always wrote _Mille et une Nuit_,)[456] is an audacious fraud.” It
requires something more than “audacity” to offer such misstatement even
in the pages of the _Edinburgh_, and can anything be falser than to
declare “the whole of the last fourteen tales have nothing whatever to
do with the ‘Nights’”?
These _bévues_, which give us the fairest measure for the Reviewer’s
competence to review, are followed (p. 189) by a series of obsolete
assertions. “The highest authority on this point (the date) is the late
Mr. Lane, who states his unqualified conviction that the tales represent
the social life of mediæval Egypt, and he selects a period approaching
the close of the fifteenth century as the probable date of collection,
though some of the tales are, he believes, rather later” (p. 189). Mr.
Lane’s studies upon the subject were painfully perfunctory. He
distinctly states (Preface, p. xii.) that “the work was commenced and
completed by one man,” or a least that “one man completed what another
commenced.” With a marvellous want of critical acumen he could not
distinguish the vast difference of style and diction, treatment and
sentiments which at once strikes every intelligent reader, and which
proves incontestably that many hands took part in the Great Saga-book.
He speaks of “Galland’s very imperfect MS.,” but he never took the
trouble to inspect the three volumes in question which are still in the
Bibliothèque Nationale. And when he opines that “it (the work) was most
probably not commenced earlier than the fifteenth century of our era”
(Pref. p. xiii.) M. Hermann Zotenberg, judging from the style of
writing, would attribute the MS. to the beginning[457] of the xivth
century. The French Savant has printed a specimen page in his _Histoire
d’ ’Alâ al-Dîn_ (p. 6; see my Suppl. vol. iii., Foreword p. ix.); and
now, at the request of sundry experts, he is preparing for publication
other proofs which confirm his opinion. We must correct Lane’s fifteenth
century to thirteenth century—a difference of only 200 years.[458]
After this unhappy excursus the Reviewer proceeds to offer a most
unintelligent estimate of the Great Recueil. “Enchantment” may be “a
constant motive,” but it is wholly secondary and subservient: “the true
and universal theme is love;” “‘all are but the ministers of love’
absolutely subordinate to the great theme” (p. 193). This is the usual
half-truth and whole unfact. Love and war, or rather war and love, form
the bases of all romantic fiction even as they are the motor power of
the myriad forms and fashions of dancing. This may not appear from
Lane’s mangled and mutilated version, which carefully omits all the
tales of chivalry and conquest as the History of Gharíb and his brother
’Ajíb (vol. vi. 257) and that of Omar ibn Al-Nu’umán, “which is, as a
whole, so very unreadable” (p. 172) though by no means more so than our
European romances. But the reverse is the case with the original
composition. Again, “These romantic lovers who will go through fire to
meet each other, are not in themselves interesting characters: it may be
questioned whether they have any character at all” (p. 195). “The story
and not the delineation of character is the essence of the ‘Arabian
Nights’” (p. 196). I can only marvel at the utter want of comprehension
and appreciation with which this critic read what he wrote about: one
hemisphere of his brain must have been otherwise occupied and his mental
cecity makes him a phenomenon even amongst reviewers. He thus ignores
all the lofty morale of the work, its marvellous pathos and humour, its
tender sentiment and fine touches of portraiture, the personal
individuality and the nice discrimination between the manifold heroes
and heroines which combine to make it a book for all time.
The critic ends his article with doing what critics should carefully
avoid to do. After shrewdly displaying his powers of invective and
depreciation he has submitted to his readers a sample of his own
workmanship. He persists in writing “Zobeyda,” “Khalifa,” “Aziza” (p.
194) and “Kahramana” (p. 199) without the terminal aspirate which, in
Arabic if not in Turkish, is a _sine quâ non_ (see my Suppl. vol. v.
419). He preserves the pretentious blunder “The Khalif” (p. 193), a word
which does not exist in Arabic. He translates (p. 181), although I have
taught him to do better, “Hádimu ’l-Lizzáti wa Mufarriku ’l-Jama’át,” by
“Terminator of Delights and Separator of Companies” instead of Destroyer
of delights and Severer of societies. And lastly he pads the end of his
article (pp. 196–199) with five dreary extracts from Lane (i. 372–373)
who can be dull even when translating the Immortal Barber.
The first quotation is so far changed that the peppering of commas
(three to the initial line of the original) disappears to the reader’s
gain, Lane’s textual date (App. 263) is also exchanged for that of the
notes (A.H. 653); and the “æra of Alexander,” A.M. 7320, an absurdity
which has its value in proving the worthlessness of such chronology, is
clean omitted, because Lane used the worthless Bul. Edit. The latinisms
due to Lane show here in force—“Looked for a considerable time”
(Maliyyan = for a long while); “there is an announcement that presenteth
itself to me” (a matter which hath come to my knowledge), and “thou hast
dissipated[459] my mind” (Azhakta rúhí = thou scatterest my wits, in the
Calc. Edit. Saghgharta rúhí = thou belittlest my mind). But even Lane
never wrote “I only required thee to shave my head”—the adverb thus
qualifying, as the ignoramus loves to do, the wrong verb—for “I required
thee only to shave my head.” In the second _échantillon_ we have “a
piece of gold” as equivalent of a quarter-dinar and “for God’s sake”
which certainly does not preserve local colour. In No. 3 we find “‘May
God,’ said I,” etc.; “There is no deity but God! Mohammed is God’s
apostle!”. Here Allah ought invariably to be used, _e.g._ “Mohammed is
the Apostle of Allah,” unless the English name of the Deity be
absolutely required as in “There is no god but _the_ God.” The Moslem’s
“Wa’lláhi” must not be rendered “By God,” a verbal translation and an
absolute non-equivalent; the terms Jehovah, Allah and God and the use of
them involving manifold fine distinctions. If it be true that God made
man, man in his turn made and mismade God who thus becomes a Son of Man
and a mere racial type. I need not trouble my reader with further
notices of these extracts whose sole use is to show the phenomenal
dullness of Lane’s latinised style: I prefer even Torrens (p. 273).
“We have spoken severely with regard to the last” (my version) says the
Reviewer (p. 185) and verily I thank him therefor. Laudari ab illaudato
has never been my ambition. A writer so learned and so disinterested
could hurt my feelings and mortify my pride only by approving me and
praising me. Nor have I any desire to be exalted in the pages of the
_Edinburgh_, so famous for its _incartades_ of old. As Dryden says “he
has done me all the honour that any man can receive from him, which is
to be railed at by him.” I am content to share the vituperation of this
veteran-incapable in company with the poetaster George Gordon who
suffered for “this Lord’s station;” with that “burnisht fly in the pride
of May,” Macaulay; and with the great trio, Darwin, Huxley and Hooker,
who also have been the butts of his bitter and malignant abuse (April
’63 and April ’73). And lastly I have no stomach for sweet words from
the present Editor of the _Edinburgh_, Mr. Henry Reeve, a cross and
cross-grained old man whose surly temper is equalled only by his ignoble
jealousy of another’s success. Let them bedevil the thin-skinned with
their godless ribaldry; for myself _peu m’importe_—my shoulders are
broad enough to bear all their envy, hatred and malice.
During the three years which have elapsed since I first began printing
my book I have not had often to complain of mere gratuitous impertinence
and a single exception deserves some notice. The following lines which I
addressed to _The Academy_ (August 11 ’88) will suffice to lay my case
before my readers:—
THE BESTIAL ELEMENT IN MAN.
“One hesitates to dissent from so great an authority as Sir Richard
Burton on all that relates to the bestial element in man.” So writes
(p. xli., Introduction to the Fables of Pilpay), with uncalled for
impertinence, Mr. Joseph Jacobs, who goes out of his way to be
offensive, and who confesses to having derived all his knowledge of
my views not from “the notorious Terminal Essay of the Nights,” but
from the excellent article by Mr. Thomas Davidson on “Beast-fables,”
in Chambers’s _Cyclopædia_, Edinburgh, 1888. This lofty standpoint
of morality was probably occupied for a reason by a writer who
dedicates “To my dear wife” a volume rich in _anecdotes grivoises_,
and not poor in language the contrary of conventional. However, I
suffer from this Maccabee in good society together with Prof. Max
Müller (pp. xxvi. and xxxiii.), Mr. Clouston (pp. xxxiii. and
xxxv.), Byron (p. xlvi.), Theodor Benfey (p. xlvii.), Mr. W. G.
Rutherford (p. xlviii.), and Bishop Lightfoot (p. xlix.). All this
eminent halfdozen is glanced at, with distinct and several sneers,
in a little volume which, rendered useless by lack of notes and
index, must advertise itself by the _réclame_ of abuse.
As regards the reminiscence of _Homo Darwiniensis_ by _Homo
Sapiens_, doubtless it would _ex hypothesi_ be common to mankind.
Yet to me Africa is the old home of the Beast-fable, because Egypt
was the inventor of the alphabet, the cradle of letters, the
preacher of animism and metempsychosis, and, generally, the source
of all human civilisation.
RICHARD F. BURTON.
And now I must proceed a trifle further a-field and meet
THE CRITIC IN ANGLO-AMERICA.
The _Boston Daily Advertiser_ (Jan. 26 ’86) contains the following
choice _morceau_ which went the round of the Transatlantic Press:—
G. W. S. writes from London to the _New York Tribune_ in regard to
Captain Burton’s notorious translation of the “Arabian Nights.” Of
Captain Burton’s translation of “The Arabian Nights,” two volumes
have now appeared. Before anything had been seen of them, I gave
some account of this scheme, and of the material on which he had
worked, with a statement of the reasons which made all existing
versions unsatisfactory to the student, and incomplete. Captain
Burton saw fit to reprint these desultory paragraphs as a kind of
circular or advertisement on his forthcoming book. He did not think
it necessary to ask leave to do this, nor did I know to what use my
letter had been put till it was too late to object. In any ordinary
case it would have been of no consequence, but Captain Burton’s
version is of such a character that I wish to state the facts, and
to say that when I wrote my letter I had never seen a line of his
translation, and had no idea that what I said of his plans would be
used for the purpose it has been, or for any purpose except to be
printed in your columns. As it is, I am made to seem to give some
sort of approval to a book which I think offensive, and not only
offensive, but grossly and needlessly offensive. If anybody has been
induced to subscribe for it by what I wrote I regret it, and both to
him and to myself I think this explanation due.
Mr. Smalley is the London correspondent of the _New York Tribune_, which
represents Jupiter Tonans in the Western World. He may be unable to
write with independent tone—few Anglo-Americans can afford to confront
the crass and compound ignorance of a “free and independent
majority;”—but even he is not called upon solemnly to state an untruth.
Before using Mr. Smalley’s article as a circular, my representative made
a point of applying to him for permission, as he indeed was bound to do
by the simplest rules of courtesy. Mr. Smalley replied at once,
willingly granting the favour, as I can prove by the note still in my
possession; and presently, frightened by the puny yelping of a few
critical curs at home, he has the effrontery to deny the fact.
In my last volumes I have been materially aided by two Anglo-American
friends MM. Thayer and Cotheal and I have often had cause to thank the
_Tribune_ and the _Herald_ of New York for generously appreciating my
labours. But no gratitude from me is due to the small fry of the
Transatlantic Press which has welcomed me with spiteful little pars.,
mostly borrowed from unfriends in England and mainly touching upon style
and dollars. In the _Mail Express_ of New York (September 7, ’85) I
read, “Captain Richard Burton, traveller and translator, intends to make
all the money that there may be in his translation of the ‘Arabian
Nights.’ * * * If he only fills his list, and collects his money he will
be in easy circumstances for the remainder of his days.” In a subsequent
issue (Oct. 24) readers are told that I have been requested not to
publish the rest of the series under pain of legal prosecution. In the
same paper (October 31, ’85: see also November 7, ’85) I find:—
The authorities have discovered where Capt. Burton’s “Thousand and
One Nights” is being printed, despite the author’s efforts to keep
the place a secret, but are undecided whether to suppress it or to
permit the publication of the coming volumes. Burton’s own
foot-notes are so voluminous that they exceed the letterpress of the
text proper, and make up the bulk of the work.[460] The foulness of
the second volume of his translation places it at a much higher
premium in the market than the first.
The _Tribune_ of Chicago (October 26, ’85) honours me by declaring “It
has been resolved to request Captain Burton not to publish the rest of
his translation of the ‘Thousand and One Nights,’ which is really foul
and slipshod as to style.” The _New York Times_ (October 17 and November
9, ’85) merely echoes the spite of its English confrère:—
Capt. Burton’s translation of the “Arabian Nights” bears the imprint
“Benares.” Of course the work never saw Benares. America, France,
Belgium and Germany have all been suggested as the place of
printing, and now the _Pall Mall Gazette_ affirms that the work was
done “north of the Tweed.” There is, without doubt, on British soil,
it says, “a press which year after year produces scores of obscene
publications.”
And the same is the case with the _St. Louis Post Dispatch_ (November
11, ’85); the _Mail Express_ of New York (November 23, ’85); the _Weekly
Post_ of Boston (November 27, ’85) which again revives a false report
and with the _Boston Herald_ (December 16, ’85). The _Chicago Daily
News_ (January 30, ’86) contains a malicious sneer at the Kamashastra
Society. The _American Register_ (Paris, July 25, ’86) informs its
_clientèle_, “If, as is generally supposed, Captain Burton’s book is
printed abroad, the probability is that every copy will on arrival be
confiscated as ‘indecent’ by the Custom-house.” And to curtail a long
list of similar _fadaises_ I will quote the _Bookmart_ (of Pittsburg,
Pa. U.S.A., October, ’86): “Sir Richard Burton’s ‘Nights’ are terribly
in want of the fig-leaf, if anything less than a cabbage-leaf will do,
before they can be fit (fitted?) for family reading. It is not possible
(Is it not possible?) that by the time a household selection has been
sifted out of the great work, everything which makes the originality and
the value—such as it is—of Richard’s series of volumes will have
disappeared, and nothing will remain but his diverting lunacies of
style.” The _Bookmart_, I am informed, is edited by one Halkett Lord, an
unnaturalised Englishman who finds it pays best to abuse everything and
everyone English. And lastly the _Springfield Republican_ (April 5, ’88)
assures me that I have published “fully as much as the (his?) world
wants of the ‘Nights’.”
In the case of “The Nights,” I am exposed to that peculiar Protestant
form of hypocrisy, so different from the Tartuffean original of
Catholicism, and still as mighty a motor force, throughout the length
and breadth of the North-American continent, as within the narrow limits
of England. There also as here it goes hand-in-hand with
“Respectability” to blind judgment and good sense.
A great surgeon of our day said (or is said to have said) in addressing
his students:—“Never forget, gentlemen, that you have to deal with an
ignorant public.” The dictum may fairly be extended from medical
knowledge to general information amongst the many-headed of England; and
the Publisher, when rejecting a too recondite book, will repeat
parrot-fashion, The English public is not a learned body. Equally valid
is the statement in the case of the Anglo-American community which is
still half-educated and very far from being erudite. The vast country
has produced a few men of great and original genius, such as Emerson and
Theodore Parker, Edgar Allan Poe and Walt. Whitman; but the sum total is
as yet too small to leaven the mighty mass which learns its rudiments at
school and college and which finishes its education with the newspaper
and the lecture. When Emerson died it was said that the intellectual
glory of a continent had departed; but Edgar A. Poe, the peculiar poetic
glory of the States, the first Transatlantic who dared be himself and
who disdained to borrow from Schiller and Byron, the outlander poet who,
as Edgar Allan Poé, is now the prime favourite in France, appears to be
still under ban because he separated like Byron from his spouse, and he
led a manner of so-called “Bohemian” life. Indeed the wide diffusion of
letters in the States, that favourite theme for boasting and bragging
over the unenlightened and analphabetic Old World, has tended only to
exaggerate the defective and disagreeable side of a national character
lacking geniality and bristling with prickly individuality. This
disposition of mind, whose favourable and laudable presentations are
love of liberty and self-reliance, began with the beginnings of American
history. The “Fathers,” Pilgrim and Puritan, who left their country for
their country’s good and their own, fled from lay tyranny and clerkly
oppression only to oppress and tyrannise over others in new and distant
homes. Hardly had a century and a half elapsed before the sturdy
colonists, who did not claim freedom but determined to keep it, formally
revolted and fought their way to absolute independence—not, by-the-by, a
feat whereof to be overproud when a whole country rose unanimously
against a handful of troops. The movement, however, reacted powerfully
upon the politics of Europe which stood agape for change, and
undoubtedly precipitated the great French Revolution. As soon as the
States became an empire, their democratic and republican institutions at
once attracted hosts of emigrants from the Old World, thus peopling the
land with a selection of species: the active and the adventurous, the
malcontent and the malefactor readily expatriate themselves while the
_pauvre diable_ remains at home. The potato-famine in Ireland (1848)
gave an overwhelming impetus to the exode of a race which had never
known a racial baptism; and, lastly, the Germans flying from the
conscription, the blood-tax of the Fatherland, carried with them over
the ocean a transcendentalism which has engendered the wildest theories
of socialism and communism. And the emigration process still continues.
Whole regions, like the rugged Bocche di Cattaro in Dalmatia and pauper
Iceland, are becoming depopulated: to me the wonder is that a poor man
ever consents to live out of America or a rich man to live in it.