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 (October 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 footnotes are so voluminous that they exceed the letterpress of the text proper, and make up the bulk of the work.[FN#459] 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 confrere:—­

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 clientele, “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’.”