To which let me add the following gentle reminder from Ibn Khaldun:—­

     All that we can we do, and who ne’er swerves
     From best endeavour much of praise deserves.

Farewell!

Richard F. Burton
United Service Club, September 30, 1888.

Opinions of the Press.

Morning Advertiser, September 15th, 1885.

As the holiday season draws to a close the publishers’ announcements of “new books” fill column after column of the organs chosen from these special communique’s.  But there is one work which is not entered in these lists, though for years scholars, and many people who are not scholars, have been looking for it with an eagerness which has left far behind the ordinary curiosity which is bestowed on the greatest of contributions to current literasure.  And to-day the chosen few who are in possession of the volume in question are examining it with an interest proportionate to the long toil which has been bestowed on its preparation.  We refer to Captain Burton’s translation of The Arabian Nights Entertainments, now entitled The Book of The Thousand Nights and a Night, of which the first tome has just been issued. * * * * Captain Burton scorns any namby pambyism.  In the Arabic a spade is usually called a spade, and in the latest English translation it is never designated an agricultural implement.  Moreover the endless footnotes which the editor appends speak with much freedom of many things usually avoided as themes for conversation in polite society, though they throw a flood of light on hundreds of features of Oriental life on which, since travellers have been compelled to write for “refined” audiences the student has failed to be informed. * * * * *

Yet, admitting that The Nights are often coarse and indelicate, and sometimes even gross it is a mistake to suppose that they are demoralising in the same way that a French novel of the Zola type is, or might be.  Indeed, what we would call its impropriety is only a reflection of the naive freedom with which talk is to this day carried on in the family circles of the East.  They see no harm in what we should regard as indecency.  So that when Captain Burton prefaces his unbowdlerised version with the Arab proverb, “To the pure in heart all things are pure,” he presents perhaps the best defence he could against the attack which it is quite possible may be made on him for devoting many years of his life to what he terms “a labour of love.” * * * Captain Burton, thirty-three years ago, went in the disguise of an Indian pilgrim to Mecca and Al-Medinah, and no one capable of giving the world the result of his experience has so minute, so exhaustive a knowledge of Arab and Oriental life generally.  Hence the work now begun—­only a limited number of students can ever see—­is simply priceless to any one who concerns himself with such subjects, and may be regarded as marking an era in the annals of Oriental translation.