either to enter the lists against Burton, with whom, he said, he had been on terms of intimate friendship, or to discuss the matter at all. "As for what," he said, "it pleases the public to think (save the mark!) of the relative merits of my own and Burton's translations, I have long ceased to care a straw." But this led me to write even more pressingly. I assured Mr. Payne that the public had been unjust to him simply because nobody had hitherto set himself the great task of comparing the two translations, and because the true history of the case had never been laid before them. I assured him that I yielded to nobody in admiration of Sir Richard Burton--that is, on account of what he (Sir Richard) did do, not on account of what he did not do; and I gave it as my opinion that Mr. Payne owed it both to the public and to himself to lay bare the whole story. After several letters and interviews I at last induced him to give way; and I think the public will thank me for my persistency.

My revelations, which form an astonishing story, will no doubt come as a complete surprise to almost everybody. I can imagine them, indeed, dropping like a bombshell into some circles; but they are founded, not only upon conversations with Mr. Payne, but upon Burton's own letters to Mr. Payne, all of which have been in my hands, and careful study of the two translations. The public, however, cannot possibly be more surprised than I myself was when I compared the two translations page by page, I could scarcely believe my own eyes; and only one conclusion was possible. Burton, indeed, has taken from Payne at least three-quarters of the entire work. He has transferred many hundreds of sentences and clauses bodily. Sometimes we come upon a whole page with only a word or two altered.[FN#7] In short, amazing to say, the public have given Burton credit for a gift which he did not possess[FN#8]--that of being a great translator. If the public are sorry, we are deeply sorry, too, but we cannot help it. Burton's exalted position, however, as ethnologist and anthropologist, is unassailable. He was the greatest linguist and traveller that England ever produced. And four thrones are surely enough for any man. I must mention that Mr. Payne gave me an absolute free hand--nay, more than that, having placed all the documents before me, he said--and this he repeated again and again--"Wherever there is any doubt, give Burton the benefit of it," and I have done so.

In dealing with the fight[FN#9] over The Arabian Nights I have endeavoured to write in such a way as to give offence to nobody, and for that reason have made a liberal use of asterisks. I am the more desirous of saying this because no one is better aware than myself of the services that some of Burton's most bitter opponents-- those ten or twelve men whom he contemptuously termed Laneites-- have rendered to literature and knowledge. In short, I regard the battle as fought and won. I am merely writing history. No man at the present day would dream of mentioning Lane in the same breath with Payne and Burton. In restoring to Mr. Payne his own, I have had no desire to detract from Burton. Indeed, it is impossible to take from a man that which he never possessed. Burton was a very great man, Mr. Payne is a very great man, but they differ as two stars differ in glory. Burton is the magnificent man of action and the anthropologist, Mr. Payne the brilliant poet and prose writer. Mr. Payne did not go to Mecca or Tanganyika, Burton did not translate The Arabian Nights,[FN#10] or write The Rime of Redemption and Vigil and Vision. He did, however, produce the annotations of The Arabian Nights, and a remarkable enough and distinct work they form.

I recall with great pleasure an evening spent with Mr. Watts-Dunton at The Pines, Putney. The conversation ran chiefly on the Gipsies, [FN#11] upon whom Mr. Watts-Dunton is one of our best authorities,