ve 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. [7] In short, amazing to say, the public have given Burton
credit for a gift which he did not possess [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 [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, [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. Wa