however, he completed only one volume, and in 1838-40
appeared the translation direct from the Arabic, of which, however, he
completed only one volume, and in 1838-40 appeared the translation of
Edward William Lane, [147] made direct from the Boulac edition. This
work, which contains about one third of the entire Arabian Nights, was
a great step forward, but unfortunately, Lane, who afterwards became an
excellent Arabic scholar, was but a poor writer, and having no gift
of verse, he rendered the poetical portions, that is to say, some ten
thousand lines "in the baldest and most prosaic of English." [148]

So Burton and Steinhauser said to themselves, As the public have
never had more than one-third of the Nights, and that translated
indifferently, we will see what we can do. "We agreed," says Burton, "to
collaborate and produce a full, complete, unvarnished, uncastrated, copy
of the great original, my friend taking the prose and I the metrical
part; and we corresponded upon the subject for years." [149] They told
each other that, having completed their task, they would look out for a
retreat as a preparation for senility, some country cottage, perhaps,
in the South of France, where, remote from books, papers, pens, ink
and telegrams, they could spend their nights in bed and their days in
hammocks. Beyond planning the translation, however, nothing was done.
Steinhauser died fourteen years later (1866), and whatever notes he made
were dispersed, while Burton, even as late as 1883, had done nothing
beyond making a syllabus of the Boulac edition. [150] Still, the
scheme was never for very long absent from his thoughts, and during his
wanderings in Somaliland, the Tanganyika country and elsewhere, he often
delighted the natives by reciting or reading some of the tales. The
history of Burton's translation of The Arabian Nights is, as we shall
subsequently show, curiously analogous to that of The Kasidah.

30. From Zeila to Harar, 27th November 1854 to 2nd January 1855.

Burton now found that, as regards the projected expedition, his plans
would have to be modified, and he finally decided to confine his
explorations to "the great parched horn" of Somaliland. His plan was now
to visit Harar via Zeila, and then make for Berbera, in order to join
Lieutenant Speke, Herne and Stroyan, who had been authorised to assist
him and had arranged to await him there. The presence at Berbera of
Speke and his companions, would, it w