rite
for the multitude, but few poets of the day have a more devoted band of
admirers. Some readers will express a preference for The Building of the
Dream, [347] others for Lautrec [348] or Salvestra [349], and others
for the dazzling and mellifluous Prelude to Hafiz. Mr. A. C. Swinburne
eulogised the "exquisite and clear cut Intaglios." [350] D. G. Rossetti
revelled in the Sonnets; Theodore de Banville, "roi des rimes," in the
Songs of Life and Death, whose beauties blend like the tints in jewels.
[351]

Mr. Payne first took up the work of a translator in 1878, his earliest
achievement in the new province being his admirable rendering of Villon,
in which he gives the music of the thief poet, and all his humour,
and this reminds us that Mr. Payne, unlike most poets, is a skilled
musician. Of his life, indeed, music, in its most advanced and
audacious manifestations had always been as much an essential a part as
literature, hence the wonderful melodic effects of the more remarkable
of his poems. Already an excellent Arabic scholar, he had as early as
1875 resolved upon a translation of The Arabian Nights, and he commenced
the task in earnest on 5th February 1877. He worked with exhausting
sedulity and expended upon it all the gifts in his power, with the
result that his work has taken its places as a classic. The price was
nine guineas. Imagining that the demand for so expensive a work
would not be large, Mr. Payne, unfortunately, limited himself to the
publication of only 500 copies. The demand exceeded 2,000, so 1,500
persons were disappointed.

It was at this moment that Mr. Payne became acquainted with Burton. Mr.
Payne admired Burton as a traveller, an explorer, and a linguist, and
recognised the fact that no man had a more intimate knowledge of the
manners and customs of the East; and Burton on his part paid high
tribute to Mr. Payne's gifts as a translator and a poet. [352]

105. To the Gold Coast, 25th November 1881-20th May 1882.

When Mr. Payne's letter reached Trieste, Burton had just started off,
with Commander Verney Lovett Cameron, on an expedition to the Gold
Coast. In his Fernando Po period he had, as we have seen, been deeply
interested in the gold digging and gold washing industries, [353] had
himself, indeed, to use his own words, "discovered several gold mines
on that coast." For years his mind had turned wistfully towards those
regions, and at last, early in 1881, he was able to enter in