rlorn moors among what Shelley calls "dismal cirques of Druid stones."
To the future, for he continued to study spiritualism, and to gaze into
crystals. He longed to make himself master of the "darkling secrets
of Eternity." [506] Both he and Lady Burton were, to use Milton's
expression, "struck with superstition as with a planet." She says:
"From Arab or gipsy he got.... his mysticism, his superstition (I
am superstitious enough, God knows, but he was far more so), his
divination." [507] Some of it, however, was derived from his friendship
in early days with the painter-astrologer Varley. If a horse stopped for
no ascertained reason or if a house martin fell they wondered what it
portended. They disliked the bodeful chirp of the bat, the screech of
the owl. Even the old superstition that the first object seen in the
morning--a crow, a cripple, &c.--determines the fortunes of the day,
had his respect. "At an hour," he comments, "when the senses are most
impressionable the aspect of unpleasant spectacles has a double effect."
[508] He was disturbed by the "drivel of dreams," and if he did not
himself search for the philosopher's stone he knew many men who were
so engaged (he tells us there were a hundred in London alone) and he
evidently sympathised with them.

Fear of man was a feeling unknown to him, and he despised it in others.
"Of ten men," he used to say, quoting an Osmanli proverb, "nine are
women." Behind his bed hung a map of Africa, and over that a motto in
Arabic which meant:

"All things pass."

This saying he used to observe, was always a consolation to him.

If he had been eager for money, it was only for what money would buy. He
wanted it because it would enable him to do greater work. "I was often
stopped, in my expeditions," he told Dr. Baker, "for the want of a
hundred pounds." He was always writing: in the house, in the desert,
in a storm, up a tree, at dinner, in bed, ill or well, fresh or
tired,--indeed, he used to say that he never was tired. There was
nothing histrionic about him, and he never posed, except "before fools
and savages." He was frank, straightforward, and outspoken, and his face
was an index of his mind. Every thought was visible just "as through a
crystal case the figured hours are seen." He was always Burton, never by
any chance any one else. As. Mr. A. C. Swinburne said of him: "He rode
life's lists as a god might ride." Of English Literature and especially
of poetry he was