o, in Burton's phrase, "taught boys not to be
ashamed of being called good," [48] and he always revered the memory of
his tutor, the Rev. Thomas Short. [49] Burton naturally made enemies
as well as friends, but the most bitter was that imaginary person, Mrs.
Grundy. This lady, whom he always pictured as an exceedingly stout and
square-looking body with capacious skirts, and a look of austere piety,
had, he tells us, "just begun to reign" when he was at Oxford, although
forty years had elapsed since she first made her bow [50], and set
everybody asking, "What will Mrs. Grundy say?" Mrs. Grundy had a
great deal to say against Richard Burton, and, life through, he took
a peculiar delight in affronting her. The good soul disapproved of
Burton's "foreign ways" and his "expressed dislike to school and college
life," she disapproved of much that he did in his prime, and when
he came to translate The Arabian Nights she set up, and not without
justification, a scream that is heard even to this day and in the
remotest corners of the kingdom.

If Richard was miserable at Oxford, Edward was equally so at Cambridge.
After the polish and politeness of Italy, where they had been "such
tremendous dandies and ladies' men," the "boorishness and shoppiness,"
of Oxford and Cambridge were well-nigh unendurable. Seizing an early
opportunity, Richard ran over to Cambridge to visit his brother. "What
is the matter, Edward," enquired Richard. "Why so downcast?" "Oh, Dick,"
moaned Edward, "I have fallen among epiciers. [51]"

7. Expelled, April 1842.

The dull life at Oxford was varied by the occasional visit of a mesmeric
lecturer; and one youth caused peals of canorous laughter by walking
round in a pretended mesmeric sleep and kissing the pretty daughters of
the dons.

The only preacher Burton would listen to was Newman, then Vicar of St.
Mary's; of Pusey's interminable and prosy harangues he could not bear
even to think. Although unable to bend himself to the drudgery of
Oxford, Burton was already forming vast ambitions. He longed to excel
as a linguist, and particularly in Oriental languages. Hence he began
to teach himself Arabic; and got a little assistance from the Spanish
scholar Don Pascual de Gayangos. When he asked the Regius Professor of
Arabic to teach him, he was rebuffed with the information that it was
the duty of a professor to teach a class, not an individual. He spent
the vacation with his Grandmother Baker in Gre