Some have regarded this action of Lady Burton's--the destruction of The
Scented Garden manuscript--as "one of rare self-sacrifice prompted by
the highest religious motives and the tenderest love for one whom she
looked to meet again in heaven, to which her burnt offering and fervent
prayers might make his entrance sure." If the burning of the MS. of The
Scented Garden had been an isolated action, we might have cheerfully
endorsed the opinion just quoted, but it was only one holocaust of
a series. That Lady Burton had the best of motives we have already
admitted; but it is also very evident that she gave the matter
inadequate consideration. The discrepancies in her account of the
manuscript prove that at most she could have turned over only three or
four pages--or half-a-dozen at the outside. [658]

Let us notice these discrepancies:

(1) In her letter to the Morning Post (19th June 1891) she says of The
Scented Garden: "It was his magnum opus, his last work that he was so
proud of." Yet in the Life (ii., 243) she calls it the only book he ever
wrote that was not valuable to the world and in p. 445 of the same work
she alludes to it "as a few chapters which were of no particular value
to the world." So it was at once the most valuable book he ever wrote
and also of no value whatever. (2) In Volume ii. of the Life (p. 441)
she says the only value in the book at all consisted in his annotations,
and there was no poetry. This remark proves more than anything else how
very superficial must have been her examination of the manuscript, for
even the garbled edition of 1886 contains nearly 400 lines of verse,
while that of 1904 probably contains over a thousand. [659] For example,
there are twenty-three lines of the poet Abu Nowas's. (3) On page 444 of
the Life she says: "It was all translation except the annotations on the
Arabic work"--which gives the impression that the translation was the
great feature, and that the notes were of secondary importance; but on
p. 441 she says, "The only value in the book at all consisted in
the annotations." As a matter of fact, the annotations amounted to
three-quarters of the whole. [See Chapter xxxiv.] (4) In the Life, page
410 (Vol. ii.), she says the work was finished all but one page; and on
page 444 that only 20 chapters were done. Yet she much have known that
the whole work consisted of 21 chapters, and that the 21st chapter was
as large as the other twenty put together, for her