he
Villon Society, adding explanatory notes of a character which renders it
essential that his edition be kept under lock and key. It was issued to
subscribers by Burton himself in London (though ostensibly 'by the
Kamashastra Society at Benares'), being printed, and probably bound, by
Brill at Leyden. The Kamashastra Society was a myth. The ten volumes
(1885-6) were sold to the subscribers at ten guineas the set, and the
entire edition (1000) was subscribed for before publication. (_Ex
inform_: E. H.-A., one of the original subscribers and a friend of
Burton.) Six volumes of _Supplemental Nights_ were issued by Burton
between 1886 and 1888. A set of the sixteen volumes now costs about forty
pounds. It was reprinted (by H. S. Nichols) in 1894, in twelve volumes,
only slightly expurgated, the present price being about twelve pounds. A
supplementary volume of illustrations was issued with this last edition.

[30] Mr. Frederic Harrison.

[31] Isaac Disraeli.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER IV

CHIVALRY AND ROMANCE

'Mekely, lordynges gentyll and fre,
Lysten awhile and herken to me.'
HUE DE ROTELANDE.

ONCE upon a time, long long before the Venerable Bede had completed that
famous last chapter in his cell at Jarrow, there lived in the ancient
capital of Sampsiceramus, a holy man named Heliodorus. Now in his youth
Heliodorus (as is not uncommon with the young) had turned his thoughts to
worldly things; and being of a romantic nature, wearied by the eternal
sameness of the books available to him, had conceived the extraordinary
notion of writing an untrue book, a book that should never instruct or
point a moral or show you where you are wrong, but should be all
joyousness and enchantment. Possessed with this great idea, timidly yet
sure of himself, he set to work.

The very first thing he did was sufficiently startling for those days.
Instead of selecting some great man for his central figure and putting
his dialogue into the mouths of learned men, fathers of the church,
philosophers, orators, or famous poets, he chose deliberately a young and
handsome man of no particular learning, and--a woman! It was unheard of!
A book, a voluminous roll closely written, containing nothing but the
adventures of a pair of lovers! Monstrous! Yet it was done at last, and
the roll, finding favour in the eyes of a bosom friend, was quickly
passed from hand to hand. All were entranced by it. Here wa