All this, of course, proved indubitably that Lady Burton actually knew next to nothing about the whole matter.  Perhaps it will be asked, What has been lost by this action of Lady Burton’s?  After carefully weighing the pros and cons we have come to the conclusion that the loss could not possibly have been a serious one.  That Burton placed a very high value on his work, that he considered it his masterpiece, is incontrovertible, but he had formed in earlier days just as high an opinion of his Camoens and his Kasidah; therefore what he himself said about it has not necessarily any great weight.  We do not think the loss serious for four reasons:  First, because the original work, whatever its claims on the anthropologist, has little, if any, literary merit;[FN#660] secondly, because Sir Richard Burton’s “old version"[FN#661] of The Scented Garden is public property, and has been reprinted at least three times; thirdly, because only half was done; and fourthly, because the whole of the work has since been translated by a writer who, whatever his qualifications or disqualifications, has had access to manuscripts that were inaccessible to Sir Richard Burton.  Practically then, for, as we have already shown, Sir Richard did not particularly shine as a translator, nothing has been lost except his notes.  These notes seem to have been equivalent to about 600 pages of an ordinary crown octavo book printed in long primer.  Two-thirds of this matter was probably of such a character that its loss cannot be deplored.  The remainder seems to have been really valuable and to have thrown light on Arab life and manners.  Although the translation was destroyed in October 1890, the public were not informed of the occurrence until June 1891—­nine months after.

Copies of the Kama Shastra edition of The Scented Garden issued in 1886[FN#662] are not scarce.  The edition of 1904, to which we have several times referred, is founded chiefly on the Arabic Manuscript in the Library at Algiers, which a few years ago was collated by Professor Max Seligsohn with the texts referred to by Burton as existing in the Libraries of Paris, Gotha and Copenhagen.

175.  The Fate of the Catullus.

The fate of the Catullus was even more tragic than that of The Scented Garden.  This work, like The Scented Garden, was left unfinished.  Burton had covered his Latin copy and his manuscript with pencil notes looking like cobwebs, and on one page was written “Never show half finished work to women or fools.”  The treatment meted to his manuscript would, if Burton had been a poet of the first order, have drawn tears from a milestone.  But it must be borne in mind that Lady Burton did consider him a poet of the first order, for she ranked his Camoens and his Kasidah with the work of Shakespere.  And this is how she treated a work which she considered a world-masterpiece.  First she skimmed it over, then she expurgated it, and finally she either typed