it herself,[FN#663] or, what is more likely, put it into the hands of a typist who must have been extremely illiterate or abominably careless.  Then, without even troubling to correct the copy, she sent the manuscript of the Catullus up the chimney after that of The Scented Garden.  The typewritten copy was forwarded to the unhappy and puzzled Mr. Leonard C. Smithers, with the request, which was amusing enough, that he would “edit it” and bring it out.  Just as a child who has been jumping on the animals of a Noah’s Ark brings them to his father to be mended.

“To me,” observes Mr. Smithers piteously, “has fallen the task of editing Sir Richard’s share in this volume from a type-written copy literally swarming with copyist’s errors.[FN#664] Lady Burton has without any reason constantly refused me even a glance at his Ms.”  The book, such as it was, appeared in 1894.  If Burton had not been embalmed he would have turned in his coffin.  We may or may not pardon Lady Burton for destroying the Ms. of The Scented Garden, but it is impossible not to pass upon her at any rate a mild censure for having treated in that way a translation of Catullus after it had been expurgated to her own taste.  Whether Burton would have considerably improved the poetry of his version we cannot say; but as it stands no single poem is superior to the work of his predecessors.  One need only compare his rendering of the lines “To the Peninsula of Sirmio” with the Hon. George Lamb’s[FN#665]

   “Sirmio of all the shores the gem,”

or Leigh Hunt’s

   “O, best of all the scattered spots that lie,”

to see what a fall was there, and yet neither Lamb’s version nor Hunt’s is satisfactory.  His “Atys” pales before Cranstoun’s, and his “Epithalamium,” is almost unreadable; while the lines “On the death of Lesbia’s Sparrow” naturally compel comparison with Byron’s version.  Nor will readers of the translations by Sir Theodore Martin or Robinson Ellis gain anything by turning to Burton.

On the other hand, we can well believe that his work, considered as a commentary on Catullus—­for nearly all his loose notes have perished—­would have been as valuable to us as, viewed in the same light, is his edition of Camoens.  He had explored all the Catullus country.  Verona, the poet’s birthplace, “Sweet Sirmio,” his home on the long narrow peninsula that cleaves Garda’s “limpid lake,” Brescia, “below the Cycnaean peak,"[FN#666] the “dimpling waters” of heavenly Como, and the estate of Caecilius;[FN#667] all were familiar to him.  He knew every spot visited by the poet in his famous voyage in the open pinnance[FN#668] from Bithynia “through the angry Euxine,” among the Cyclades, by “purple Zante,” up the Adriatic, and thence by river and canal to ‘Home, sweet home.’  He was deep in every department of Catullian lore.  He had taken enormous pains; he had given his nights and days to the work.  The notes at the end of the printed volume are a mere drop compared with the ocean he left.  However, the manuscript with its pencilled cobwebs, the voluminous “loose notes”—­all—­good and bad—­went up the chimney.