Writing to Payne on September 9th (1884) he says, “As you have been chary of notes my version must by way of raison d’etre (amongst others) abound in esoteric lore, such as female circumcision and excision, etc.  I answer all my friends that reading it will be a liberal education, and assure them that with such a repertory of esotericism at their finger ends they will know all the Scibile[FN#380] requisite to salvation.  My conviction is that all the women in England will read it and half the men will cut me.”

112.  The Battle over the Nights.

Although, as we have seen, Burton’s service to Mr. Payne’s translation was almost too slight to be mentioned, Burton was to Mr. Payne in another way a tower of strength.  Professional spite, jealousy and other causes had ranged against his Nights whole platoons of men of more or less weight.  Jealousy, folly and ignorance made common cause against the new translation—­the most formidable coterie being the group of influential men who for various reasons made it their business to cry up the commonplace translation of E. W. Lane, published in 1840, and subsequently reprinted—­a translation which bears to Payne’s the relation of a glow-worm to the meridian sun.  The clique at first prepared to make a professional attack on the work, but the appearance of Volume i. proved it to be from a literary, artistic and philological point of view quite unassailable.  This tactic having failed, some of these gentlemen, in their meanness, and we fear we must add, malevolence, then tried to stir up the authorities to take action against Mr. Payne on the ground of public morality.[FN#381] Burton had long been spoiling for a fight—­and now was his opportunity.  In season and out of season he defended Payne.  He fell upon the Lane-ites like Samson upon the Philistines.  He gloried in the hurly-burly.  He wallowed, as it were, in blood.  Fortunately, too, at that time he had friends in the Government—­straightforward, commonsense men—­ who were above all pettinesses.  Lord Houghton, F. F. Arbuthnot, and others, also ranged themselves on the same side and hit out manfully.

Before starting on the Palmer expedition, Burton, in a letter of October 29th, had written to Mr. Payne:  “The more I read your translation the more I like it.  You have no need to fear the Lane clique; that is to say, you can give them as good as they can give you.  I am quite ready to justify the moral point.  Of course we must not attack Lane till he is made the cheval de bataille against us.  But peace and quiet are not in my way, and if they want a fight, they can have it.”  The battle was hot while it lasted, but it was soon over.  The Lane-ites were cowed and gradually subsided into silence.  Mr. Payne took the matter more coolly than Burton, but he, too, struck out when occasion required.  For example, among the enemy was a certain reverend Professor of Semitic languages, who held advanced opinions on religious matters.