(and that side the most interesting to mankind) I proposed to supply the want in these pages. ...  While Pharisee and Philistine may be or may pretend to be ‘shocked’ and ‘horrified’ by my pages, the sound commonsense of a public, which is slowly but surely emancipating itself from the prudish and prurient reticences and the immodest and immoral modesties of the early 19th century, will in good time do me, I am convinced, full and ample justice.”

In order to be quite ready, should prosecution ensue, Burton compiled what he called The Black Book, which consisted of specimens, of, to use his own expression, the “turpiloquium” of the Bible and Shakespeare.  It was never required for its original purpose, but he worked some portions into the Terminal Essay to The Arabian Nights.[FN#497] And here it may be said that when Burton attacks the Bible and Christianity he is inconsistent and requires to be defended against himself.  The Bible, as we have seen was one of the three books that he constantly carried about with him, and few men could have had greater admiration for its more splendid passages.  We know, too, that the sincere Christian had his respect.  But his Terminal Essay and these notes appeared at a moment when the outcry was raised against his Arabian Nights; consequently, when he fires off with “There is no more immoral work than the Old Testament,” the argument must be regarded as simply one of Tu quoque.  Instead of attacking the Bible writers as he did, he should, to have been consistent, have excused them, as he excused the characters in The Arabian Nights, with:  “Theirs is a coarseness of language, not of idea, &c., &c. ...  Such throughout the East is the language of every man, woman and child,"[FN#498] and so on.  The suggestion, for example, that Ezekiel and Hosea are demoralizing because of certain expressions is too absurd for refutation.  The bloodshed of the Bible horrified him; but he refused to believe that the “enormities” inflicted by the Jews on neighbouring nations were sanctioned by the Almighty.[FN#499] “The murderous vow of Jephthah,” David’s inhuman treatment of the Moabites, and other events of the same category goaded him to fury.

If he attacks Christianity, nevertheless, his diatribe is not against its great Founder, but against the abuses that crept into the church even in the lifetime of His earliest followers; and again, not so much against Christiantiy in general as against Roman Catholicism.  Still, even after making every allowance, his article is mainly a glorification of the crescent at the expense of the cross.

   Chapter xxx
   21st November 1885-5th June 1886
   K. C. M. G.

Bibliography: 

74.  Six Months at Abbazia. 1888. 75.  Lady Burton’s Edition of the Arabian Nights. 1888.

141.  In Morocco, 21st November 1885.

On October 28th the Burtons went down to Hatfield, where there was a large party, but Lord Salisbury devoted himself chiefly to Burton.  After they had discussed the Eastern Question, Lord Salisbury said to Burton “Now go to your room, where you will be quiet, and draw up a complete programme for Egypt.”