forgave Carlyle for denouncing The Arabian Nights as “downright lies” and “unwholesome literature;” Miss Martineau, as an old maid, was, of course, also out of court.  If she had written Shakespeare, it would have been all the same.  He enjoyed a pen and ink fight, even as in those old Richmond School days he had delighted in fisticuffs.  “Peace and quiet are not in my way.”  And as long as he got his adversary down he was still not very particular what method he employed.

Unlike so many of his fellow-countrymen, he was a lover or art, and had visited all the galleries in Europe.  “If anyone,” he used to say, “thinks the English have the artistic eye, let him stand in the noblest site in Europe, Trafalgar Square, and look around.”  On another occasion he described the square as “the nation’s last phase of artistic bathos.”  The facade of the National Gallery was his continual butt.

A fine handwriting, he said, bespoke the man of audacity and determination; and his own might have been done with a pin.  Then he used to split his words as if they were Arabic; writing, for example, “con tradict” for contradict.  When young ladies teased him to put something in their albums he generally wrote: 

   “Shawir hunna wa khalif hunna,”

which may be translated: 

   “Ask their advice, ye men of wit
    And always do the opposite.”

Another of his favourite sayings against women was the Persian couplet: 

   “Agar nek budi zan u Ray-i-Zan
    Zan-ra Ma-zan nam budi, na Zan,"[FN#516]

which may be rendered: 

   “If good were in woman, of course it were meeter
    To say when we think of her, Beat not, not Beat her.”

Zan meaning “woman” and also “beat,” and ma-zan “beat not.”

There was in Burton, as in most great men, a touch of the Don Quixote, derived, no doubt, in his case, from his father.  He was generous and magnanimous, and all who knew him personally spoke of him with affection.  He was oftenest referred to as “a dear chap.”  Arbuthnot regarded him as a paladin, with no faults whatever.  When younger he had, as we have noticed, never undervalued a good dinner, but as he advanced in years, everything—­food, sleep, exercise—­had to give way before work.

144.  More Anecdotes.

For silver he had a conspicuous weakness.  “Every person,” he used to say, “has some metal that influences him, and mine is silver.”  He would have every possible article about him of that metal—­ walking-stick knobs, standishes, modern cups, ancient goblets—­ all of gleamy silver.  Had he been able to build an Aladdin’s palace it would have been all of silver.  He even regarded it as a prophylactic against certain diseases.  If his eyes got tired through reading he would lie on his back with a florin over each.  When the gout troubled him, silver coins had to be bound to his feet; and the household must have been