We now come to that absorbing period of Burton’s life which is connected principally with The Arabian Nights.  Amazing as the statement may seem, we feel ourselves compelled to say at once, though regretfully, that Burton’s own account of the history of the translation, given in his Translator’s Foreword to the Arabian Nights, and Lady Burton’s account, given in her life of her husband, do not tally with the facts as revealed in his letters.  In matters relating to his own history Burton often spoke with amazing recklessness,[FN#340] and perhaps he considered he was justified in stating that his translation of The Arabian Nights was well advanced by November 1881, seeing that it had for thirty years intermittently occupied his thoughts.  As regards Lady Burton, no doubt, of some of the facts presently to be given, she was unaware.  But she was one who easily deceived herself.  Whatever she wished, she was apt to believe.  The actual facts compiled from existing documentary evidence—­including Burton’s own letters—­will now be revealed for the first time; and it will be found, as is generally the case, that the unembroidered truth is more interesting than the romance.  The story is strangely paralleled by that of the writing of The Kasidah; or in other words it recalls traits that were eminently characteristic of Burton.  As early as 1854, as we have seen, Burton and Steinhauser had planned a translation of The Arabian Nights, Steinhauser was to furnish the prose, Burton the poetry.  They corresponded on the subject, but made only trifling progress.  Steinhauser died in 1866, his manuscripts were scattered, and Burton never heard of them again.  Absolutely nothing more was done, for Burton was occupied with other matters—­travelling all over the world and writing piles of voluminous books on other subjects.  Still, he had hoards of Eastern manuscripts, and notes of his own on Eastern manners and customs, which had for years been accumulating and an even greater mass of curious information had been stored in his brain.  Again and again he had promised himself to proceed, but something every time hindered.

In November 1881, Burton, who was then at Trieste, noticed a paragraph in The Athenaeum[FN#341] to the effect that Mr. John Payne, the well-known author of The Masque of Shadows and of a famous rendering of The Poems of Francois Villon, was about to issue a Translation of The Book of the Thousand Nights and one Nights.  Burton, who was an enthusiastic admirer of the Villon and who, moreover, had not relinquished his own scheme, though it had lain so long quiescent, wrote at once to The Athenaeum a letter which appeared on 26th November 1881.  He said:  “Many years ago, in collaboration with my old and lamented friend, Dr. F. Steinhauser, of the Bombay Army, I began to translate the whole[FN#342] of The Thousand Nights and a Night.  The book, mutilated in Europe to a collection of fairy tales, and miscalled the Arabian Nights, is unique as a study of anthropology.