From the portrait by Lord Leighton F. Jenkins Imp. Paris
Richard F. Burton
[Arabic: الحج عبدالله: Al-Hajj 'abd Allah]
The Jew, The Gypsy
and
El Islam
By the late Captain
SIR RICHARD F. BURTON
K.C.M.G. F.R.G.S. ETC
Translator of
“The Thousand and One Nights,” and Author of “The
Book of the Sword,” “My Pilgrimage to Mecca,” etc.
Edited with a Preface and Brief Notes
by
W. H. WILKINS
London
Hutchinson & Co
Paternoster Row
1898
Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury.
PREFACE
“Good wine needs no bush,” and a good bookneeds no preface, least of all from anybut the author’s pen. This is a rule morehonoured in the breach than the observance nowadays,when many a classic appears weighed downand obscured by the unnecessary remarks and bulkycommentaries of some unimportant editor. Formy part it will suffice to give as briefly as possiblethe history of the MSS. now published for thefirst time in this volume.
Sir Richard Burton was a voluminous writer. Inaddition to the forty-eight works published duringhis life, there remained at his death twenty MSS.,some long and some short, in different stages ofcompletion. A few were ready for press; others werefinished to all intents and purposes, and only requiredfinal revision or a few additions; some were in astate of preparation merely, and for that reasonmay never see the light. Those in this volume[Pg vi]belong to the second category. That so many ofBurton’s MSS. were unpublished at the time of hisdeath arose from his habit of working at severalbooks at a time. In his bedroom, which also servedas his study, at Trieste were some ten or twelve roughdeal tables, and on each table were piled the materialsand notes of a different book in a more or less advancedstage of completion. When he was tired of one,or when he came to a standstill for lack of material,he would leave it for a time and work at another.During the last few years of his life the great successwhich attended his Arabian Nights led him to turnhis attention more to that phase of his work, tothe exclusion of books which had been in preparationfor years. Thus it came about that so manywere unpublished when he died.
As it is well known, he left his writings, publishedand unpublished, to his widow, Lady Burton,absolutely, to do with as she thought best. LadyBurton suppressed what she deemed advisable; therest she brought with her to England. Shepublished her Life of Sir Richard Burton, a newedition of his Arabian Nights, also Catullus andIl Pentamerone; and was a