Chapter xxiii

.]

[Footnote 466: At the same time the Edinburgh Review (July 1886) goes too far. It puts its finger on Burton's blemishes, but will not allow his translation a single merit. It says, "Mr. Payne is possessed of a singularly robust and masculine prose style... Captain Burton's English is an unreadable compound of archaeology and slang, abounding in Americanisms, and full of an affected reaching after obsolete or foreign words and phrases."

[Footnote 467: "She drew her cilice over his raw and bleeding skin." [Payne has "hair shirt."]--"Tale of the Ensorcelled Prince." Lib. Ed., i., 72.]

[Footnote 468: "Nor will the egromancy be dispelled till he fall from his horse." [Payne has "charm be broken."]--"Third Kalendar's Tale." Lib. Ed., i., 130. "By virtue of my egromancy become thou half stone and half man." [Payne has "my enchantments."]--"Tale of the Ensorcelled Prince." Lib. Ed., i., 71.]

[Footnote 469: "The water prisoned in its verdurous walls."--"Tale of the Jewish Doctor."

[Footnote 470: "Like unto a vergier full of peaches." [Note.--O.E. "hortiyard" Mr. Payne's word is much better.]--"Man of Al Zaman and his Six Slave Girls."

[Footnote 471: "The rondure of the moon."--"Hassan of Bassorah." [Shakespeare uses this word, Sonnet 21, for the sake of rhythm. Caliban, however, speaks of the "round of the moon."]

[Footnote 472: "That place was purfled with all manner of flowers." [Purfled means bordered, fringed, so it is here used wrongly.] Payne has "embroidered," which is the correct word.--"Tale of King Omar," Lib. Ed., i., 406.]

[Footnote 473: Burton says that he found this word in some English writer of the 17th century, and, according to Murray, "Egremauncy occurs about 1649 in Grebory's Chron. Camd. Soc. 1876, 183." Mr. Payne, however, in a letter to me, observes that the word is merely an ignorant corruption of "negromancy," itself a corruption of a corruption it is "not fit for decent (etymological) society."

[Footnote 474: A well-known alchemical term, meaning a retort, usually of glass, and completely inapt to express a common brass pot, such as that mentioned in the text. Yellow copper is brass; red copper is ordinary copper.]

[Footnote 475: Fr. ensorceler--to bewitch. Barbey d'Aurevilly's fine novel L'Ensorcelee, will be recalled. Torrens uses this word, and so does Payne, vol. v., 36. "Hath evil eye ensorcelled thee?"

[Footnote 476: Lib. Ed., ii., 360.]

[Footnote 477: Swevens--dreams.]

[Footnote 478: Burton, indeed, while habitually paraphrasing Payne, no less habitually resorts, by way of covering his "conveyances," to the clumsy expedient of loading the test with tasteless and grotesque additions and variations (e.g., "with gladness and goodly gree," "suffering from black leprosy," "grief and grame," "Hades-tombed," "a garth right sheen," "e'en tombed in their tombs," &c., &c.), which are not only meaningless, but often in complete opposition to the spirit and even the letter of the original, and, in any case, exasperating in the highest degree to any reader with a sense of style.]

[Footnote 479: Burton's A. N., v., 135; Lib. Ed., iv., 95.]

[Footnote 480: Or Karim-al-Din. Burton's A. N., v., 299; Lib. Ed., iv., 246; Payne's A. N., v. 52.]

[Footnote 481: Le Fanu had carefully studied the effects of green tea and of hallucinations in general. I have a portion of the correspondence between him and Charles Dickens on this subject.]

[Footnote 482: Burton's A. N., Suppl. ii., 90-93; Lib. Ed., ix., 307, 308.]

[Footnote 483: Lib. Ed., iv., 147.]

[Footnote 484: "The Story of Janshah." Burton's A. N., v., 346; Lib. Ed., iv., 291.]

[Footnote 485: One recalls "Edith of the Swan Neck," love of King Harold, and "Judith of the Swan Neck," Pope's "Erinna," Cowper's Aunt.]

[Footnote 486: Burton's A. N., x., 6; Lib. Ed., viii., 6.]

[Footnote 487: Burton's A. N., viii., 275; Lib. Ed., vii., 12.]

[Footnote 488: Burton's A. N., vii., 96; Lib. Ed., v., 294.]

[Footnote 489: Burton's A. N., Suppl. Nights, vi., 438; Lib. Ed., xii., 258.]

[Footnote 490: Burton's A. N., x., 199; Lib. Ed., viii., 174; Payne's A. N., ix., 370.]

[Footnote 491: The writer of the article in the Edinburgh Review (no friend of Mr. Payne), July 1886 (No. 335, p. 180.), says Burton is "much less accurate" than Payne.]

[Footnote 492: New York Tribune, 2nd November 1891.]

[Footnote 493: See