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What he did is hard to condense into an article. I can do no more than skim over his career, and make out a feature here and there. He was an unstudious youth. He was not disciplined. He grew as he might, and he absorbed information at haphazard from any book he found to his liking, but he was a sort of intellectual Ishmael. He studied things not in the curriculum. He plunged into Arabic and Hindustani, and was “rusticated.” He cared nothing for the classics, yet he left a redaction of Catullus that is a splendid exposition of that singer’s fearful corruption, and with all of his art. He entered the Indian Army, and he became so powerful, though a subordinate, that he was repressed. His superiors feared, that in him, they would find another Clive or Hastings. Then he joined the Catholic church, but he joined many a church thereafter to find its hidden meaning. He was trusted to a limited extent by Sir Charles Napier, and he so insinuated himself with the natives, that he was one of them, and sharer of their mysterious powers. Kipling has pictured him under the name of “Strickland” as an occultly powerful personage in several of his stories. He was close to the Sikh war, and he mingled with the hostile natives in disguise, until he knew their very hearts. His pilgrimage to Mecca was a feat that startled the world. He was the first “infidel” to kiss the Kaabba. To do this he had to become a Mohammedan, and to perform almost hourly minute ceremonials, in which, had he failed of perfection, he would have been torn to pieces. His book on this journey is a narration that displays the deadly cold quality of his courage, and indeed a stupendous consciencelessness in the interest of science. Next we find him in the Crimea in the thick of things, and always in trouble. He said that all his friends got into trouble, and Burton was, usually, “agin the government.” It was after the Crimea that he met the lady who became his remarkable wife, in the remarkable manner I have sketched. Then he went off to discover the sources of the Nile, and with Speke navigated Lake Tanganyika. He knew that he had not discovered the source, and he wanted to try again, but he and Speke quarreled, and pamphleteered against each other in the press. Burton, deficient in money, and in sycophancy, was discredited for a time, although now his name is immortal in geography as a pioneer of African travel. We have seen how he left his betrothed to study the Mormons, and he studied them more closely than his wife’s book intimates, for she everything extenuated and ignored for her God-like Richard.

After his experiences of marriage in Mormondom, undertaken it now seems, in a desire to ascertain if polygamy were not better for him than monogamy, he returned to London, and was married despite the objections of Isabel Arundell’s Catholic family. The lot of the couple was poverty, although now and then, thoughtful friends invited them to visit, and they accepted to save money. After a long wait he was appointed Consul at Fernando Po, on the West African coast. This was a miserable place, but Burton made it lively; he disciplined the negroes, and he made the sea captains fulfill their contracts under threat of guns. He went home, and then went back to Fernando Po, and undertook delicate dealings with the king of Dahomey, and explored the west coast. He went to Ireland, but Ireland was too quiet for him, but he found there were Burtons there, which accounted to himself for much of himself. After that he went to Brazil as Consul at Santos, Sao Pablo, another “Jumping off place.” He explored. He found rubies, and he obtained a concession for a lead mine for others. He met there the Tichborne Claimant, and invented a Carbine pistol. He visited Argentina. All this time he was writing upon many things, or having his wife take his dictation. She went into the wilds, down into the mines, everywhere with him. Next he was transferred to Damascus, where his honesty got him into trouble, and his wife’s Catholicity aroused great sentiment against him. He went into Syria, and he created consternation among the corrupt office holders in Asia Minor. One can scarcely follow his career without dizziness. By way of obliging a friend, who wanted a report on a mine, he went to Iceland, and came back to take the Consulship at Trieste. He went back to India and into Egypt, and then returned to Trieste to die. He wrote pamphlets, monographs, letters and books about everything he saw, and every place he visited. He had information exact, and from the fountain head about innumerable things; religions, races, ruins, customs, languages, tribal genealogies, plants, geology, archaeology paleontology, botany, politics, morals, almost everything that was of human interest and value, and besides all this, he was familiar with Chaucer’s vocabulary, with recondite learning about Latin colloquialisms, and read with avidity everything from the Confessions of Saint Augustine to the newspapers. He wrote a “Book of the Sword,” that is the standard book on that implement for the carving of the world. His translations of the “Arabian Nights” is a Titanic work, invaluable for its light upon Oriental folk lore, and literal to a degree that will keep it forever a sealed book to the Young Person. His translations of Camoens is said to be a wonderful rendition of the spirit of the Portuguese Homer. His Catullus is familiar to students, but not edifying. He wrote a curious volume on Falconry in India, and a manual of bayonet exercise. He collated a strange volume of African folk-lore. He translated several Brazilian tales. He translated Apulius’ “Golden Ass.” And he had notes for a book on the Gypsies, on the Greek Anthology, and Ausonius. The Burton bibliography looks like the catalogue of a small library. All the world knows about his book, “The Scented Garden,” which he translated from the Persian, and which, after his death, his wife burned rather than permit the publication of its naked naturalism. It was in the same vein as his “Arabian Nights,” and contained much curious comment upon many things that we Anglo Saxons do not talk about, save in medical society meetings, and dog Latin.