The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-08-16
cLoIsrEEED yIRTUK.

Lady Burton, widow of the famed Orien.
tai scholar and explorer, Sir Richard Bur-
ton, is greatly condemned by all scholars,
students of literature and lovers Of sound
learning for her utterly Indefensible de-
struction Of her husbands translation of
THE Scented Garden" a famous collec-
ton of Arabic poetry, upon which Sir
Richard Burton had spent the best years
of his life to complete. Lady Burton de-
stroyed the manuscript after her hus-
bands death, because she found this an
cient Arabic poetry, like the Arabian
Nights. was not as clean as Sum
day-school book. If the pious monks
who guarded the manuscript CO.
pies of the greatest classics OF
Greece and Rome had been as shallow as
Lady Burton we would know nothing Of
the history of man under those great civil
izations. for it is from books like Horace.
Terence, Plautus, Ovid, Petronius. Sueto-
MUS, Martial, Juvenal, Aristophanes and
the Greek tragic drama that we learn all
we know of the social life of antiquity,
rather than from dry histories, annals and
chronicles. Montaigne, Rabelais, Boccac-
clio, Chaucer. Balzac, Ceramics, Shake
speare, the novels of Fielding and Smol-
lett, the comedies of Congreve, Wycherley
and Sheridan would hardly be part Of
literature today if Lady Burton had been
censor.
This ancient Arabic poetry was not
translated by great Oriental scholar and
upright man, for the sake of its coarse
passages, but because it had an interesting
place in the world IS old literature: it Illus
trated and recorded one phase of humanity
which cannot be omitted in the complete
study Of man. Sir Richard Burton knew
that people who read filth for filth's sake
can get in English, French and Italian
books far more satisfactory reading than
this Arab poem. Lady Burton was
stupid woman, who was in spirit
as much literary vandal in de-
stroying the work upon which her
gifted husband had spent years of patient
toll as the Saracen Omar, who burnt the
Alexandria library because it was useless
if the books agreed with the Koran and
pernicious if they did not. Lady Burton
belonged to that class of well-meaning
people who imagine that if they could re-
write all literature the worlds wickedness
would be largely abated. Luckily for the
world the Church of Rome had many
popes who had brains enough to under
stand that "books do not create crime and
there destruction or suppression cannot
prevent it."
This idea that society is in danger of
ruin unless it studies expurgated editions
of the classics, expurgated Shakespeares,
ETC., is delusion of prurient prudery that
has often obtained cheap currency with
many excellent persons. The virtue that
has to be coddled by reading expurgated
classics, expurgated Shakespeare, etc.;
that can be undermined and overthrown
by such knowledge, is not worth saving;
is but fair weather garment at best. for
virtue and modesty do not turn upon not
reading this or reading that. The
fellow whose decency or refinement
is so lightly rooted or so feebly
developed that it dies out or begins to
droop at the sight of ballet dance is not
worth saving; nay, has already parted
with his salvation. There is much in this
world that we make moral bug bears of
that has only to be seen to be heartily de-
spised, and many experiences in life leave
the same superficial mark on our moral
and mental growth that the measles and
chicken-pox do on the average human
physical constitution. The child whose
constitution breaks under these diseases
had but a slim chance of maturity even if
he had escaped them.
Trying to reclaim world by burning an
Arabic poem that was a valuable contribu-
ton to the worlds literature not because
of its coarseness in spots, but in spite of
them, just as Falstaff is a precious char
acter in Shakespeare in spite of his bad
life and coarse speech, was as absurd as
any other attempt to make the world good
by sending it to nursery for its manners,
its diet and its reading. The world that
can read must work out its own salvation
by tasting of all genuine books and hold
ing fast to that which is good. The moral
ity that has only coddled life, that lives
or dies by the reading of one book or the
non-reading of another book, has not vigor
enough to keep it sweet and strong in the
smallest of the worlds trying experiences.
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