Page:The life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton (IA b21778401).pdf/23

Rh friends to dinner one night, and I put my manuscript on the table before them after dinner, and I begged them to each take a part and look over it. Feeling as I do that the general public never understood him, and that his mantle after death seemed to descend upon my shoulders, that everything I saw seems to be misunderstood, and that, in some few eyes, I can do nothing right, I said at the end of the evening, "If I endeavour to explain, will it not be throwing pearls to swine?" (not that I meant, dear readers, to compare you to swine—it is but an expression of thought well understood). And the answer was, "Oh, Lady Burton, do give the world the ins and outs of this remarkable and interesting character, and let the swine take care of themselves." "If you leave out by order" (said one) "religion and politics, the two touchstones of the British publish, you leave out the great part of a man." "Mind you gloss over nothing to please anybody" (said a second). I think they are right—one set of people see one side, and another see another side, and neither of the two will comprehend (like St. Thomas) anything that they have not seen and felt; or, to quote one of Richard's favourite mottoes from St. Augustine, "Let them laugh at me for speaking of things which they do not understand, and I must pity them, whilst they laugh at me." So I must remain an unfortunate buffer amidst a cyclone of opinions. I can only avoid controversies and opinions of my own, and quote his and his actions.

These words are forced from me, because I have received my orders, if not exactly from the public, from a few of the friends who profess to know him best. I am ordered to describe Richard as a sort of Didérot (a disciple of Voltaire's), who wrote "that the world would never quiet till the last king was strangled with the bowels of the last priest,"—whereas there was no one whom Richard delighted more to honour than a worthy King, or an honest straightforward Priest.

There are people who are ready to stone me, if I will not describe Richard as being absolutely without belief in anything; yet I really cannot oblige them, without being absolutely untruthful. He was a spade-truth man, and he honestly