Produced by Fritz Ohrenschall, Emmanuel Ackerman and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Books project.) THE JEW, THE GYPSY and EL ISLAM [Illustration: 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 book needs no preface, least of all from any but the author’s pen. This is a rule more honoured in the breach than the observance nowadays, when many a classic appears weighed down and obscured by the unnecessary remarks and bulky commentaries of some unimportant editor. For my part it will suffice to give as briefly as possible the history of the MSS. now published for the first time in this volume. Sir Richard Burton was a voluminous writer. In addition to the forty-eight works published during his life, there remained at his death twenty MSS., some long and some short, in different stages of completion. A few were ready for press; others were finished to all intents and purposes, and only required final revision or a few additions; some were in a state of preparation merely, and for that reason may never see the light. Those in this volume belong to the second category. That so many of Burton’s MSS. were unpublished at the time of his death arose from his habit of working at several books at a time. In his bedroom, which also served as his study, at Trieste were some ten or twelve rough deal tables, and on each table were piled the materials and notes of a different book in a more or less advanced stage 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 success which attended his _Arabian Nights_ led him to turn his attention more to that phase of his work, to the exclusion of books which had been in preparation for years. Thus it came about that so many were unpublished when he died. As it is well known, he left his writings, published and unpublished, to his widow, Lady Burton, absolutely, to do with as she thought best. Lady Burton suppressed what she deemed advisable; the rest she brought with her to England. She published her _Life of Sir Richard Burton_, a new edition of his _Arabian Nights_, also _Catullus_ and _Il Pentamerone_; and was arranging for the publication of others when she died (March, 1896).