"I don't care a button about being prosecuted, and if the matter comes to a fight, I will walk into court with my Bible and my Shakespeare and my Rabelais under my arm, and prove to them that, before they condemn me, they must cut half of _them_ out, and not allow them to be circulated to the public." Richard then found that it was a popular idea that "Ali Baba, and the Forty Thieves" and "Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp" belonged to the "Arabian Nights," whereas they do not, and he found a collection of similar tales sufficient to produce six Supplemental volumes. At first I rather objected to his risking the "Arabian Nights," from a passage written by himself in his "First Footsteps in East Africa," page 36-- "When Arabs are present, I usually recite or read a tale from 'The Thousand and One Nights,' that wonderful work so often translated, so much turned over, and so little understood at home. The most familiar book in England, next to the Bible, it is one of the least known, the reason being that about one-fifth is utterly unfit for translation; and the most sanguine Orientalist would not dare to render literally more than three-quarters of the remainder, consequently the reader loses the contrast--the very essence of the book--between its brilliancy and dulness, its moral putrefaction and such pearls as-- 'Cast the seed of good works on the least fit soil; Good is never wasted, however it may be laid out.' And in a page or two after such divine sentiment, the ladies of Baghdad sit in the porter's lap, and indulge in a facetiousness which would have killed Pietro Aretino before his time." (This was written in 1855, thirty years before.)