husband is owing mainly to her over-anxiety to shield him from his
enemies. But I think she mistook the situation. I do not believe
Burton had any enemies to speak of at the time of his death.

If Lady Burton's treatment of her husband's unfinished works cannot
be defended, on the other hand I shall show that the loss as regards
The Scented Garden was chiefly a pecuniary one, and therefore almost
entirely her own. The publication of The Scented Garden would not--
it could not--have added to Burton's fame. However, the matter will
be fully discussed in its proper place.

It has generally been supposed that two other difficulties must
confront any conscientious biographer of Burton--the first being
Burton's choice of subjects, and the second the friction between
Lady Burton and the Stisteds. But as regards the first, surely we
are justified in assuming that Burton's studies were pursued purely
for historical and scientific purposes. He himself insisted in
season and out of season that his outlook was solely that of the
student, and my researches for the purposes of this work have
thoroughly convinced me that, however much we may deprecate some of
these studies, Burton himself was sincere enough in his pursuit of
them. His nature, strange as it may seem to some ears, was a cold
one[FN#15]; and at the time he was buried in the most forbidding
of his studies he was an old man racked with infirmities. Yet he
toiled from morning to night, year in year out, more like a navvy
than an English gentleman, with an income of (pounds)700 a year, and 10,000
"jingling, tingling, golden, minted quid," as R. L. Stevenson would
have said, in his pocket. In his hunger for the fame of an author,
he forgot to feed his body, and had to be constantly reminded of its
needs by his medical attendant and others. And then he would wolf