HOW SIR RICHARD BURTON TRANSLATED CAMOENS.

Grey River Argus, Volume XXXIX, Issue 6987, 12 February 1891, Page 4

HOW SIR RICHARD BURTON TRANSLATED CAMOENS.

Some years ago' there was a smoking party given by a well-known Londoner (Mr G. W. Smalley, writes to the " New York T ibune"). I went late, ond on my "way upstairs stumbled against a man sitting on the steps, with a< book and pencil in his hand, absorbed in his reading and the notes he was making. It was Burton. When I spoke to him he woke up as if fripm a dream, with the dazed air of one not "quite sure where he is. I asked him what he was reading. It proved to be Camoens, and he told me he was translating the Portuguese poet. It seemed an odd place for such work, and I said as much. "Oh, "answered Burton, "lean read anywhere or write anywhere. And I always carry Camoens about with me. Tou see, he is a little book, and I have done most of my translating in these odd moments — or, as you say, in this odd fashion. "And he added, ■wifch a kind of cynical grin on his face. " You will find plenty of dull people in the rooms above. " He had been bored, and this was his refuge. " Besides," he said, "I have been up all last night, and I can't waste time." I looked tohim with that sort of curiosity one has in the presence of a perfectly unique, or, at any rate, original, person, whose character and capacities are both evidently beyond the common. .And I asked " Are you never tired?" He answered "Never." Indeed, now that he had fairly withdrawn his attention from the book, he seemed wideawake and fresh. As he did not seem to mind, I pursued him with question. '' What do you mean by " never' 1 ? ** 1 mean that I cannot remember that I ever knew what it was to feel tired or to be unable to go on with any work I wanted to do." "Do you know Portuguese well?" "Yes, it is no effort to master a language or dia'ect." " How many do yon know?" " Twentyseven!" I forbore to ask him what they were. He added, however, " I include different dialects ef the same language in the twentyseven." Bayard Taylor had a singular gift of tongues and power of mastering local peculiarities of speech. "I know," said Taylor once, "all the various patois and dialects of South Germany as well as any peasant knows any of them which he speaks."