—Contentez-vous, mes yeux, Jamais vous ne verrez chose plus belle;
And now, turning away from these and similar pleasures of memory, and passing over the once-told tale (Foreword, vol. i. pp. ix., x.) of how, when and where work was begun, together with the disappointment caused by the death of my friend and collaborator, Steinhaeuser; concerning the copying process which commenced in 1879 and anent the precedence willingly accorded to the “Villon Edition,” I proceed directly to what may be termed
During the autumn of ’82, after my return from the Gold Coast (with less than no share of the noble metal which my companion Cameron and I went forth to find and found a failure), my task began in all possible earnest with ordering the old scraps of translation and collating a vast heterogeneous collection of notes. I was fortunate enough to discover, at unlettered Trieste, an excellent copyist able and willing to decypher a crabbed hand and deft at reproducing facetious and drolatic words without thoroughly comprehending their significance. At first my exertions were but fitful and the scene was mostly a sick bed to which I was bound between October ’83 and June ’84. Marienbad, however, and Styrian Sauerbrunn (bei Rohitsch) set me right and on return to Trieste (Sept. 4, ’84), we applied ourselves to the task of advertising, the first two volumes being almost ready for print. And here we were confronted by a serious question, What number of copies would suffice my public? A distinguished Professor who had published some 160,000 texts with prices ranging from 6d. to 50 guineas, wrote to me in all kindness advising an issue of 150 to 250: an eminent printer-publisher would have ventured upon some 500: others rose to 750 with a warning-note anent “wreckage,” great risk and ruinous expenditure, while only one friend—and he not in business—urged an edition of 2,000 to 3,000 with encouraging words as to its probable reception. After long forethought I choose 1,000 as a just middle.
We then drew up a long list, names of friends, acquaintances and strangers likely to patronise the novelty and caused the following three papers to be lithographed and printed at Trieste.
_Captain Burton, having neither agent nor publisher for his forthcoming_ ARABIAN NIGHTS, _requests that all subscribers will kindly send their names and addresses to him personally (Captain Burton, Trieste, Austria), when they will be entered into a book kept for the purpose_.