'Come, Tell Us,' Said Bird, 'how Many Men Have You Killed?'
'How many have you, Doctor?' was the answer.
Richard Burton was probably the most extraordinary linguist
of his day. Lady Burton mentions, I think, in his Life, the
number of languages and dialects her husband knew. That
Mahometans should seek instruction from him in the Koran,
speaks of itself for his astonishing mastery of the greatest
linguistic difficulties. With Indian languages and their
variations, he was as completely at home as Miss Youghal's
Sais; and, one may suppose, could have played the ROLE of a
fakir as perfectly as he did that of a Mecca pilgrim. I
asked him what his method was in learning a fresh language.
He said he wrote down as many new words as he could learn and
remember each day; and learnt the construction of the
language colloquially, before he looked at a grammar.
Lady Burton was hardly less abnormal in her way than Sir
Richard. She had shared his wanderings, and was intimate, as
no one else was, with the eccentricities of his thoughts and
deeds. Whatever these might happen to be, she worshipped her
husband notwithstanding. For her he was the standard of
excellence; all other men were departures from it. And the
singularity is, her religious faith was never for an instant
shaken - she remained as strict a Roman Catholic as when he
married her from a convent. Her enthusiasm and
cosmopolitanism, her NAIVETE and the sweetness of her
disposition made her the best of company.
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