In early life he studied everything till he had passed in it, whether it was medicine, law, theology, or any other branch. In after life he kept his knowledge on a steady platform, studying up all things together to a certain point at so much a day, "raising the platform" (as he called it) equally. He never passed a day without reading up something in one of his twenty-nine languages; hence he spoke them all without difficulty, never mixing them. He then read a good deal, and took notes, and cut any useful and interesting paragraphs from about ten English and four local papers. He used to examine into the meaning and the etymology of words as he went on, with all their bearings and different spellings; he never read hurriedly, passing anything over. He wrote for a certain time in the day at several different tables—a table to each work. He kept himself up in all the passing events of the day, wrote his journal, copied anything that struck him, and at night he always "cooled his head" with a novel. If he were sick he would go to bed for several days—went on the starvation system, banished all business from his mind, and had piles of novels on chairs by his bed. One day he would get up quite well and go to work again. The most remarkable thing about him was, that every man who spoke to him found, that his one specialty was Richard's specialty. It seemed as if there was nothing that he did not know; and as for hidden things, he seemed to guess them by intuition as if he were a magician.
People will wonder if I tell them of a quality quite unsuspected on the exterior. The older he grew, the greater dislike he had for women who went wrong. He was always civil to them, especially in his own house, but there was a coldness in his manner to them, in contrast to people who were innocent, and he seemed to detect them by instinct. He used to tell me that he inherited this from his father, who in his old age was exactly the same, and if any lady known to have affaires gallantes was coming, that he used to turn round to his mother and say, "Mind, Martha! I won't have that adulteress put by me." He was also very indignant if any lady was insulted. He especially disliked a man who boasted of favours received, or let one know in any way about it—he always said such a one was no Englishman; and when he heard that any woman had lost her reputation through being simply kind to anybody, he took her part. He said, "Those are not even the men who 'kiss and tell,' but the men who 'tell and have not kissed.' A man when he really has any affair with a woman, if he is a man, is deadly silent about it." In his journals he has mapped and classified his men into three sorts as regarding their conduct with women:—
"1. The English gentleman who kisses and does not tell.
"2. The snob who kisses and tells, or if he does not actually tell, he insinuates with a smile and a gesture.
"3. Is the lying coward who tells and does not kiss, has never been allowed the chance of kissing, who has a snub to avenge, or who blackmails for money; who forge their own love-letters, and read them not only to their friends, but at cafés and clubs.
"The two last classes were more or less unknown in England till the introduction of so much foreign blood and foreign contact. It never would have occurred to the pure-blooded Englishman. Unfortunately, when men debase themselves by asking ladies for money (there is always something generous in a woman to a man—not to her own sex), they pity them, and are kind to them, and give it to them, instead of doing what they ought to do—ringing the bell and having the man turned out of the house. I have seen more innocent women lose a spotless reputation by those acts of kindness, than others by an illicit love with an English gentleman. When I see a man trying to prove that a woman drinks, or that she is out of her mind, or hysterical, or a liar, if he tells it to me once I may forget it, but if he tells it to me twice I know that that man has got something serious to hide, and that that woman knows his secret. If the man is effeminate, or deformed, or vain, morbid, or craving for notice and sympathy, be sure it is his own state he describes, and not the woman he runs down, who has snubbed him and knows what he wants to hide."
Of critics and reviewers he wrote as follows:—
"They no longer review books; when they are incompetent they review the author, and if the author's politics and religion do not happen to agree with the office of that paper, it admits scurrilous and personal paragraphs on the authors themselves, bringing up a sort of dossier of the author, which would be considered even disgraceful in a trial in a criminal court. Thirty years ago this would never have been allowed. This may amuse the writer, it may excite the reader, but I protest against it. Nothing can be less profitable to an author or a reader than a long tirade of peevish, petulant, personal comment, and unanswerable sneer. This is only used by people who can shelter themselves under an anonymous signature, or a Critique manqué, and is quite the mark of a pretender in literature and critical art, and which seldom disfigures the style of a true or able critic."
Much as he disliked unjust or coarse criticism, he delighted in playful bits of chaff like the following from the writer of the feuilleton in the Queen, the lady's newspaper and Court chronicle. He had simply written to the Morning Post a little chaff, telling truly what he had seen at a private Davenport séance.
"Oh, R. F. B.! Oh, R. F. B.!
How can you such a ninny be?
Why peril a good name and fame
By playing into tricksters' game?
Why, when all other dodges fail,
Apply your aid to prop a tale
Not half so true as 'Gammer Gurton,'
With such a name as R. F. Burton?"
"Gaiety," in speaking of Echo, said—
"The Echo is just a bit wild,
Its par is indeed a hard hitter;
In fact, it is not drawn mild,
It is a matter of Burton and bitter."
Anent the "Arabian Nights," a young girl says—