Bowring has told his own story in a volume of Autobiographical Recollections,[85] a singularly dull book for a man whose career was at once so varied and so full of interest. He was born at Exeter in 1792 of an old Devonshire family, and entered a merchant's office in his native city on leaving school. He early acquired a taste for the study of languages, and learnt French from a refugee priest precisely in the way in which Borrow had done. He also acquired Italian, Spanish, German and Dutch, continuing with a great variety of other languages. Indeed, only the very year after Borrow had published Faustus, he published his Ancient Poetry and Romances of Spain, and the year after Borrow's Romantic Ballads came Bowring's Servian Popular Poetry. With such interest in common it was natural that the two men should be brought together, but Bowring had the qualities which enabled him to make a career for himself and Borrow had not. In 1811, as a clerk in a London mercantile house, he was sent to Spain, and after this his travels were varied. He was in Russia in 1820, and in 1822 was arrested at Calais and thrown into prison, being suspected by the Bourbon Government of abetting the French Liberals. Canning as Foreign Minister took up his cause, and he was speedily released. He assisted Jeremy Bentham in founding The Westminster Review in 1824. Meanwhile he was seeking official employment, and in conjunction with Mr. Villiers, afterwards Earl of Clarendon, and that ambassador to Spain who befriended Borrow when he was in the Peninsula, became a commissioner to investigate the commercial relations between England and France. After the Reform Bill of 1832 Bowring was frequently a candidate for Parliament, and was finally elected for Bolton in 1841. In the meantime he assisted Cobden in the formation of the Anti-Corn Law League in 1838. Having suffered great monetary losses in the interval, he applied for the appointment of Consul at Canton, of which place he afterwards became Governor, being knighted in 1854. At one period of his career at Hong Kong his conduct was made the subject of a vote of censure in Parliament, Lord Palmerston, however, warmly defending him. Finally returning to England in 1862, he continued his literary work with unfailing zest. He died at Exeter, in a house very near that in which he was born, in 1872. His extraordinary energies cannot be too much praised, and there is no doubt but that in addition to being the possessor of great learning he was a man of high character. His literary efforts were surprisingly varied. There are at least thirty-six volumes with his name on the title-page, most of them unreadable to-day; even such works, for example, as his Visit to the Philippine Isles and Siam and the Siamese, which involved travel into then little-known lands. Perhaps the only book by him that to-day commands attention is his translation of Chamisso's Peter Schlemihl. The most readable of many books by him into which I have dipped is his Servian Popular Poetry of 1827, in which we find interesting stories in verse that remind us of similar stories from the Danish in Borrow's Romantic Ballads published only the year before. The extraordinary thing, indeed, is the many points of likeness between Borrow and Bowring. Both were remarkable linguists; both had spent some time in Spain and Russia; both had found themselves in foreign prisons. They were alike associated in some measure with Norwich—Bowring through friendship with Taylor—and I might go on to many other points of likeness or of contrast. It is natural, therefore, that the penniless Borrow should have welcomed acquaintance with the more prosperous scholar. Thus it is that, some thirty years later, Borrow described the introduction by Taylor:

The writer had just entered into his eighteenth year, when he met at the table of a certain Anglo-Germanist an individual, apparently somewhat under thirty, of middle stature, a thin and weaselly figure, a sallow complexion, a certain obliquity of vision, and a large pair of spectacles. This person, who had lately come from abroad, and had published a volume of translations, had attracted some slight notice in the literary world, and was looked upon as a kind of lion in a small provincial capital. After dinner he argued a great deal, spoke vehemently against the Church, and uttered the most desperate Radicalism that was perhaps ever heard, saying, he hoped that in a short time there would not be a king or queen in Europe, and inveighing bitterly against the English aristocracy, and against the Duke of Wellington in particular, whom he said, if he himself was ever president of an English republic—an event which he seemed to think by no means improbable—he would hang for certain infamous acts of profligacy and bloodshed which he had perpetrated in Spain. Being informed that the writer was something of a philologist, to which character the individual in question laid great pretensions, he came and sat down by him, and talked about languages and literature. The writer, who was only a boy, was a little frightened at first.[86]

The quarrels of authors are frequently amusing but rarely edifying, and this hatred of Bowring that possessed the soul of poor Borrow in his later years is of the same texture as the rest. We shall never know the facts, but the position is comprehensible enough. Let us turn to the extant correspondence[87] which, as far as we know, opened when Borrow paid what was probably his third visit to London in 1829:

To Dr. John Bowring

17 GREAT RUSSELL STREET, BLOOMSBURY. [Dec. 6, 1829.]

MY DEAR SIR,—Lest I should intrude upon you when you are busy, I write to inquire when you will be unoccupied. I wish to shew you my translation of The Death of Balder, Ewald's most celebrated production,[88] which, if you approve of, you will perhaps render me some assistance in bringing forth, for I don't know many publishers. I think this will be a proper time to introduce it to the British public, as your account of Danish literature will doubtless cause a sensation. My friend Mr. R. Taylor has my Kaempe Viser, which he has read and approves of; but he is so very deeply occupied, that I am apprehensive he neglects them: but I am unwilling to take them out of his hands, lest I offend him. Your letting me know when I may call will greatly oblige,—Dear Sir, your most obedient servant,

GEORGE BORROW.

To Dr. John Bowring

17 GREAT RUSSELL STREET, BLOOMSBURY. [Dec. 28, 1829.][89]

MY DEAR SIR,—I trouble you with these lines for the purpose of submitting a little project of mine for your approbation. When I had last the pleasure of being at yours, you mentioned, that we might at some future period unite our strength in composing a kind of Danish Anthology. You know, as well as I, that by far the most remarkable portion of Danish poetry is comprised in those ancient popular productions termed Kaempe Viser, which I have translated. Suppose we bring forward at once the first volume of the Danish Anthology, which should contain the heroic and supernatural songs of the K. V., which are certainly the most interesting; they are quite ready for the press with the necessary notes, and with an introduction which I am not ashamed of. The second volume might consist of the Historic songs and the ballads and Romances, this and the third volume, which should consist of the modern Danish poetry, and should commence with the celebrated 'Ode to the Birds' by Morten Borup, might appear in company at the beginning of next season. To Oelenslager should be allotted the principal part of the fourth volume; and it is my opinion that amongst his minor pieces should be given a good translation of his Aladdin, by which alone he has rendered his claim to the title of a great poet indubitable. A proper Danish Anthology cannot be contained in less than 4 volumes, the literature being so copious. The first volume, as I said before, might appear instanter, with no further trouble to yourself than writing, if you should think fit, a page or two of introductory matter.—Yours most truly, my dear Sir,

GEORGE BORROW.

To Dr. John Bowring

17 GREAT RUSSELL STREET, Decr. 31, 1829.

MY DEAR SIR,—I received your note, and as it appears that you will not be disengaged till next Friday evening (this day week) I will call then. You think that no more than two volumes can be ventured on. Well! be it so! The first volume can contain 70 choice Kaempe Viser; viz. all the heroic, all the supernatural ballads (which two classes are by far the most interesting), and a few of the historic and romantic songs. The sooner the work is advertised the better, for I am terribly afraid of being forestalled in the Kaempe Viser by some of those Scotch blackguards who affect to translate from all languages, of which they are fully as ignorant as Lockhart is of Spanish. I am quite ready with the first volume, which might appear by the middle of February (the best time in the whole season), and if we unite our strength in the second, I think we can produce something worthy of fame, for we shall have plenty of matter to employ talent upon.—Most truly yours,

GEORGE BORROW.

To Dr. John Bowring

17 GREAT RUSSELL STREET, BLOOMSBURY, Jany. 14, 1830.

MY DEAR SIR,—I approve of the prospectus in every respect; it is business-like, and there is nothing flashy in it. I do not wish to suggest one alteration. I am not idle: I translated yesterday from your volume 3 longish Kaempe Visers, among which is the 'Death of King Hacon at Kirkwall in Orkney,' after his unsuccessful invasion of Scotland. To-day I translated 'The Duke's Daughter of Skage,' a noble ballad of 400 lines. When I call again I will, with your permission, retake Tullin and attack The Surveyor. Allow me, my dear Sir, to direct your attention to Oelenschlaeger's St. Hems Aftenspil, which is the last in his Digte of 1803. It contains his best lyrics, one or two of which I have translated. It might, I think, be contained within 70 pages, and I could translate it in 3 weeks. Were we to give the whole of it we should gratify Oelenschlaeger's wish expressed to you, that one of his larger pieces should appear. But it is for you to decide entirely on what is or what is not to be done. When you see the foreign editor I should feel much obliged if you would speak to him about my reviewing Tegner, and enquire whether a good article on Welsh poetry would be received. I have the advantage of not being a Welshman. I would speak the truth, and would give translations of some of the best Welsh poetry; and I really believe that my translations would not be the worst that have been made from the Welsh tongue.—Most truly yours,

G. BORROW.

To Dr. John Bowring

17 GREAT RUSSELL STREET, BLOOMSBURY, Jany. 7, 1830.

MY DEAR SIR,—I send the prospectus[90] for your inspection and for the correction of your master hand. I have endeavoured to assume a Danish style, I know not whether I have been successful.

Alter, I pray you, whatever false logic has crept into it, find a remedy for its incoherencies, and render it fit for its intended purpose. I have had for the two last days a rising headache which has almost prevented me doing anything. I sat down this morning and translated a hundred lines of the May-day; it is a fine piece.—Yours most truly, my dear Sir,

GEORGE BORROW.

To Dr. John Bowring

7 MUSEUM STREET, Jany. 1830.

MY DEAR SIR,—I write this to inform you that I am at No. 7 Museum St., Bloomsbury. I have been obliged to decamp from Russell St. for the cogent reason of an execution having been sent into the house, and I thought myself happy in escaping with my things. I have got half of the Manuscript from Mr. Richard Taylor, but many of the pages must be rewritten owing to their being torn, etc. He is printing the prospectus, but a proof has not yet been struck off. Send me some as soon as you get them.[91] I will send one with a letter to H. G.—Yours eternally,

G. BORROW.

To Dr. John Bowring

7 MUSEUM STREET, Jany. 25, 1830.

MY DEAR SIR,—I find that you called at mine, I am sorry that I was not at home. I have been to Richard Taylor, and you will have the prospectuses this afternoon. I have translated Ferroe's 'Worthiness of Virtue' for you, and the two other pieces I shall translate this evening, and you shall have them all when I come on Wednesday evening. If I can at all assist you in anything, pray let me know, and I shall be proud to do it.—Yours most truly,

G. BORROW.

To Dr. John Bowring

7 MUSEUM STREET, Feby. 20, 1830.

MY DEAR SIR,—To my great pleasure I perceive that the books have all arrived safe. But I find that, instead of an Icelandic Grammar, you have lent me an Essay on the origin of the Icelandic Language, which I here return. Thorlakson's Grave-ode is superlatively fine, and I translated it this morning, as I breakfasted. I have just finished a translation of Baggesen's beautiful poem, and I send it for your inspection.—Most sincerely yours,

GEORGE BORROW.

P.S.—When I come we will make the modifications of this piece, if you think any are requisite, for I have various readings in my mind for every stanza. I wish you a very pleasant journey to Cambridge, and hope you will procure some names amongst the literati.

To Dr. John Bowring

7 MUSEUM STREET, March 9, 1830.

MY DEAR SIR,—I have thought over the Museum matter which we were talking about last night, and it appears to me that it would be the very thing for me, provided that it could be accomplished. I should feel obliged if you would deliberate upon the best mode of proceeding, so that when I see you again I may have the benefit of your advice.—Yours most sincerely,

GEORGE BORROW.

To this letter Bowring replied the same day, and his reply is preserved by Dr. Knapp. He promised to help in the Museum project 'by every sort of counsel and creation.' 'I should rejoice to see you nicked in the British Museum,' he concludes.

To Dr. John Bowring

7 MUSEUM STREET, Friday Evening, May 21, 1830.

MY DEAR SIR,—I shall be happy to accept your invitation to meet Mr. Grundtvig to-morrow morning. As at present no doubt seems to be entertained of Prince Leopold's accepting the sovereignty of Greece, would you have any objection to write to him concerning me? I should be very happy to go to Greece in his service. I do not wish to go in a civil or domestic capacity, and I have, moreover, no doubt that all such situations have been long since filled up; I wish to go in a military one, for which I am qualified by birth and early habits. You might inform the Prince that I have been for years on the Commander-in-Chief's List for a commission, but that I have not had sufficient interest to procure an appointment. One of my reasons for wishing to reside in Greece is, that the mines of Eastern Literature would be acceptable to me. I should soon become an adept in Turkish, and would weave and transmit to you such an anthology as would gladden your very heart. As for The Songs of Scandinavia, all the ballads would be ready before departure, and as I should take books, I would in a few months send you translations of the modern lyric poetry. I hope this letter will not displease you. I do not write it from flightiness, but from thoughtfulness. I am uneasy to find myself at four and twenty drifting on the sea of the world, and likely to continue so.—Yours most sincerely,

G. BORROW.

This letter is printed in part by Dr. Knapp, and almost in its entirety by Mr. Herbert Jenkins. Dr. Knapp has much sound worldly reflection upon its pathetic reference to 'drifting on the sea of the world.' If only, he suggests, Borrow had not received that unwise eulogy from Allan Cunningham about his 'exquisite Danish ballads,' if only he had listened to Richard Ford's advice—which came too late in any case—'Avoid poetry and translations of poets'—how much better it would have been. But Borrow had not the makings in him of a 'successful' man, and we who enjoy his writings to-day must be contented with the reflection that he had just the kind of life-experience which gave us what he had to give. Here Borrow holds his place among the poets—an unhappy race. In any case the British Museum appointment was not for him, nor the military career. Had one or other fallen to his lot, we might have had much literary work of a kind, but certainly not Lavengro. To return to the correspondence:

To Dr. John Bowring

7 MUSEUM ST., June 1, 1830.

MY DEAR SIR,—I send you Hafbur and Signe to deposit in the Scandinavian Treasury, and I should feel obliged by your doing the following things.

1. Hunting up and lending me your Anglo-Saxon Dictionary as soon as possible, for Grundtvig wishes me to assist him in the translation of some Anglo-Saxon Proverbs.

2. When you write to Finn Magnussen to thank him for his attention, pray request him to send the Feeroiska Quida, or popular songs of Ferroe, and also Broder Run's Historie, or the History of Friar Rush, the book which Thiele mentions in his Folkesagn.—Yours most sincerely,

G. BORROW.

To Dr. John Bowring

7 MUSEUM STREET, June 7, 1830.

MY DEAR SIR,—I have looked over Mr. Grundtvig's manuscripts. It is a very long affair, and the language is Norman-Saxon. L40 would not be an extravagant price for a transcript, and so they told him at the museum. However, as I am doing nothing particular at present, and as I might learn something from transcribing it, I would do it for L20. He will call on you to-morrow morning, and then if you please you may recommend me. The character closely resembles the ancient Irish, so I think you can answer for my competency.—Yours most truly,

G. BORROW.

P.S.—Do not lose the original copies of the Danish translations which you sent to the Foreign Quarterly, for I have no duplicates. I think The Roses of Ingemann was sent; it is not printed; so if it be not returned, we shall have to re-translate it.

To Dr. John Bowring

7 MUSEUM ST., Sept. 14, 1830.

MY DEAR SIR,—I return you the Bohemian books. I am going to Norwich for some short time as I am very unwell, and hope that cold bathing in October and November may prove of service to me. My complaints are, I believe, the offspring of ennui and unsettled prospects. I have thoughts of attempting to get into the French service, as I should like prodigiously to serve under Clausel in the next Bedouin campaign. I shall leave London next Sunday and will call some evening to take my leave; I cannot come in the morning, as early rising kills me.—Most sincerely yours,

G. BORROW.

To Dr. John Bowring

WILLOW LANE, NORWICH, Sept. 11, 1831.

MY DEAR SIR,—I return you my most sincere thanks for your kind letter of the 2nd inst., and though you have not been successful in your application to the Belgian authorities in my behalf, I know full well that you did your utmost, and am only sorry that at my instigation you attempted an impossibility. The Belgians seem either not to know or not to care for the opinion of the great Cyrus, who gives this advice to his captains: 'Take no heed from what countries ye fill up your ranks, but seek recruits as ye do horses, not those particularly who are of your own country, but those of merit.' The Belgians will only have such recruits as are born in Belgium, and when we consider the heroic manner in which the native Belgian army defended the person of their new sovereign in the last conflict with the Dutch, can we blame them for their determination? It is rather singular, however, that, resolved as they are to be served only by themselves, they should have sent for 50,000 Frenchmen to clear their country of a handful of Hollanders, who have generally been considered the most unwarlike people in Europe, but who, if they had had fair play given them, would long ere this time have replanted the Orange flag on the towers of Brussels, and made the Belgians what they deserve to be—hewers of wood and drawers of water. And now, my dear Sir, allow me to reply to a very important part of your letter. You ask me whether I wish to purchase a commission in the British Service, because in that case you would speak to the Secretary at War about me. I must inform you, therefore, that my name has been for several years upon the list for the purchase of a commission, and I have never yet had sufficient interest to procure an appointment. If I can do nothing better I shall be very glad to purchase; but I will pause two or three months before I call upon you to fulfil your kind promise. It is believed that the militias will be embodied in order to be sent to that unhappy country Ireland, and, provided I can obtain a commission in one of them and they are kept in service, it would be better than spending L500 upon one in the line. I am acquainted with the colonels of the two Norfolk regiments, and I dare say that neither of them would have any objection to receive me. If they are not embodied I will most certainly apply to you, and you may say when you recommend me that, being well grounded in Arabic, and having some talent for languages, I might be an acquisition to a corps in one of our Eastern colonies. I flatter myself that I could do a great deal in the East provided I could once get there, either in a civil or military capacity. There is much talk at present about translating European books into the two great languages, the Arabic and Persian. Now I believe that with my enthusiasm for those tongues I could, if resident in the East, become in a year or two better acquainted with them than any European has been yet, and more capable of executing such a task. Bear this in mind, and if, before you hear from me again, you should have any opportunity to recommend me as a proper person to fill any civil situation in those countries, or to attend any expedition thither, I pray you to lay hold of it, and no conduct of mine shall ever give you reason to repent of it.—I remain, my dear Sir, your most obliged and obedient servant,

GEORGE BORROW.

P.S.—Present my best remembrances to Mrs. Bowring and to Edgar, and tell them that they will both be starved. There is now a report in the street that twelve corn-stacks are blazing within twenty miles of this place. I have lately been wandering about Norfolk, and I am sorry to say that the minds of the peasantry are in a horrible state of excitement. I have repeatedly heard men and women in the harvest-field swear that not a grain of the corn they were cutting should be eaten, and that they would as lieve be hanged as live. I am afraid all this will end in a famine and a rustic war.

Borrow's next letter to Bowring that has been preserved is dated 1835 and was written from Portugal. With that I will deal when we come to Borrow's travels in the Peninsula. Here it sufficeth to note that during the years of Borrow's most urgent need he seems to have found a kind friend if not a very zealous helper in the 'Old Radical' whom he came to hate so cordially.

FOOTNOTES:

[85] Autobiographical Reflections of Sir John Bowring. With a Brief Memoir by Lewin B. Bowring. Henry S. King and Co., London, 1877.

[86] The Romany Rye Appendix, ch. xi.

[87] Kindly placed at my disposal by Mr. Wilfred J. Bowring, Sir John Bowring's grandson. The rights which I hold through the executors of George Borrow's stepdaughter, Mrs. MacOubrey, over the Borrow correspondence enable me to publish in their completeness letters which three previous biographers, all of whom have handled the correspondence, have published mainly in fragments.

[88] The manuscript of The Death of Balder came into the hands of Mr. William Jarrold of Norwich through Mr. Webber of Ipswich, who purchased a large mass of Borrow manuscripts that were sold at Borrow's death, most of which were re-purchased by Dr. Knapp. His firm, Jarrold and Sons, issued The Death of Balder, from the Danish of Johannes Ewald, in 1889.

[89] This and the previous letter are undated, but bear the careful endorsement of Dr. John Bowring, as he then was, with the date of receipt, presumably the day after the letters were written.

[90]

'PROSPECTUS

It is proposed to publish, in Two Volumes Octavo Price to Subscribers L1, 1s., to Non Subscribers L1, 4s.

THE SONGS OF SCANDINAVIA

Translated by

Dr. BOWRING and Mr. BORROW.

Dedicated to the King of Denmark, by permission of His Majesty.

* * * * *

The First Volume will contain about One Hundred Specimens of the Ancient Popular Ballads of North-Western Europe, arranged under the heads of Heroic, Supernatural, Historical, and Domestic Poems.

The Second Volume will represent the Modern School of Danish Poetry, from the time of Tullin, giving the most remarkable lyrical productions of Ewald, Oelenschlaeger, Baggesen, Ingemann, and many others.'

This four-page leaflet contains two blank pages for lists of subscribers, who apparently did not come, and the project seems to have been abandoned.

[91] The prospectus, already quoted, bears the imprint: Printed by Richard Taylor, Red Lion Court, Fleet Street.



CHAPTER XV

BORROW AND THE BIBLE SOCIETY

That George Borrow should have become an agent for the Bible Society, then in the third decade of its flourishing career, has naturally excited doubts as to his moral honesty. The position was truly a contrast to an earlier ideal contained in the letter to his Norwich friend, Roger Kerrison, that we have already given, in which, with all the zest of a Shelley, he declares that he intends to live in London, 'write plays, poetry, etc., abuse religion, and get myself prosecuted.' But that was in 1824, and Borrow had suffered great tribulation in the intervening eight years. He had acquired many languages, wandered far and written much, all too little of which had found a publisher. There was plenty of time for his religious outlook to have changed in the interval, and in any case Borrow was no theologian. The negative outlook of 'Godless Billy Taylor,' and the positive outlook of certain Evangelical friends with whom he was now on visiting terms, were of small account compared with the imperative need of making a living—and then there was the passionate longing of his nature for a wider sphere—for travelling activity which should not be dependent alone upon the vagabond's crust. What matter if, as Harriet Martineau—most generous and also most malicious of women, with much kinship with Borrow in temperament—said, that his appearance before the public as a devout agent of the Bible Society excited a 'burst of laughter from all who remembered the old Norwich days'; what matter if another 'scribbling woman,' as Carlyle called such strident female writers as were in vogue in mid-Victorian days—Frances Power Cobbe—thought him 'insincere'; these were unable to comprehend the abnormal heart of Borrow, so entirely at one with Goethe in Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre:

Bleibe nicht am Boden heften, Frisch gewagt und frisch hinaus! Kopf und Arm, mit heitern Kraften, Ueberall sind sie zu Haus; Wo wir uns der Sonne freuen, Sind wir jede Sorge los; Dass wir uns in ihr zerstreuen, Darum ist die Welt so gross.[92]

Here was Borrow's opportunity indeed. Verily I believe that it would have been the same had it been a society for the propagation of the writings of Defoe among the Persians. With what zest would Borrow have undertaken to translate Moll Flanders and Captain Singleton into the languages of Hafiz and Omar! But the Bible Society was ready to his hand, and Borrow did nothing by halves. A good hater and a staunch friend, he was loyal to the Bible Society in no half-hearted way, and not the most pronounced quarrel with forces obviously quite out of tune with his nature led to any real slackening of that loyalty. In the end a portion of his property went to swell the Bible Society's funds.[93]

When Borrow became one of its servants, the Bible Society was only in its third decade. It was founded in the year 1804, and had the names of William Wilberforce, Granville Sharp, and Zachary Macaulay on its first committee. To circulate the authorised version of the Bible without note or comment was the first ideal that these worthy men set before them; never to the entire satisfaction of the great printing organisations, which already had a considerable financial interest in such a circulation. For long years the words 'Sold under cost price' upon the Bibles of the Society excited mingled feelings among those interested in the book trade[94]. The Society's first idea was limited to Bibles in the English tongue. This was speedily modified. A Bible Society was set up in Nuremberg to which money was granted by the parent organisation. A Bible in the Welsh language was circulated broadcast through the Principality, and so the movement grew. From the first it had one of its principal centres in Norwich, where Joseph John Gurney's house was open to its committee, and at its annual gatherings at Earlham his sister Elizabeth Fry took a leading part, while Wilberforce, Charles Simeon, the famous preacher, and Legh Richmond, whose Dairyman's Daughter Borrow failed to appreciate, were of the company. 'Uncles Buxton and Cunningham are here,' we find one of Joseph John Gurney's daughters writing in describing a Bible Society gathering. This was John Cunningham, rector of Harrow, and it was his brother who helped Borrow to his position in connection with the Society, as we shall see. At the moment of these early meetings Borrow is but a boy, meeting Joseph Gurney on the banks of the river near Earlham, and listening to his discourse upon angling. The work of the Bible Society in Russia may be said to have commenced when one John Paterson of Glasgow, who had been a missionary of the Congregational body, went to St. Petersburg during those critical months of 1812 that Napoleon was marching into Russia. Paterson indeed, William Canton tells us,[95] was 'one of the last to behold the old Tartar wall and high brick towers' and other splendours of the Moscow which in a month or two were to be consumed by the flames. Paterson was back again in St. Petersburg before the French were at the gates of Moscow, and it is noteworthy that while Moscow was burning and the Czar was on his way to join his army, this remarkable Scot was submitting to Prince Galitzin a plan for a Bible Society in St. Petersburg, and a memorial to the Czar thereon:

The plan and memorial were examined by the Czar on the 18th (of December); with a stroke of his pen he gave his sanction—'So be it, Alexander'; and as he wrote, the last tattered remnants of the Grand Army struggled across the ice of the Niemen.[96]

The Society was formed in January 1813, and when the Czar returned to St. Petersburg in 1815, after the shattering of Napoleon's power, he authorised a new translation of the Bible into modern Russian. From Russia it was not a far cry, where the spirit of evangelisation held sway, to Manchuria and to China. To these remote lands the Bible Society desired to send its literature. In 1822 the gospel of St. Matthew was printed in St. Petersburg in Manchu. Ten years later the type of the whole New Testament in that language was lying in the Russian capital. 'All that was required was a Manchu scholar to see the work through the press'.[97] Here came the chance for Borrow. At this period there resided at Oulton Hall, Suffolk, but a few miles from Norwich, a family of the name of Skepper, Edward and Anne his wife, with their two children, Breame and Mary. Mary married in 1817 one Henry Clarke, a lieutenant in the Royal Navy. He died a few months afterwards of consumption. Of this marriage there was a posthumous child, Henrietta Mary, born but two months after her father's death. Mary Clarke, as she now was, threw herself with zest into all the religious enthusiasms of the locality, and the Rev. Francis Cunningham, Vicar of St. Margaret's, Lowestoft, was one of her friends. Borrow had met Mary Clarke on one of his visits to Lowestoft, and she had doubtless been impressed with his fine presence, to say nothing of the intelligence and varied learning of the young man. The following note, the first communication I can find from Borrow to his future wife, indicates how matters stood at the time:

To Mrs. Clarke

ST. GILES, NORWICH, 22 October 1832.

DEAR MADAM,—According to promise I transmit you a piece of Oriental writing, namely the tale of Blue Beard, translated into Turkish by myself. I wish it were in my power to send you something more worthy of your acceptance, but I hope you will not disdain the gift, insignificant though it be. Desiring to be kindly remembered to Mr. and Mrs. Skepper and the remainder of the family,—I remain, dear Madam, your most obedient humble servant,

GEORGE BORROW.

That Borrow owed his introduction to Mr. Cunningham to Mrs. Clarke is clear, although Cunningham, in his letter to the Bible Society urging the claims of Borrow, refers to the fact that a 'young farmer' in the neighbourhood had introduced him. This was probably her brother, Breame Skepper. Dr. Knapp was of the opinion that Joseph John Gurney obtained Borrow his appointment, but the recently published correspondence of Borrow with the Bible Society makes it clear that Cunningham wrote—on 27th December 1832—recommending Borrow to the secretary, the Rev. Andrew Brandram. How little he knew of Borrow is indicated by the fact that he referred to him as 'independent in circumstances.' Brandram told Caroline Fox many years afterwards that Gurney had effected the introduction, but this was merely a lapse of memory. In fact we find Borrow asking to be allowed to meet Gurney before his departure. In any case he has himself told us, in one of the brief biographies of himself that he wrote, that he promptly walked to London, covering the whole distance of 112 miles in twenty-seven hours, and that his expenses amounted to 5-1/2d. laid out in a pint of ale, a half-pint of milk, a roll of bread, and two apples. He reached London in the early morning, called at the offices of the Bible Society in Earl Street, and was kindly received by Andrew Brandram and Joseph Jowett, the two secretaries. He was asked if he would care to learn Manchu, and go to St. Petersburg. He was given six months for the task, and doubtless also some money on account. He returned to Norwich more luxuriously—by mail coach. In June 1833 we find a letter from Borrow to Jowett, dated from Willow Lane, Norwich, and commencing, 'I have mastered Manchu, and I should feel obliged by your informing the committee of the fact, and also my excellent friend, Mr. Brandram.' A long reply to this by Jowett is among my Borrow Papers, but the Bible Society clearly kept copies of its letters, and a portion of this one has been printed.[98] It shows that Borrow went through much heart-burning before his destiny was finally settled. At last he was again invited to London, and found himself as one of two candidates for the privilege of going to Russia. The examination consisted of a Manchu hymn, of which Borrow's version seems to have proved the more acceptable, and he afterwards printed it in his Targum. Finally, on the 5th of July 1833, Borrow received a letter from Jowett offering him the appointment, with a salary of L200 a year and expenses. The letter contained his first lesson in the then unaccustomed discipline of the Evangelical vocabulary. Borrow had spoken of the prospect of becoming 'useful to the Deity, to man, and to himself.'

'Doubtless you meant,' commented Jowett, 'the prospect of glorifying God,' and Jowett frankly tells him that his tone of confidence in speaking of himself 'had alarmed some of the excellent members of our committee.' Borrow adapted himself at once, and is congratulated by Jowett in a later communication upon the 'truly Christian' spirit of his next letter.

By an interesting coincidence there was living in Norwich at the moment when Borrow was about to leave it, a man who had long identified himself with good causes in Russia, and had lived in that country for a considerable period of his life. John Venning[99] was born in Totnes in 1776, and he is buried in the Rosary Cemetery at Norwich, where he died in 1858, after twenty-eight years' residence in that city. He started for St. Petersburg four years after John Howard had died, ostensibly on behalf of the commercial house with which he was associated, but with the intention of carrying on the work of that great man in prison reform. Alexander I. was on the throne, and he made Venning his friend, frequently conversing with him upon religious subjects. He became the treasurer of a society for the humanising of Russian prisons; but when Nicholas became Czar in 1825 Venning's work became more difficult, although the Emperor was sympathetic. Venning returned to England in 1830, and thus opportunely, in 1833, was able to give his fellow-townsman letters of introduction to Prince Galitzin and other Russian notables, so that Borrow was able to set forth under the happiest auspices—with an entire change of conditions from those eight years of semi-starvation that he was now to leave behind him for ever. Borrow left London for St. Petersburg on 31st July 1833, not forgetting to pay his mother before he left the L17 he had had to borrow during his time of stress. Always devoted to his mother, Borrow sent her sums of money at intervals from the moment the power of earning came to him. We shall never know, we can only surmise something of the self-sacrificing devotion of that mother during the years in which Borrow had failed to find remunerative work. Wherever he wandered there had always been a home in the Willow Lane cottage. It is probable that much the greater part of the period of his eight years of penury was spent under her roof. Yet we may be sure that the good mother never once reproached her son. She had just that touch of idealism in her character that made for faith and hope. In any case never more was Borrow to suffer penury, or to be a burden on his mother. Henceforth she was to be his devoted care to her dying day.

FOOTNOTES:

[92]

Keep not standing, fixed and rooted, Briskly venture, briskly roam; Head and hand, where'er thou foot it, And stout heart, are still at home. In each land the sun does visit; We are gay whate'er betide. To give room for wandering is it, That the world was made so wide.

—Carlyle's translation.

[93] Through the will of his stepdaughter, Henrietta MacOubrey.

[94] Although the Bible Society then as now purchased all the sheets of its Bibles from the three authorised sources of production—the King's printers who hold a patent, and the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, which hold licences to print—these exclusive privileges being granted in order that the text of the Bible should be maintained with accuracy.

[95] Let me here acknowledge with gratitude my indebtedness to that fine work The History of the British Foreign Bible Society (1904-10, Murray), by William Canton, which is worthy of the accomplished author of The Invisible Playmate. An earlier history of the Society, by the Rev. George Browne, published in 1859, has necessarily been superseded by Mr. Canton's book.

[96] Canton's History of the Bible Society, vol. i. 195.

[97] Ibid., vol. ii. 127.

[98] In Letters from George Borrow to the Bible Society (Hodder and Stoughton), 1911.

[99] See Memoirs of John Venning, Esq., formerly of St. Petersburgh and late of Norwich. With Numerous Notices from his Manuscripts relative to the Imperial Family of Russia. By Thulia S. Henderson. London: Knight and Son, 1862. Borrow's name is not once mentioned, but there is a slight reference to him on pages 148 and 149.



CHAPTER XVI

ST. PETERSBURG AND JOHN P. HASFELD

Borrow travelled by way of Hamburg and Luebeck to Travemuende, whence he went by sea to St. Petersburg, where he arrived on the twentieth of August 1833. He was back in London in September 1835, and thus it will be seen that he spent two years in Russia. After the hard life he had led, everything was now rose-coloured. 'Petersburg is the finest city in the world,' he wrote to Mr. Jowett; 'neither London nor Paris nor any other European capital which I have visited has sufficient pretensions to enter into comparison with it in respect to beauty and grandeur.' But the striking thing about Borrow in these early years was his capacity for making friends. He had not been a week in St. Petersburg before he had gained the regard of one, William Glen, who, in 1825, had been engaged by the Bible Society to translate the Old Testament into Persian. The clever Scot, of whom Borrow was informed by a competent judge that he was 'a Persian scholar of the first water,' was probably too heretical for the Society which recalled him, much to his chagrin. 'He is a very learned man, but of very simple and unassuming manners,' wrote Borrow to Jowett.[100] His version of the Psalms appeared in 1830, and of Proverbs in 1831. Thus he was going home in despair, but seems to have had good talk on the way with Borrow in St. Petersburg. In 1845 his complete Old Testament in Persian appeared in Edinburgh. This William Glen has been confused with another William Glen, a law student, who taught Carlyle Greek, but they had nothing in common. Borrow and Carlyle could not possibly have had friends in common. Borrow was drawn towards this William Glen by his enthusiasm for the Persian language. But Glen departed out of his life very quickly. Hasfeld, who entered it about the same time, was to stay longer. Hasfeld was a Dane, now thirty-three years of age, who, after a period in the Foreign Office at Copenhagen, had come to St. Petersburg as an interpreter to the Danish Legation, but made quite a good income as a professor of European languages in cadet schools and elsewhere. The English language and literature would seem to have been his favourite topic. His friendship for Borrow was a great factor in Borrow's life in Russia and elsewhere. If Borrow's letters to Hasfeld should ever turn up, they will prove the best that he wrote. Hasfeld's letters to Borrow were preserved by him. Three of them are in my possession. Others were secured by Dr. Knapp, who made far too little use of them. They are all written in Danish on foreign notepaper: flowery, grandiloquent productions we may admit, but if we may judge a man by his correspondents, we have a revelation of a more human Borrow than the correspondence with the friends at Earl Street reveals:

ST. PETERSBURG, 6/18 November 1836.

MY DEAR FRIEND,—Much water has run through the Neva since I last wrote to you, my last letter was dated 5/17th April; the last letter I received from you was dated Madrid, 23rd May, and I now see with regret that it is still unanswered; it is, however, a good thing that I have not written as often to you as I have thought about you, for otherwise you would have received a couple of letters daily, because the sun never sets without you, my lean friend, entering into my imagination. I received the Spanish letter a day or two before I left for Stockholm, and it made the journey with me, for it was in my mind to send you an epistle from Svea's capital, but there were so many petty hindrances that I was nearly forgetting myself, let alone correspondence. I lived in Stockholm as if each day were to be my last, swam in champagne, or rested in girls' embraces. You doubtless blush for me; you may do so, but don't think that that conviction will murder my almost shameless candour, the only virtue which I possess, in a superfluous degree. In Sweden I tried to be lovable, and succeeded, to the astonishment of myself and everybody else. I reaped the reward on the most beautiful lips, which only too often had to complain that the fascinating Dane was faithless like the foam of the sea and the ice of spring. Every wrinkle which seriousness had impressed on my face vanished in joy and smiles; my frozen heart melted and pulsed with the rapid beat of gladness; in short, I was not recognisable. Now I have come back to my old wrinkles, and make sacrifice again on the altar of friendship, and when the incense, this letter, reaches you, then prove to me your pleasure, wherever you may be, and let an echo of friendship's voice resound from Granada's Alhambra or Sahara's deserts. But I know that you, good soul, will write and give me great pleasure by informing me that you are happy and well; when I get a letter from you my heart rejoices, and I feel as if I were happy, and that is what happiness consists of. Therefore, let your soldierlike letters march promptly to their place of arms—paper—and move in close columns to St. Petersburg, where they will find warm winter quarters. I have received a letter from my correspondent in London, Mr. Edward Thomas Allan, No. 11 North Audley St.; he informs me that my manuscript has been promenading about, calling on publishers without having been well received; some of them would not even look at it, because it smelt of Russian leather; others kept it for three or six weeks and sent it back with 'Thanks for the loan.' They probably used it to get rid of the moth out of their old clothes. It first went to Longman and Co.'s, Paternoster Row; Bull of Hollis St.; Saunders and Otley, Conduit St.; John Murray of Albemarle St., who kept it for three weeks; and finally it went to Bentley of New Burlington St., who kept it for SIX weeks and returned it; now it is to pay a visit to a Mr. Colburn, and if he won't have the abandoned child, I will myself care for it. If this finds you in London, which is quite possible, see whether you can do anything for me in this matter. Thank God, I shall not buy bread with the shillings I perhaps may get for a work which has cost me seventy nights, for I cannot work during the day. In The Athenaenum,[101] No. 436, issued on the 3rd March this year, you will find an article which I wrote, and in which you are referred to; in the same paper you will also find an extract from my translation. I hope that article will meet with your approbation. Ivan Semionewitch sends his kind regards to you. I dare not write any more, for then I should make the letter a double one, and it may perhaps go after you to the continent; if it reaches you in England, write AT ONCE to your sincere friend,

J. P. HASFELD.

My address is, Stieglitz and Co., St. Petersburg.

ST. PETERSBURG, 9th/21st July 1842.

DEAR FRIEND,—I do not know how I shall begin, for you have been a long time without any news from me, and the fault is mine, for the last letter was from you; as a matter of fact, I did produce a long letter for you last year in September, but you did not get it, because it was too long to send by post and I had no other opportunity, so that, as I am almost tired of the letter, you shall, nevertheless, get it one day, for perhaps you will find something interesting in it; I cannot do so, for I never like to read over my own letters. Six days ago I commenced my old hermit life; my sisters left on the 3rd/15th July, and are now, with God's help, in Denmark. They left with the French steamer Amsterdam, and had two Russian ladies with them, who are to spend a few months with us and visit the sea watering-places. These ladies are the Misses Koladkin, and have learnt English from me, and became my sisters' friends as soon as they could understand each other. My sisters have also made such good progress in your language that they would be able to arouse your astonishment. They read and understand everything in English, and thank you very much for the pleasure you gave them with your 'Targum'; they know how to appreciate 'King Christian stood by the high mast,' and everything which you have translated of languages with which they are acquainted. They have not had more than sixty real lessons in English. After they had taken ten lessons, I began, to their great despair, to speak English, and only gave them a Danish translation when it was absolutely necessary. The result was that they became so accustomed to English that it scarcely ever occurs to them to speak Danish together; when one cannot get away from me one must learn from me. The brothers and sisters remaining behind are now also to go to school when they get home, for they have recognised how pleasant it is to speak a language which servants and those around one do not understand. During all the winter my dearest thought was how, this summer, I was going to visit my long, good friend, who was previously lean and who is now fat, and how I should let him fatten me a little, so as to be able to withstand better the long winter in Russia; I would then in the autumn, like the bears, go into my winter lair fat and sleek, and of all these romantic thoughts none has materialised, but I have always had the joy of thinking them and of continuing them; I can feel that I smile when such ideas run through my mind. I am convinced that if I had nothing else to do than to employ my mind with pleasant thoughts, I should become fat on thoughts alone. The principal reason why this real pleasure journey had to be postponed, was that my eldest sister, Hanna, became ill about Easter, and it was not until the end of June that she was well enough to travel. I will not speak about the confusion which a sick lady can cause in a bachelor's house, occasionally I almost lost my patience. For the amount of roubles which that illness cost I could very well have travelled to America and back again to St. Petersburg; I have, however, the consolation in my reasonable trouble that the money which the doctor and chemist have received was well spent. The lady got about again after she had caused me and Augusta just as much pain, if not more, than she herself suffered. Perhaps you know how amiable people are when they suffer from liver trouble; I hope you may never get it. I am not anxious to have it either, for you may do what the devil you like for such persons, and even then they are not satisfied. We have had great festivals here by reason of the Emperor's marriage; I did not move a step to see the pageantry; moreover, it is difficult to find anything fresh in it which would afford me enjoyment; I have seen illuminations and fireworks, the only attractive thing there was must have been the King of Prussia; but as I do not know that good man, I have not very great interest in him either; nor, so I am told, did he ask for me, and he went away without troubling himself in the slightest about me; it was a good thing that I did not bother him.

J. P. H.

ST. PETERSBURG, 26th April/8th May 1858.

DEAR FRIEND,—I thank you for your friendly letter of the 12th April, and also for the invitation to visit you. I am thinking of leaving Russia soon, perhaps permanently, for twenty-seven years are enough of this climate. It is as yet undecided when I leave, for it depends on business matters which must be settled, but I hope it will be soon. What I shall do I do not yet know either, but I shall have enough to live on; perhaps I shall settle down in Denmark. It is very probable that I shall come to London in the summer, and then I shall soon be at Yarmouth with you, my old true friend. It was a good thing that you at last wrote, for it would have been too bad to extend your disinclination to write letters even to me. The last period one stays in a country is strange, and I have many persons whom I have to separate from. If you want anything done in Russia, let me know promptly; when I am in movement I will write, so that you may know where I am, and what has become of me. I have been ill nearly all the winter, but now feel daily better, and when I get on the water I shall soon be well. We have already had hot and thundery weather, but it has now become cool again. I have already sold the greater part of my furniture, and am living in furnished apartments which cost me seventy roubles per month; I shall soon be tired of that. I am expecting a letter from Denmark which will settle matters, and then I can get ready and spread my wings to get out into the world, for this is not the world, but Russia. I see you have changed houses, for last year you lived at No. 37. With kindest regards to your dear ones, I am, dear friend, yours sincerely,

JOHN P. HASFELD.[102]

FOOTNOTES:

[100] Darlow's George Borrow's Letters to the Bible Society, page 76. There are twenty letters written by Borrow from Russia to the Bible Society, contained in T. H. Darlow's Letters of George Borrow to the British and Foreign Bible Society, several of which, in the original manuscripts, are in my possession. There are as many also in Knapp's Life of Borrow, and these last are far more interesting, being addressed to his mother and other friends. I have several other letters concerned with Borrow's Bible Society work in Russia, but they are not inspiring. Borrow's correspondence with Hasfeld, of which Knapp gives us glimpses, is more bracing, and the two or three letters from that admirable Dane that are in my collection I am glad to print here.

[101] In the Athenaeum for March 5, 1836, there is a short, interesting letter, dated from St. Petersburg, signed J. P. H. This was obviously written by Hasfeld. 'Here your journal is found in every well furnished library,' he writes, 'and yet not a passing word do you ever bestow upon us,' and then, to the extent of nearly five columns, he discourses upon the present state of Russian literature, and has very much to say about his friend George Borrow:

'Will it be thought ultra-barbarian if I mention that Mr. George Borrow concluded, in the autumn, the publication of the New Testament in the Mandchou language? Remember, if you please, that he was sent here for the express purpose by the British and Foreign Bible Society of London. The translation was made for the Society by Mr. Lipoftsof, a gentleman in the service of the Russian Department of Foreign Affairs, who has spent the greater part of an industrious life in Peking and the East. I can only say that it is a beautiful edition of an Oriental work, that it is printed with great care on a fine imitation of Chinese paper made on purpose. At the outset, Mr. Borrow spent weeks and months in the printing-office to make the compositors acquainted with the intricate Mandchou types, and that, as for the contents, I am assured by well-informed persons, that this translation is remarkable for the correctness and fidelity with which it has been executed.'

Then Hasfeld goes on to describe Borrow's small volume, Targum: 'The exquisite delicacy with which he has caught and rendered the beauties of his well-chosen originals,' he says, 'is a proof of his learning and genius. The work is a pearl in literature, and, like pearls, it derives value from its scarcity, for the whole edition was limited to about a hundred copies.' Then Hasfeld gives two poems from the book, which really justify his eulogy, for the poetic quality of Targum has not had justice done to it by Borrow's later critics.

[102] The name is frequently spelt 'Hasfeldt,' but I have followed the spelling not only of Hasfeld's signature in his letters in my possession, but also of the printed addressed envelope which he was in the habit of forwarding to his friends in his letters.



CHAPTER XVII

THE MANCHU BIBLE—TARGUM—THE TALISMAN

The Bible Society wanted the Bible to be set up in the Manchu language, the official language of the Chinese Court and Government. A Russian scholar named Lipoftsof, who had spent twenty years in China, undertook in 1821 to translate the New Testament into Manchu for L560. Lipoftsof had done his work in 1826, and had sent two manuscript copies to London. In 1832 the Rev. William Swan of the London Missionary Society in passing through St. Petersburg discovered a transcript of a large part of the Old and New Testament in Manchu, made by one Pierot, a French Jesuit, many years before. This transcript was unavailable, but a second was soon afterwards forthcoming for free publication if a qualified Manchu scholar could be found to see it through the Press. Mr. Swan's communication of these facts to the Bible Society in London gave Borrow his opportunity. It was his task to find the printers, buy the paper, and hire the qualified compositors for setting the type. It must be admitted Borrow worked hard for his L200 a year. First he had to ask the diplomatists for permission from the Russian Government, not now so friendly to British Missionary zeal. The Russian Bible Society had been suppressed in 1826. He succeeded here. Then he had to continue his studies in the Manchu language. He had written from Norwich to Mr. Jowett on 9th June 1833, 'I have mastered Manchu,' but on 20th January 1834 we find him writing to the same correspondent: 'I pay about six shillings, English, for each lesson, which I grudge not, for the perfect acquirement of Manchu is one of my most ardent wishes.'[103] Then he found the printers—a German firm, Schultz and Beneze—who probably printed the two little books of Borrow's own for him as a 'make weight.' He purchased paper for his Manchu translation with an ability that would have done credit to a modern newspaper manager. Every detail of these transactions is given in his letters to the Bible Society, and one cannot but be amused at Borrow's explanation to the Reverend Secretary of the little subterfuges by which he proposed to 'best' the godless for the benefit of the godly:

Knowing but too well that it is the general opinion of the people of this country that Englishmen are made of gold, and that it is only necessary to ask the most extravagant price for any article in order to obtain it, I told no person, to whom I applied, who I was, or of what country; and I believe I was supposed to be a German.[104]

Then came the composing or setting up of the type of the book. When Borrow was called to account by his London employers, who were not sure whether he was wasting time, he replied: 'I have been working in the printing-office, as a common compositor, between ten and thirteen hours every day.' In another letter Borrow records further difficulties with the printers after the composition had been effected. Several of the working printers, it appears, 'went away in disgust,' Then he adds:

I was resolved 'to do or die,' and, instead of distressing and perplexing the Committee with complaints, to write nothing until I could write something perfectly satisfactory, as I now can; and to bring about that result I have spared neither myself nor my own money. I have toiled in a close printing-office the whole day, during ninety degrees of heat, for the purpose of setting an example, and have bribed people to work whom nothing but bribes would induce so to do. I am obliged to say all this in self-justification. No member of the Bible Society would ever have heard a syllable respecting what I have undergone but for the question, 'What has Mr. Borrow been about?'[105]

It is not my intention to add materially to the letters of Borrow from Russia and from Spain that have already been published, although many are in my possession. They reveal an aspect of the life of Borrow that has been amply dealt with by other biographers, and it is an aspect that interests me but little. Here, however, is one hitherto unpublished letter that throws much light upon Borrow's work at this time:

To the Rev. Andrew Brandram

ST. PETERSBURG, 18th Oct. 1833.

REVEREND SIR,—Supposing that you will not be displeased to hear how I am proceeding, I have taken the liberty to send a few lines by a friend[106] who is leaving Russia for England. Since my arrival in Petersburg I have been occupied eight hours every day in transcribing a Manchu manuscript of the Old Testament belonging to Baron Schilling, and I am happy to be able to say that I have just completed the last of it, the Rev. Mr. Swan, the Scottish missionary, having before my arrival copied the previous part. Mr. Swan departs to his mission in Siberia in about two months, during most part of which time I shall be engaged in collating our transcripts with the original. It is a great blessing that the Bible Society has now prepared the whole of the Sacred Scriptures in Manchu, which will doubtless, when printed, prove of incalculable benefit to tens of millions who have hitherto been ignorant of the will of God, putting their trust in idols of wood and stone instead of in a crucified Saviour. I am sorry to say that this country in respect to religion is in a state almost as lamentable as the darkest regions of the East, and the blame of this rests entirely upon the Greek hierarchy, who discountenance all attempts to the spiritual improvement of the people, who, poor things, are exceedingly willing to receive instruction, and, notwithstanding the scantiness of their means in general for the most part, eagerly buy the tracts which a few pious English Christians cause to be printed and hawked in the neighbourhood. But no one is better aware, Sir, than yourself that without the Scriptures men can never be brought to a true sense of their fallen and miserable state, and of the proper means to be employed to free themselves from the thraldom of Satan. The last few copies which remained of the New Testament in Russian were purchased and distributed a few days ago, and it is lamentable to be compelled to state that at the present there appears no probability of another edition being permitted in the modern language. It is true that there are near twenty thousand copies of the Sclavonic bible in the shop which is entrusted with the sale of the books of the late Russian Bible Society, but the Sclavonian translation is upwards of a thousand years old, having been made in the eighth century, and differs from the dialect spoken at present in Russia as much as the old Saxon does from the modern English. Therefore it cannot be of the slightest utility to any but the learned, that is, to about ten individuals in one thousand. I hope and trust that the Almighty will see fit to open some door for the illumination of this country, for it is not to be wondered if vice and crime be very prevalent here when the people are ignorant of the commandments of God. Is it to be wondered that the people follow their every day pursuits on the Sabbath when they know not the unlawfulness of so doing? Is it to be wondered that they steal when only in dread of the laws of the country, and are not deterred by the voice of conscience which only exists in a few. This accounts for their profanation of their Sabbath, their proneness to theft, etc. It is only surprising that so much goodness is to be found in their nature as is the case, for they are mild, polite, and obliging, and in most of their faces is an expression of great kindness and benignity. I find that the slight knowledge which I possess of the Russian tongue is of the utmost service to me here, for the common opinion in England that only French and German are spoken by persons of any respectability in Petersburg is a great and injurious error. The nobility, it is true, for the most part speak French when necessity obliges them, that is, when in company with foreigners who are ignorant of Russian, but the affairs of most people who arrive in Petersburg do not lie among the nobility, therefore a knowledge of the language of the country, unless you associate solely with your own countrymen, is indispensable. The servants speak no language but their native tongue, and also nine out of ten of the middle classes of Russians. I might as well address Mr. Lipoftsof, who is to be my coadjutor in the edition of the New Testament (in Manchu) in Hebrew as in either French or German, for though he can read the first a little he cannot speak a word of it or understand when spoken. I will now conclude by wishing you all possible happiness. I have the honour to be, etc.,

GEORGE BORROW.

When the work was done at so great a cost of money,[107] and of energy and enthusiasm on the part of George Borrow, it was found that the books were useless. Most of these New Testaments were afterwards sent out to China, and copies distributed by the missionaries there as opportunities offered. It was found, however, that the Manchus in China were able to read Chinese, preferring it to their own language, which indeed had become almost confined to official use.[108] In the year 1859 editions of St. Matthew and St. Mark were published in Manchu and Chinese side by side, the Manchu text being a reprint of that edited by Borrow, and these books are still in use in Chinese Turkestan. But Borrow had here to suffer one of the many disappointments of his life. If not actually a gypsy he had all a gypsy's love of wandering. No impartial reader of the innumerable letters of this period can possibly claim that there was in Borrow any of the proselytising zeal or evangelical fervour which wins for the names of Henry Martyn and of David Livingstone so much honour and sympathy even among the least zealous. At the best Borrow's zeal for religion was of the order of Dr. Keate, the famous headmaster of Eton—'Blessed are the pure in heart ... if you are not pure in heart, by God, I'll flog you!' Borrow had got his New Testaments printed, and he wanted to distribute them because he wished to see still more of the world, and had no lack of courage to carry out any well defined scheme of the organisation which was employing him. Borrow had thrown out constant hints in his letters home. People had suggested to him, he said, that he was printing Testaments for which he would never find readers. If you wish for readers, they had said to him, 'you must seek them among the natives of Pekin and the fierce hordes of desert Tartary.' And it was this last most courageous thing that Borrow proposed. Let him, he said to Mr. Jowett, fix his headquarters at Kiachta upon the northern frontier of China. The Society should have an agent there:

I am a person of few words, and will therefore state without circumlocution that I am willing to become that agent. I speak Russ, Manchu, and the Tartar or broken Turkish of the Russian steppes, and have also some knowledge of Chinese, which I might easily improve at Kiachta, half of the inhabitants of which town are Chinamen. I am therefore not altogether unqualified for such an adventure.[109]

The Bible Committee considered this and other plans through the intervening months, and it seems clear that at the end they would have sanctioned some form of missionary work for Borrow in the Chinese Empire; but on 1st June 1835 he wrote to say that the Russian Government, solicitous of maintaining good relations with China, would not grant him a passport across Siberia except on the condition that he carried not one single Manchu Bible thither.[110] And so Borrow's dreams were left unfulfilled. He was never to see China or the farther East, although, because he was a dreamer and like his hero, Defoe, a bit of a liar, he often said he had. In September 1835 he was back in England awaiting in his mother's home in Norwich further commissions from his friends of the Bible Society.

* * * * *

Work on the Manchu New Testament did not entirely absorb Borrow's activities in St. Petersburg. He seems to have made a proposition to another organisation, as the following letter indicates. The proposal does not appear to have borne any fruit:

PRAYER BOOK AND HOMILY SOCIETY, NO. 4 EXETER HALL, LONDON, January 16th, 1835.

SIR,—Your letters dated July and November 17, 1834, and addressed to the Rev. F. Cunningham, have been laid before the Committee of the Prayer Book and Homily Society, who have agreed to print the translation of the first three Homilies into the Russian language at St. Petersburg, under the direction of Mr. and Mrs. Biller, so soon as they shall have caused the translation to undergo a thorough revision, and shall have certified the same to this Society. I write by this post to Mrs. Biller on the subject. In respect to the second Homily in Manchu, if we rightly understand your statement, an edition of five hundred copies may be sent forth, the whole expense of which, including paper and printing, will amount to about L12. If we are correct in this the Committee are willing to bear the expense of five hundred copies, by way of trial, their wish being this, viz.: that printed copies should be put into the hands of the most competent persons, who shall be invited to offer such remarks on the translation as shall seem desirable; especially that Dr. Morrison of Canton should be requested to submit copies to the inspection of Manchu scholars as he shall think fit. When the translation has been thoroughly revised the Committee will consider the propriety of printing a larger edition. They think that the plan of submitting copies in letters of gold to the inspection of the highest personages in China should probably be deferred till the translation has been thus revised. We hope that this resolution will be satisfactory to you; but the Committee, not wishing to prescribe a narrower limit than such as is strictly necessary, have directed me to say, that should the expense of an edition of five hundred copies of the Homily in Manchu exceed L12, they will still be willing to meet it, but not beyond the sum of L15.

Should you print this edition be pleased to furnish us with twenty-five copies, and send twenty-five copies at the least to Rev. Dr. Morrison, at Canton, if you have the means of doing so; if not, we should wish to receive fifty copies, that we may send twenty-five to Canton. In this case you will be at liberty to draw a bill upon us for the money, within the limits specified above, in such manner as is most convenient. Possibly Mr. and Mrs. Biller may be able to assist you in this matter. Believe me, dear Sir, yours most sincerely,

C. R. PRITCHETT.

Mr. G. Borrow.

I am not aware whether I am addressing a clergyman or a layman, and therefore shall direct as above. Will you be so kind as to send the MS. of the Russian Homilies to Mrs. Biller?

During Borrow's last month or two in St. Petersburg he printed two thin octavo volumes of translations—some of them verses which, undeterred by the disheartening reception of earlier efforts, he had continued to make from each language in succession that he had the happiness to acquire, although most of the poems are from his old portfolios. These little books were named Targum and The Talisman. Dr. Knapp calls the latter an appendix to the former. They are absolutely separate volumes of verse, and I reproduce their title-pages from the only copies that Borrow seems to have reserved for himself out of the hundred printed of each. The publishers, it will be seen, are the German firm that printed the Manchu New Testament, Schultz and Beneze. Borrow's preface to Targum is dated 'St. Petersburg, June 1, 1835.' Here in Targum we find the trial poem which in competition with a rival candidate had won him the privilege of going to Russia for the Bible Society—The Mountain Chase. Here also among new verses are some from the Arabic, the Persian, and the Turkish. If it be true, as his friend Hasfeld said, that here was a poet who was able to render another without robbing the garland of a single leaf—that would but prove that the poetry which Borrow rendered was not of the first order. Nor, taking another standard—the capacity to render the ballad with a force that captures 'the common people,'—can we agree with William Bodham Donne, who was delighted with Targum and said that 'the language and rhythm are vastly superior to Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome.' In The Talisman we have four little poems from the Russian of Pushkin followed by another poem, The Mermaid, by the same author. Three other poems in Russian and Polish complete the booklet. Borrow left behind him in St. Petersburg with his friend, Hasfeld, a presentation copy for Pushkin, who, when he received it, expressed regret that he had not met his translator while Borrow was in St. Petersburg.



FOOTNOTES:

[103] Darlow, Letters to the Bible Society, p. 32.

[104] Ibid. p. 47.

[105] Darlow, Letters to the Bible Society, pp. 60, 61.

[106] Mr. Glen.

[107] The Manchu version—i.e. the transcript of Pierot's MS. of the Old Testament and 1000 copies of Lipoftsof's translation of the New—cost the Society in all L2600. Canton: History of the Bible Society, vol. ii. p. 239.

[108] Darlow; Letters to the Bible Society, p. 96.

[109] Darlow: Letters to the Bible Society, p. 65.

[110] Ibid., p. 81.



CHAPTER XVIII

THREE VISITS TO SPAIN

From his journey to Russia Borrow had acquired valuable experience, but nothing in the way of fame, although his mother had been able to record in a letter to St. Petersburg that she had heard at a Bible Society gathering in Norwich his name 'sounded through the hall' by Mr. Joseph John Gurney and Mr. Cunningham, to her great delight. 'All this is very pleasing to me,' she said, 'God bless you!' Even more pleasing to Borrow must have been a letter from Mary Clarke, his future wife, who was able to tell him that she heard Francis Cunningham refer to him as 'one of the most extraordinary and interesting individuals of the present day.' But these tributes were not all-satisfying to an ambitious man, and this Borrow undoubtedly was. His Russian journey was followed by five weeks of idleness in Norwich varied by the one excitement of attending a Bible meeting at Oulton with the Reverend Francis Cunningham in the chair, when 'Mr. George Borrow from Russia'[111] made one of the usual conventional missionary speeches, Mary Clarke's brother, Breame Skepper, being also among the orators. Borrow begged for more work from the Society. He urged the desirability of carrying out its own idea of an investigation in Portugal and perhaps also in Spain, and hinted that he could write a small volume concerning what he saw and heard which might cover the expense of the expedition.[112] So much persistency conquered. Borrow sailed from London on 6th November 1835, and reached Lisbon on 12th November, this his first official visit to the Peninsula lasting exactly eleven months. The next four years and six months were to be spent mainly in Spain.[113] Broadly the time divides itself in the following fashion:

1st Tour (via Lisbon), Nov. 1835 to Oct. 1836.

Lisbon. Mafia. Evora. Badajoz. Madrid.

2nd Tour (via Cadiz), Nov. 1836 to Sept. 1838.

Cadiz. Lisbon. Seville. Madrid. Salamanca. Coruna. Oviedo. Toledo.

3rd Tour (via Cadiz), Dec. 1838 to March 1840.

Cadiz. Seville. Madrid. Gibraltar. Tangier.

What a world of adventure do the mere names of these places call up. Borrow entered the Peninsula at an exciting period of its history. Traces of the Great War in which Napoleon's legions faced those of Wellington still abounded. Here and there a bridge had disappeared, and some of Borrow's strange experiences on ferry-boats were indirectly due to the results of Napoleon's ambition.[114] Everywhere there was still war in the land. Portugal indeed had just passed through a revolution. The partisans of the infant Queen Maria II. had been fighting with her uncle Dom Miguel for eight years, and it was only a few short months before Borrow landed at Lisbon that Maria had become undisputed queen. Spain, to which Borrow speedily betook himself, was even in a worse state. She was in the throes of a six years' war. Queen Isabel II., a child of three, reigned over a chaotic country with her mother Dona Christina as regent; her uncle Don Carlos was a formidable claimant to the throne and had the support of the absolutist and clerical parties. Borrow's political sympathies were always in the direction of absolutism; but in religion, although a staunch Church of England man, he was certainly an anti-clerical one in Roman Catholic Spain. In any case he steered judiciously enough between contending factions, describing the fanatics of either side with vigour and sometimes with humour. Mr. Brandram's injunction to Borrow 'to be on his guard against becoming too much committed to one particular party' seems to have been unnecessary.

Borrow's three expeditions to Spain have more to be said for them than had his journey to St. Petersburg. The work of the Bible Society was and is at its highest point of human service when distributing either the Old or the New Testament in Christian countries, Spain, England, or another. Few there be to-day in any country who, in the interests of civilisation, would deny to the Bible a wider distribution. In a remote village of Spain a Bible Society's colporteur, carrying a coloured banner, sold me a copy of Cipriano de Valera's New Testament for a peseta. The villages of Spain that Borrow visited could even at that time compare favourably morally and educationally, with the villages of his own county of Norfolk at the same period. The morals of the agricultural labourers of the English fen country eighty years ago were a scandal, and the peasantry read nothing; more than half of them could not read. They had not, moreover, the humanising passion for song and dance that Andalusia knew. But this is not to deny that the Bible Society under Borrow's instrumentality did a good work in Spain, nor that they did it on the whole in a broad and generous way. Borrow admits that there was a section of the Roman Catholic clergy 'favourably disposed towards the circulation of the Gospel,'[115] and the Society actually fixed upon a Roman Catholic version of the Spanish Bible, that by Scio de San Miguel,[116] although this version Borrow considered a bad translation. Much has been said about the aim of the Bible Society to provide the Bible without notes or comment—in its way a most meritorious aim, although then as now opposed to the instinct of a large number of the priests of the Roman Church. It is true that their attitude does not in any way possess the sanction of the ecclesiastical authorities. It may be urged, indeed, that the interpretation of the Bible by a priest, usually of mature judgment, and frequently of a higher education than the people with whom he is associated, is at least as trustworthy as its interpretation at the hands of very partially educated young women and exceedingly inadequately equipped young men who to-day provide interpretation and comment in so many of the Sunday Schools of Protestant countries.[117]

Behold George Borrow, then, first in Portugal and a little later in Spain, upon his great mission—avowedly at first a tentative mission—rather to see what were the prospects for Bible distribution than to distribute Bibles. But Borrow's zeal knew no such limitations. Before very long he had a shop in one of the principal streets of Madrid—the Calle del Principe—much more in the heart of things than the very prosperous Bible Society of our day ventures upon.[118] Meanwhile he is at present in Portugal not very certain of his movements, and he writes to his old friend Dr. Bowring the following letter with a request with which Bowring complied, although in the coldest manner:

To Dr. John Bowring.

EVORA IN THE ALEMTEJO, 27 Decr. 1835.

DEAR SIR,—Pray excuse me for troubling you with these lines. I write to you, as usual, for assistance in my projects, convinced that you will withhold none which it may be in your power to afford, more especially when by so doing you will perhaps be promoting the happiness of our fellow creatures. I returned from dear, glorious Russia about three months since, after having edited there the Manchu New Testament in eight volumes. I am now in Portugal, for the Society still do me the honour of employing me. For the last six weeks I have been wandering amongst the wilds of the Alemtejo and have introduced myself to its rustics, banditti, etc., and become very popular amongst them, but as it is much more easy to introduce oneself to the cottage than the hall (though I am not entirely unknown in the latter), I want you to give or procure me letters to the most liberal and influential minds of Portugal. I likewise want a letter from the Foreign Office to Lord De Walden, in a word, I want to make what interest I can towards obtaining the admission of the Gospel of Jesus into the public schools of Portugal which are about to be established. I beg leave to state that this is my plan, and not other persons', as I was merely sent over to Portugal to observe the disposition of the people, therefore I do not wish to be named as an Agent of the B.S., but as a person who has plans for the mental improvement of the Portuguese; should I receive these letters within the space of six weeks it will be time enough, for before setting up my machine in Portugal I wish to lay the foundation of something similar in Spain. When you send the Portuguese letters direct thus:

Mr. George Borrow, to the care of Mr. Wilby, Rua Dos Restauradores, Lisbon.

I start for Spain to-morrow, and I want letters something similar (there is impudence for you) for Madrid, which I should like to have as soon as possible. I do not much care at present for an introduction to the Ambassador at Madrid, as I shall not commence operations seriously in Spain until I have disposed of Portugal. I will not apologise for writing to you in this manner, for you know me, but I will tell you one thing, which is that the letter which you procured for me, on my going to St. Petersburg, from Lord Palmerston, assisted me wonderfully. I called twice at your domicile on my return; the first time you were in Scotland, the second in France, and I assure you I cried with vexation. Remember me to Mrs. Bowring and God bless you.

G. BORROW.

P.S.—I am told that Mendizabal is liberal, and has been in England; perhaps he would assist me.

During this eleven months' stay in the Peninsula Borrow made his way to Madrid, and here he interviewed the British Minister, Sir George Villiers, afterwards fourth Earl of Clarendon, and had received a quite remarkable encouragement from him for the publication and distribution of the Bible. He also interviewed the Spanish Prime Minister, Mendizabal, 'whom it is as difficult to get nigh as it is to approach the North Pole,' and he has given us a picturesque account of the interview in The Bible in Spain. It was agreed that 5000 copies of the Spanish Testament were to be reprinted from Scio's text at the expense of the Bible Society, and all these Borrow was to handle as he thought fit. Then Borrow made his way to Granada, where, under date 30th August 1836, his autograph may be read in the visitors' book of the Alhambra:

George Borrow Norvicensis.

Here he studied his friends the gypsies, now and probably then, as we may assume from his Zincali, the sordid scum on the hillside of that great city, but now more assuredly than then unutterably demoralised by the numerous but curious tourists who visit this rabble under police protection, the very policeman or gendarme not despising a peseta for his protective services. But Borrow's hobbies included the Romanies of every land, and a year later he produced and published a gypsy version of the Gospel of St. Luke.[119] In October 1836 Borrow was back in England. He found that the Bible Society approved of him. In November of the same year he left London for Cadiz on his second visit to Spain. The journey is described in The Bible in Spain;[120] but here, from my Borrow Papers, is a kind letter that Mr. Brandram wrote to Borrow's mother on the occasion:



NO. 10 EAST STREET, Jany. 11, 1837.

MY DEAR MADAM,—I have the joyful news to send you that your son has again safely arrived at Madrid. His journey we were aware was exceedingly perilous, more perilous than we should have allowed him to take had we sooner known the extent of the danger. He begs me to write, intending to write to you himself without delay. He has suffered from the intense cold, but nothing beyond inconvenience. Accept my congratulations, and my best wishes that your dear son may be preserved to be your comfort in declining years—and may the God of all consolation himself deign to comfort your heart by the truths of that holy volume your son is endeavouring, in connection with our Society, to spread abroad.—Believe me, dear Madam, yours faithfully,

A. BRANDRAM. Mrs. Borrow, Norwich.

A brilliant letter from Seville followed soon after, and then he went on to Madrid, not without many adventures. 'The cold nearly killed me,' he said. 'I swallowed nearly two bottles of brandy; it affected me no more than warm water.' This to kindly Mr. Brandram, who clearly had no teetotaller proclivities, for the letter, as he said, 'filled his heart with joy and gladness.' Meanwhile those five thousand copies of the New Testament were a-printing, Borrow superintending the work with the assistance of a new friend, Dr. Usoz. 'As soon as the book is printed and issued,' he tells Mr. Brandram, 'I will ride forth from Madrid into the wildest parts of Spain, ...' and so, after some correspondence with the Society which is quite entertaining, he did. The reader of The Bible in Spain will note some seventy separate towns and villages that Borrow visited, not without countless remarkable adventures on the way. 'I felt some desire,' he says in The Romany Rye, 'to meet with one of those adventures which upon the roads of England are generally as plentiful as blackberries in autumn.' Assuredly in this tour of Spanish villages Borrow met with no lack of adventures. The committee of the Bible Society authorised this tour in March 1837, and in May Borrow started off on horseback attended by his faithful servant, Antonio. This tour was to last five months, and 'if I am spared,' he writes to his friend Hasfeld, 'and have not fallen a prey to sickness, Carlists, banditti, or wild beasts, I shall return to Madrid.' He hopes a little later, he tells Hasfeld, to be sent to China. We have then a glimpse of his servant, the excellent Antonio, which supplements that contained in The Bible of Spain. 'He is inordinately given to drink, and is of so quarrelsome a disposition that he is almost constantly involved in some broil.'[121] Not all his weird experiences were conveyed in his letters to the Bible Society's secretary. Some of these letters, however—the more highly coloured ones—were used in The Bible in Spain, word for word, and wonderful reading they must have made for the secretary, who indeed asked for more, although, with a view to keeping Borrow humble—an impossible task—Mr. Brandram takes occasion to say 'Mr. Graydon's letters, as well as yours, are deeply interesting,' Graydon being a hated rival, as we shall see. The question of L.S.D. was also not forgotten by the assiduous secretary. 'I know you are no accountant,' he writes, 'but do not forget there are some who are,' and a financial document was forwarded to Borrow about this time which we reproduce in facsimile.



But now Borrow was happy, for next to the adventures of five glorious months in the villages between Madrid and Coruna nothing could be more to the taste of Borrow than a good wholesome quarrel. He was imprisoned by order of the Spanish Government and released on the intervention of the British Embassy.[122] He tells the story so graphically in The Bible in Spain that it is superfluous to repeat it; but here he does not tell of the great quarrel with regard to Lieutenant Graydon that led him to attack that worthy zealot in a letter to the Bible Society. This attack did indeed cause the Society to recall Graydon, whose zealous proclamation of anti-Romanism must however have been more to the taste of some of its subscribers than Borrow's trimming methods. Moreover, Graydon worked for love of the cause and required no salary, which must always have been in his favour. Borrow was ten days in a Madrid prison, and there, as ever, he had extraordinary adventures if we may believe his own narrative, but they are much too good to be torn from their context. Suffice to say here that in the actual correspondence we find breezy controversy between Borrow and the Society. Borrow thought that the secretary had called the accuracy of his statements in question as to this or that particular in his conduct. Ever a fighter, he appealed to the British Embassy for confirmation of his word, and finally Mr. Brandram suggested he should come back to England for a time and talk matters over with the members of the committee. In the beginning of September 1838 Borrow was again in England, when he issued a lengthy and eloquent defence of his conduct and a report on 'Past and Future Operations in Spain.'[123] In December of the same year Borrow was again on his way to Cadiz upon his third and last visit to Spain.

Borrow reached Cadiz on this his last visit on 31st December 1838, and went straight to Seville, where he arrived on 2nd January 1839. Here he took a beautiful little house, 'a paradise in its way,' in the Plazuela de la Pila Seca, and furnished it—clearly at the expense of his friend Mrs. Clarke of Oulton, who must have sent him a cheque for the purpose. He had been corresponding regularly with Mrs. Clarke, who had told him of her difficulties with lawyers and relatives, and Borrow had advised her to cut the Gordian knot and come to Spain. But Mrs. Clarke and her daughter, Henrietta, did not arrive from England until June.

In the intervening months Borrow had been working more in his own interests than in those of the patient Bible Society, for he started to gather material for his Gypsies of Spain, and this book was for the most part actually written in Seville. It was at this period that he had the many interviews with Colonel Elers Napier that we quote at length in our next chapter.

A little later he is telling Mr. Brandram of his adventure with the blind girl of Manzanares who could talk in the Latin tongue, which she had been taught by a Jesuit priest, an episode which he retold in The Bible in Spain. 'When shall we hear,' he asks, 'of an English rector instructing a beggar girl in the language of Cicero?' To which Mr. Brandram, who was rector of Beckenham, replied 'Cui bono?' The letters of this period are the best that he ever wrote, and are incorporated more exactly than the earlier ones in The Bible in Spain.



Four letters to his mother within the period of his second and third Spanish visits may well be presented together here from my Borrow Papers:

To Mrs. Ann Borrow

MADRID, July 27, 1838.

MY DEAR MOTHER,—I am in perfect health though just returned from a long expedition in which I have been terribly burnt by the sun. In about ten days I sold nearly a thousand Testaments among the labourers of the plains and mountains of Castille and La Mancha. Everybody in Madrid is wondering and saying such a thing is a miracle, as I have not entered a town, and the country people are very poor and have never seen or heard of the Testament before. But I confess to you that I dislike my situation and begin to think that I have been deceived; the B.S. have had another person on the sea-coast who has nearly ruined their cause in Spain by circulating seditious handbills and tracts. The consequence has been that many of my depots have been seized in which I kept my Bibles in various parts of the country, for the government think that he is employed by me; I told the B.S. all along what would be the consequence of employing this man, but they took huff and would scarce believe me, and now all my words are come true; I do not blame the government in the slightest degree for what they have done in many points, they have shown themselves to be my good friends, but they have been driven to the step by the insane conduct of the person alluded to. I told them frankly in my last letter that I would leave their service if they encouraged him; for I will not be put in prison again on his account, and lose another servant by the gaol fever, and then obtain neither thanks nor reward. I am going out of town again in a day or two, but I shall now write very frequently, therefore be not alarmed for I will run into no danger. Burn this letter and speak to no one about it, nor any others that I may send. God bless you, my dear mother.

G. B.

To Mrs. Ann Borrow, Willow Lane, St. Giles, Norwich (Inglaterra)

MADRID, August 5, 1838.

MY DEAR MOTHER,—I merely write this to inform you that I am back to Madrid from my expedition. I have been very successful and have sold a great many Testaments. Indeed all the villages and towns within thirty miles have been supplied. In Madrid itself I can do nothing as I am closely watched by order of the government and not permitted to sell, so that all I do is by riding out to places where they cannot follow me. I do not blame them, for they have much to complain of, though nothing of me, but if the Society will countenance such men as they have lately done in the South of Spain they must expect to reap the consequences. It is very probable that I may come to England in a little time, and then you will see me; but do not talk any more about yourself being 'no more seen,' for it only serves to dishearten me, and God knows I have enough to make me melancholy already. I am in a great hurry and cannot write any more at present.—I remain, dear mother, yours affectionately,

GEORGE BORROW.

To Mrs. Ann Borrow

(No date.)

MY DEAR MAMA,—As I am afraid that you may not have received my last letter in consequence of several couriers having been stopped, I write to inform you that I am quite well.

I have been in some difficulties. I was selling so many Testaments that the priests became alarmed, and prevailed on the government to put a stop to my selling any more; they were likewise talking of prosecuting me as a witch, but they have thought better of it. I hear it is very cold in England, pray take care of yourself, I shall send you more in a few weeks.—God bless you, my dear mama,

G. B.

It was in the middle of his third and last visit to Spain that Borrow wrote this next letter to his mother which gives the first suggestion of the romantic and happy termination of his final visit to the Peninsula:

To Mrs. Ann Borrow

SEVILLE, SPAIN, April 27, 1839.

MY DEAR MOTHER,—I should have written to you before I left Madrid, but I had a long and dangerous journey to make, and I wished to get it over before saying anything to you. I am now safely arrived, by the blessing of God, in Seville, which, in my opinion, is the most delightful town in the world. If it were not a strange place with a strange language I know you would like to live in it, but it is rather too late in the day for you to learn Spanish and accommodate yourself to Spanish ways. Before I left Madrid I accomplished a great deal, having sold upwards of one thousand Testaments and nearly five hundred Bibles, so that at present very few remain; indeed, not a single Bible, and I was obliged to send away hundreds of people who wanted to purchase, but whom I could not supply. All this has been done without the slightest noise or disturbance or anything that could give cause of displeasure to the government, so that I am now on very good terms with the authorities, though they are perfectly aware of what I am about. Should the Society think proper to be guided by the experience which I have acquired, and my knowledge of the country and the people, they might if they choosed sell at least twelve thousand Bibles and Testaments yearly in Spain, but let them adopt or let any other people adopt any other principle than that on which I act and everything will miscarry. All the difficulties, as I told my friends the time I was in England, which I have had to encounter were owing to the faults and imprudencies of other people, and, I may say, still are owing. Two Methodist schoolmasters have lately settled at Cadiz, and some little time ago took it into their heads to speak and preach, as I am informed, against the Virgin Mary; information was instantly sent to Madrid, and the blame, or part of it, was as usual laid to me; however, I found means to clear myself, for I have powerful friends in Madrid, who are well acquainted with my views, and who interested themselves for me, otherwise I should have been sent out of the country, as I believe the two others have been or will be. I have said nothing on this point in my letters home, as people would perhaps say that I was lukewarm, whereas, on the contrary, I think of nothing but the means best adapted to promote the cause; but I am not one of those disposed to run a ship on a rock when only a little skill is necessary to keep her in the open sea.