A STRANGE MISSIONARY.* • TunE has been, we think, no
biography . since Froudes Thomas Carlyle which 'will arouse so much discussion and- Controversy as this Life of George Borrow, unless, indeed, that George Borrow be . so utterly forgotten. that men have ceased to take interest in him at all. The biography-is the fruit of very wide research.; all documents, letters; and other materials connected in any . way with George :Borrow -have. been laboriously collected by Dr. Knapp. • Fronde had,. indeed, the great advantage:of a .personal intimacy with his subject, which Dr. Knapp has not possessed ; none the less, the portrait here presented is as vivid in its colouring, as trenchant its out- lines, it brings. before. us all the • salient .features- of the physiognomy as forcibly as does Mr. Froude's famous picture. Other biographies .may, and probably will, be written later ; softening touches may be put in here:and-there, blank spots may be partially filled up ; but this will always. remain the' first, the truest, and most authentic portrait of .the writer of The Bible in $pain, of Lavengro, Romany 'Rye, and Wild Wales. .
We have already mentioned one of the great writers of the day. whom. George Borrow resembles in. one side of his character. He' is, as-. it . were, a, cross between. Carlyle and Captain Richard Burton, with- some elements of likeness to the Brante family.. Like Carlyle, Borrow was of yeoman origin ; - like Carlyle, he . was all his. life " gey ill to live with" ; like. him and -like Charlotte Bronte, he had that wondrous gift of stylesthe touch of genius alighting on whom it will, and associated, as in her case, with. a Celtic ancestry ; then, like Sir Richard Burton, he had the gift of languages, and, as in his case, the wandering life of soldier parents aroused the slumbering pristine instinct for a nomad life of travel and adventure. Borrow had. not the passion for accuracy of fact. and truth which Carlyle had, and yet in his furthest aberrations from truth he never wholly invents ; he tells of the shadiest scenes, he is found in the roughest com- pany, but he is never unclean like Burton, there is no.page of his.that a woman's hand need ever destroy on this account. Yet this half-educated wanderer had the subtlest perception, in hiF own work, of literary excellence ; at the risk of spoiling the sale of a book by his delay, he would never let. a page proceed to press without giving• the utmost polish of which he was capable. And thus it is that Borrow takes a place among the masters of English prose. In the autumn of 1887 the Fort- nightly Review published a series of "Fine Passagei in Verse and -Prose, selected .by Living Men of Letters." - Unless memory mislead us, More:than• one of these passages was from the writings of George Borrow. .
... If we turn froni the writer to . the _man, a deception awaits us ; alas !:only too familiar in the lives of those afflicted with the disease of genius, so often_ is' it accompanied with. some morbid taint of character, or lanientable infirMity ofs-will- It was the former in Borrow's case. . His restless ;love of travel and adventure prevented him from enjoying quiet. "HO could, and did, work hard on occasion, as when he was at St: Petersburg, transcribing and printing the Manchu New Tista- ment ; but any sustained literary composition tried him severely ; he always was, or fancied himself to be, unwell at such times. He had a strange confusion as to the limits of truth and fact; in names and dates and places he is almost habitually inaccurate ; he seems really to have believedhis own assertions, even when farthest from literal fact. As George IV. was convinced that he had been at Waterloo, and appealed to the Duke of Wellington for corrobOration, and received the invariable reply : "I have often heard your -Majesty say so" ; thus Borrow would declare that he had been in Kiatcha, or in Constantinople, or had met the gipsies in Moultan, and expect his hearers to believe him. He was vain of his fine person, of his small white hands, of his prowess as a boxer, of his skill in horsemanship and horse-dealing, of his linguistic acquirements,. of his literary skill ; and when this vanity was wounded he never forgot the slight or insult. He was as unconventional as Richard Burton himself, and was most at home in company from which his equals in society would have shrunk. As a youth and in early manhood he had a period' of aggressive infidelity ; in after life the chief article of his religious creed • • Life, writings, and Correspondence of George Borrow, deriredfrona
and (Oar Authentic Sources. By William Ph.D., LL.D. With portrait and Illustrations. 2 volt London : John Murray. [Ma •
was a fanatical horror of Popery.. It is one of .thaleas;blanks IUDs. Knapp's book that it does. riot explain the change or conversion from the blatant irreligion of 18.44 to the religious tone of the letters of .1832, and the wish for ordination; This was the man whom the British and Foreign Bible Society • chose as their agent" for printing. and distribnring the Bible among the proudest and most punctilious of freoples, and the most devoted Roman Catholics in .Europe The mission proved 'at once a failure and a vast success. As to spreading ' or helping the cause of the Reformation in Spain, it was, almost a failure ; but 'the publication of:The 131W in Spain.callaatten- tionto the work of the Bible Society as nothing else could have done. For years afterwards, if at a meeting .:.the audience were bored and listless, the deputation had but to breathe the name of George Borrow to arouse instant attention. As might have been anticipated, the mission ended-in alienation. The Society were certainly in the . wrong in not acquaintins Borrow with the work of Lieutenant Graydon in other parts of Spain ; but Borrow gave them abundant provocation. So it was, always in his relations with his publishers and with his critics. Mr. John Murray's forbearance and kindness are astonishing. It was Borrow's delays, quite as much as the confuSion of fact and fiction which irritated his readers, that caused the comparative temporary failure of Lavengro. •Ford, the author of the handbook, treated him with the utmost generosity, yet Borrow would not • make the effort to write a fitting review of Ford's splendid work ; thongh he was capable of inditing anonymously such a review of one of his own works as to sell off the edition. One of the revelations of Dr. Knapp is the weakness of .Borrow.in Spanish ; he had no knowledge .vhatever of the masterpieces of the original literatiire, and, when he needed them, used tauslations. • It was inevitable that traditions ., and myths should accumulate around such a man. His own embellishments: of fact invited these. He could play so many parts, he could do So many things, that men credited him with everything. Borrow was never a war correspondent, though he possessed almost every qualification for being an excellent one. It is unfair to judge of his philology. by the standard of to-day. His gipsy- lore and researches have been superseded, his versions are mere paraphrases, distant echoes rather than translations.. In his family relations he was a most devoted son and loving brother, and when at last he married he was a good husband, and a kind step-father, yet he can never . have been easy to live _with. Where his bigotry, or jealousy, or vindictiveness are' not crossed he could be charming in writing and in intercourse ; but he is for ever:posing..
The, present work . bears - some, . marks of - superabundant material; 'it 'was' Originally, written on a larger scale, and sufferisomeWhat from the „curtailment. The unused ,matter is to be employed in a new edition of Lavengro; which will' lie eagerly ,lOoked- for Besides its value as a biogiaphy. of Borrow, Dr. Knapp has here: a masterly study of the morbid temperament which' so often accompanies literary excellence (or, we - might rather say, which' is; the characieristie Orthe literary Bohemian), established by the fullest proof, and with the closest possible adherence to actual fact.
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