of his linguistic attainments, as an assistant in the British Museum Library, and was reduced to writing reactionary political leaders for a Norwich paper; he was, in fact, waiting, like Mr. Micawber, for something to turn up, or, in his own graphic phrase, “digging holes in the sand and filling them up again.”

His deliverance was effected in rather a singular manner.  About 1833 he became acquainted with the Skeppers of Oulton Hall, in that pleasant stretch of country which borders on the river Waveney.  By Mrs. Clarke (afterwards Mrs. Borrow), the widowed sister of the owner of the Hall, he was introduced to the Rev. Francis Cunningham, rector of Pakefield, a fine type of the Evangelical clergyman of a past generation, who had married the sister of Joseph John Gurney.  It seemed to this good man that Borrow’s gift of tongues might well be employed in the service of the Bible Society, of which the famous Norfolk Quaker was an influential member.  The hour of the former would-be martyr to infidelity had now come; he was taken into the regular service of the society upon an average salary of about £250, in addition to expenses, and was employed as editor, translator, and colporteur of Bibles in strange lands.  The labours of the next eight years of his life were as fruitful and honourable as those of the preceding eight had been desultory and obscure.  His first commission was to go to St. Petersburg and there edit and superintend the setting up and printing of Lipóftsof’s version of the New Testament into Manchu.  Borrow acquired the language and performed his task with an almost incredible expedition.  He also learned Russian, and in the summer of 1835 proposed to the society that he should himself distribute the work which he had seen through the press upon the confines of the Far East.  This scheme was scotched by the refusal of the Russian Government to grant him the necessary authorization and passports.  But Borrow’s energies were transferred to a project which scarcely, if at all, less deserves the epithet Quixotic.  It was to disseminate a Castilian translation of the Vulgate (made by Father Scio at Valencia between 1790 and 1793) in Spain and Portugal.  To disperse Bibles in Papua or in Park-lane were, it might be argued, an enterprise fully as hopeful as to scatter them in Galicia or La Mancha; but this is neither here nor there, and the stimulus that was lacking in other directions was abundantly supplied to the society and their emissary by the fact that, according to the regla quinta of the old Index, all Spanish versions of the Bible or of any part of it were absolutely forbidden, and that as a necessary consequence the Bible was a book as unfamiliar in Spain as it was held to be dangerous and revolutionary.  Spain was to Borrow what the Harley Ministry was to Swift.  It seemed to develop in him an almost superhuman activity and power; and, fond of cant as Borrow’s employers too often were, it is infinitely to their credit that they not only tolerated but even applauded the unconventional epistles which he wrote to them of his exploits during his three long journeys in Spain, which with two brief intervals occupied him from November, 1835, down to April, 1840.  These letters with the addition of a few chapters and a number of insignificant changes made up “The Bible in Spain,” which was published by John Murray on December 10, 1812, when “El Gitano,” as the enthusiastic Ford dubbed the author, literally woke up to find himself famous.  His experience for a season was that of “the man Sterne”; he dined with peers, Ambassadors, and Bishops, and, like Major Pendennis, was particularly complacent with Bishops.  We might here for a moment compare his position to that of Johnson in 1763.  He had gone down into the arena and fought his wild beasts, and had come up triumphant, as Johnson had done after the Dictionary.  He still had difficulties to meet and debts to face, for he had gradually become estranged from “the sub-committee,” and the Bible