FRIENDS OF BORROW'S EARLY YEARS
[Transcriber's Note: This is the caption for the page of four portraits, each portrait's caption is shown above.]
Phillips explains that he has given up publishing, except 'under the rose,' had only The Monthly Magazine, here[56] called The Magazine, but contemplated yet another monthly, The Universal Review, here called The Oxford. He gave Borrow much the same sound advice that a publisher would have given him to-day—that poetry is not a marketable commodity, and that if you want to succeed in prose you must, as a rule, write trash—the most acceptable trash of that day being The Dairyman's Daughter,[57] which has sold in hundreds of thousands, and is still much prized by the Evangelical folk who buy the publications of the Religious Tract Society. Phillips, moreover, asked him to dine to meet his wife, his son, and his son's wife,[58] and we know what an amusing account of that dinner Borrow gives in Lavengro. Moreover, he set Borrow upon his first piece of hack-work, the Celebrated Trials, and gave him something to do upon The Universal Review and also upon The Monthly. The Universal lasted only for six numbers, dying in January 1825. In that year appeared the six volumes of the Celebrated Trials, of which we have something to say in our next chapter. Borrow found Phillips most exacting, always suggesting the names of new criminals, and leaving it to the much sweated author to find the books from which to extract the necessary material:
In the compilation of my Lives and Trials I was exposed to incredible mortification, and ceaseless trouble, from this same rage for interference.... This was not all; when about a moiety of the first volume had been printed, he materially altered the plan of the work; it was no longer to be a collection of mere Newgate lives and trials, but of lives and trials of criminals in general, foreign as well as domestic.... 'Where is Brandt and Struensee?' cried the publisher. 'I am sure I don't know,' I replied; whereupon the publisher falls to squealing like one of Joey's rats. 'Find me up Brandt and Struensee by next morning, or—' 'Have you found Brandt and Struensee?' cried the publisher, on my appearing before him next morning. 'No,' I reply, 'I can hear nothing about them'; whereupon the publisher falls to bellowing like Joey's bull. By dint of incredible diligence, I at length discover the dingy volume containing the lives and trials of the celebrated two who had brooded treason dangerous to the state of Denmark. I purchase the dingy volume, and bring it in triumph to the publisher, the perspiration running down my brow. The publisher takes the dingy volume in his hand, he examines it attentively, then puts it down; his countenance is calm for a moment, almost benign. Another moment and there is a gleam in the publisher's sinister eye; he snatches up the paper containing the names of the worthies which I have intended shall figure in the forthcoming volumes—he glances rapidly over it, and his countenance once more assumes a terrific expression. 'How is this?' he exclaims; 'I can scarcely believe my eyes—the most important life and trial omitted to be found in the whole criminal record—what gross, what utter negligence! Where's the life of Farmer Patch? where's the trial of Yeoman Patch?'
'What a life! what a dog's life!' I would frequently exclaim, after escaping from the presence of the publisher.[59]
Then came the final catastrophe. Borrow could not translate Phillips's great masterpiece, Twelve Essays on the Proximate Causes, into German with any real effectiveness although the testimonial of the enthusiastic Taylor had led Phillips to assume that he could. Borrow, as we shall see, knew many languages, and knew them well colloquially, but he was not a grammarian, and he could not write accurately in any one of his numerous tongues. His wonderful memory gave him the words, but not always any thoroughness of construction. He could make a good translation of a poem by Schiller, because he brought his own poetic fancy to the venture, but he had no interest in Phillips's philosophy, and so he doubtless made a very bad translation, as German friends were soon able to assure Phillips, who had at last to go to a German for a translation, and the book appeared at Stuttgart in 1826.[60] Meanwhile, Phillips's new magazine, The Universal Review, went on its course. It lasted only for a few numbers, as we have said—from March 1824 to January 1825—and it was entirely devoted to reviews, many of them written by Borrow, but without any distinction calling for comment to-day. Dr. Knapp thought that Gifford was the editor, with Phillips's son and George Borrow assisting. Gifford translated Juvenal, and it was for a long time assumed that Borrow wished merely to disguise Gifford's identity when he referred to his editor as the translator of Quintilian. But Sir Leslie Stephen has pointed out in Literature that John Carey (1756-1826), who actually edited Quintilian in 1822, was Phillips's editor, 'All the poetry which I reviewed,' Borrow tells us, 'appeared to be published at the expense of the authors. All the publications which fell under my notice I treated in a gentlemanly ... manner—no personalities, no vituperation, no shabby insinuations; decorum, decorum was the order of the day.' And one feels that Borrow was not very much at home. But he went on with his Newgate Lives and Trials, which, however, were to be published with another imprint, although at the instance of Phillips. By that time he and that worthy publisher had parted company. Probably Phillips had set out for Brighton, which was to be his home for the remainder of his life.