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.
FOOTNOTES:
[49] The few lines awarded to him in Mumby's Romance of Bookselling are an illustration of this.
[50] Memoirs of the Public and Private Life of Sir Richard Phillips, King's High Sheriff for the City of London and the County of Middlesex, by a Citizen of London and Assistants. London, 1808. This Memoir was published in 1808, many years before the death of Phillips, and was clearly inspired and partly written by him, although an autograph letter before me from one Ralph Fell shows that the worthy Fell actually received £12 from Phillips for 'compiling' the book. A portion of the Memoir may have been written by another literary hack named Pinkerton, but all of it was compiled under the direction of Phillips.
[51] Mr. Arthur Aikin Brodribb in his memoir of Aikin in the Dictionary of National Biography makes the interesting but astonishing statement that Aikin's Life of Howard 'has been adopted, without acknowledgment, by a modern writer.' Mr. Brodribb apparently knew nothing of Dr. Aikin's association with the Monthly Magazine or with the first Athenæum.
[52] I have no less than four memoirs of Lady Morgan on my shelves:—Passages from my Autobiography, by Sydney, Lady Morgan (Richard Bentley, 1859); The Friends, Foes, and Adventures of Lady Morgan, by William John Fitzpatrick (W. B. Kelly: Dublin, 1859); Lady Morgan; Her Career, Literary and Personal, with a Glimpse of her Friends, and A Word to her Calumniators, by William John Fitzpatrick (London: Charles J. Skeet, 1860); Lady Morgan's Memoirs: Autobiography, Diaries and Correspondence. Two vols. (London: W. H. Allen, 1863).
[53] Memoirs of Lady Morgan, edited by W. Hepworth Dixon.
[54] See Timbs's article on Phillips in his Walks and Talks about London, 1865. Timbs was wont to recall, as the late W. L. Thomas of the Graphic informed me, that while at the Illustrated London News he got so exasperated with Herbert Ingram, the founder and proprietor, that he would frequently write and post a letter of resignation, but would take care to reach the office before Ingram in the morning in order to withdraw it.
[55] Another London book before me, which bears the imprint 'Richard Phillips, Bridge Street,' is entitled The Picture of London for 1811. Mine is the twelfth edition of this remarkable little volume.
[56] In Lavengro.