[114] Who that has visited Spain can for a moment doubt but that, if Napoleon had really conquered the Peninsula and had been able to put his imprint upon it as he did upon Italy, the Spain of to-day would have become a much greater country than it is at present—than it will be in a few short years.
[115] The Bible in Spain, ch. xlii.
[116] The Old and New Testament, in ten volumes, were first issued in Spanish at Valencia in 1790-93. When in Madrid I picked up on a second-hand bookstall a copy of a cheap Spanish version of Scio's New Testament, which bears a much earlier date than the one Borrow carried. It was published, it will be noted, two years before Borrow published his translation of Klinger's ribald book Faustus:—
'El Nuevo Testamento, Traducido al Español de la Vulgata Latina por el Rmo. P. Philipe Scio de S. Miguel. Paris: En la Imprenta de J. Smith, 1823,'
[117] This kind of interpretation is not restricted to the youthful Sunday School teacher. At a meeting of the Bible Society held at Norwich—Borrow's own city—on 29th May 1913, Mrs. Florence Barclay, the author of many popular novels, thus addressed the gathering. I quote from the Eastern Daily Press: 'She had heard sometimes a shallow form of criticism which said that it was impossible that in actual reality any man should have lived and breathed three days and three nights in the interior of a fish. Might she remind the meeting that the Lord Jesus Christ, who never made mistakes, said Himself, "As Jonah was three days and three nights in the interior of the sea monster." Please note that in the Greek the word was not "whale," but "sea monster." And then, let us remember, that we were told that the Lord God had prepared the great fish in order that it should swallow Jonah. She did suggest that if mere man nowadays could construct a submarine, which went down to the depths of the ocean and came up again when he pleased, it did not require very much faith to believe that Almighty God could specially prepare a great fish which should rescue His servant, to whom He meant to give another chance, from the depths of the sea, and land him in due course upon the shore. (Applause).' These crude views, which ignored the symbolism of Nineveh as a fish, now universally accepted by educated people, were not, however, endorsed by Dr. Beeching, the learned Dean of Norwich, who in the same gathering expressed the point of view of more scholarly Christians:—'He would not distinguish inspired writing from fiction. He would say there could be inspired fiction just as well as inspired facts, and he would point to the story of the prodigal son as a wonderful example from the Bible of inspired fiction. There were a good many other examples in the Old Testament, and he had not the faintest doubt that the story of Jonah was one. It was on the same level as the prodigal son. It was a story told to teach the people a distinct truth.'
[118] When in Madrid in May 1913 I called upon Mr. William Summers, the courteous Secretary of the Madrid Branch of the British and Foreign Bible Society in the Flor Alta. Mr. Summers informs me that the issues of the British and Foreign Bible Society, Bibles and Testaments, in Spain for the past three years are as follows:
| Year. | Bibles. | Testaments. | Portions. | Total. |
| 1910, | 5,309 | 8,971 | 70,594 | 84,874 |
| 1911, | 5,665 | 11,481 | 79,525 | 96,671 |
| 1912, | 9,083 | 11,842 | 85,024 | 105,949 |
The Calle del Principe is now rapidly being pulled down and new buildings taking the place of those Borrow knew.
[119] Embeo e Majaro Lucas. El Evangelio segun S. Lucas traducido al Romani ó dialecto de los Gitanos de España, 1857. Two later copies in my possession bear on their title-pages 'Lundra, 1871' and 'Lundra, 1872.' But the Bible Society in Spain has long ceased to handle or to sell any gypsy version of St. Luke's Gospel.
[120] And in Darlow's Letters of George Borrow to the Bible Society, pp. 180-4.