More than most authors Borrow appears greater than his books, though he is their offspring. It is one of his great achievements to have made his books bring forth this lusty and mysterious figure which moves to and fro in all of them, worthy of the finest scenes and making the duller ones acceptable. He is not greater than his books in the sense that he is greater than the sum of them: as a writer he made the most out of his life. But in the flesh he was a fine figure of a man, and what he wrote has added something, swelling him to more than human proportions, stranger and more heroical. So we come to admire him as a rare specimen of the genus homo, who had among other faculties that of writing English; and at last we have him armed with a pen that is mightier than a sword, but with a sword as well, and what he writes acquires a mythical value. Should his writing ever lose the power to evoke this figure, it might suffer heavily. We to-day have many temptations to over praise him, because he is a Great Man,
a big truculent outdoor wizard, who comes to our doors with a marvellous company of Gypsies and fellows whose like we shall never see again and could not invent. When we have used the impulse he may give us towards a ruder liberty, he may be neglected; but I cannot believe that things so much alive as many and many a page of Borrow will ever die.
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF GEORGE BORROW
By Edward Thomas.
1823
“New Monthly Magazine,” Vol. 7: “The Diver, a Ballad translated from the German,” by G. O. B.
“Monthly Magazine,” Vol. 56: “Ode to a Mountain Torrent,” from the German of Stolberg; “Death,” from the Swedish of J. C. Lohmann; “Mountain Song,” from the German of Schiller; “Danish Poetry and Ballad Writing,” with a translation of “Skion Middel”; “Lenora,” a new translation from the German, in the metre of the original; “Chloe,” from the Dutch of Johannes Bellamy; “Sea-Song,” from the Danish of Evald; “The Erl-King, from the German of Goethe; signed “George Olaus Borrow.”
1824
“Monthly Magazine,” Vol. 57: “Bernard’s Address to his Army,” a ballad from the Spanish; “The Singing Mariner,” a ballad from the Spanish; “The French Princess,” a ballad from the Spanish; “The Nightingale,” translated from the Danish; signed, all but the last, “George Olaus Borrow.”
“Monthly Magazine,” Vol. 58: “Danish Traditions and Superstitions”; “War-Song,” written when the French invaded Spain, translated from the Spanish of Vincente, by George Olaus Borrow; “Danish Songs and Ballads,” No. 1, Bear Song, by “B.”