Judged by Borrow’s translation, the literary merits of “The Sleeping Bard” come out very high. Whether they are as splendid as the plentiful comparisons with classical writers would suggest can only be estimated by those who are deeply versed in the Welsh literary medium. What more immediately concerns us is the quality of Borrow’s rendering. His style lent itself admirably to the interpretation of the ideas in the book, and whatever the excellences or defects of his work as a translator, the effect he produces, especially in the most lurid parts of the “Visions,” is often superb. There is magnificent prose in the last section, the “Vision of Hell”—notably in the dialogues between Lucifer and his hosts. Lucifer’s address to the “potentates of Hell! princes of the black abodes of Despair!” is a gigantic conception of the eternal warfare of Good and Evil, couched in language of extraordinary power. Take the speech, in which he urges his confederates to greater exertions against the Omnipotent:
“. . . although the Almighty Enemy sent his own son to die for the beings of that world; yet I, by my baubles, obtain ten souls for every one which he obtains by his crucified son. And although I have not been able to reach him who sits in the high places and discharges the invincible thunder-bolts, yet revenge of some kind is sweet. Let us complete the destruction of the remnant of human beings still in the favour of our destroyer. I remember the time when you caused them to be burnt by multitudes and cities, and even the whole race of the earth, by means of the flood, to be swept down to us in the fire. But at present, though your strength and your natural cruelty are not a whit diminished, yet you are become in some degree inactive; if that had not been the case we might long since have destroyed the few who are godly, and have caused the earth to be united with this our vast empire. But know, ye black ministers of my displeasure, that unless ye be more resolute and more diligent, and make the most of the short-time that remains to you for doing evil, ye shall experience the weight of my anger, in torments new and strange to the whole of you. This I swear, by the deepest Hell, and the vast eternal pit of darkness.”
Moloch arises to protest against the censure, to declare, how he has joyed in the sufferings of men, “the shrieks of infants perishing in the fire as of old, when thousands of sucklings were sacrificed to me outside of Jerusalem.” Lucifer laughs in the face of his “heartless legions,” and announces his intention to go to the Earth in his own kingly person: “Not one man, henceforth, shall be found on the earth to adore the Almighty.”
“Thereupon he gave a furious bound, attempting to set off in a firmament of living fire; but, behold! the fist above his head shook the terrific bolt till he trembled in the midst of his frenzy, and before he could move far an invisible hand lugged the old fox back by his chain in spite of his teeth. Whereupon he became seven times more frantic; his eyes were more terrible than lightnings, black, thick smoke burst from his nostrils, and dark green flames from his mouth and entrails; he gnawed his chain in agony, and hissed forth direful blasphemy and the most frightful curses.”
“Myn Diawl!” as the little bookseller of Smithfield ejaculated. No wonder he regarded Elis Wyn as a terrible fellow. While Borrow was engaged in transferring these scenes into English, contrasting the peaceful figure of the Bard asleep on the summit of Cader Idris with the appalling spectacles of his dreams, delighting in the process of heaping horror upon horror and crashing them against the “squeamish nonsense” of his age, he did not fail to be effective. It was when he took to verse that he failed: the metrical translations at the end of each section are the weakest things in the book. Elis Wyn had a salty humour, and used it well upon “the oddities and follies which men commit.” Several of Borrow’s own pet aversions are held up to ridicule—gentility, coquetry, tobacco, and so on. With what zest he relates the mockery in Hell of “two honourable gentlemen, newly arrived, who were insisting on being shown respect suitable to their gentility” may be imagined. The condemnation of tobacco is worthy of slobbering James himself: “For what is tobacco but one of my meanest instruments to carry bewilderment into the brain?” asks Beelzebub.
Borrow made good use of Elis Wyn, not only in this translation, but in “Wild Wales.” The intensely humorous conversation with Bos the drover at Pentraeth Coch will be remembered:
“Pray excuse me,” said I, “but is not droving rather a low-lifed occupation?”
“Not half so much as pig-jobbing,” said Bos, “and that that’s your trade, I’m certain, or you would never have gone to Llanfair.”
“I am no pig-jobber,” said I, “and when I asked you that question about droving, I merely did so because one Elis Wyn, in a book he wrote, gives the drovers a very bad character, and puts them in Hell for their malpractices.”
“Oh, he does,” said Mr. Bos, “well, the next time I meet him at Corwen I’ll crack his head for saying so. Malpractices—he had better look at his own, for he is a pig-jobber, too. Written a book, has he? Then I suppose he has been left a legacy, and gone to school after middle-age, for when I last saw him, which is four years ago, he could neither read nor write.”
I was about to tell Mr. Bos that the Elis Wyn I meant was no more a pig-jobber than myself, but a respectable clergyman who had been dead considerably upwards of a hundred years, and that also, notwithstanding my respect for Mr. Bos’s knowledge of history, I did not believe that Owen Tudor was buried at Penmynnydd, when I was prevented . . .
And he made equally good use of the other bards and heroes of Wales, both in his colloquies with comic persons like Mr. Bos or with the bard of Anglesey, “the greatest Prydydd in the whole world,” who kept an inn at L—, and believed “the awen or inspiration was quite as much at home in the bar as in the barn, perhaps more”; and in his outbursts of apostrophic eloquence—as when he stood on Holyhead: “‘Some king, giant, or man of old renown lies buried beneath this cairn,’ said I. ‘Whoever he may be I trust he will excuse me for mounting it, seeing that I do so with no disrespectful spirit.’” A glowing vision follows of the scenes which had passed beneath that grey promontory, from the times of the Druids, “long-bearded men with white vestments, toiling up the rocks, followed by fierce warriors with glittering helms and short, broad, two-edged swords,” as the army of Suetonius pursued them; “I thought I heard groans, cries of rage, and the dull, awful sound of bodies precipitated down the rocks . . .” Borrow may not have sympathised with the modern aspirations of Nationalist Wales, but he certainly succeeded in demonstrating its nationality, in understanding its poetry, and in visualising its romance.
Borrow’s purely poetical works remain to be considered. The ballad literature of many lands had overpowering fascination for him. This was a perfectly natural affinity. In the ballads, if anywhere, is to be found the “homely, plain writing” which Borrow admired. In them, too, were enshrined the histories of the characters he loved or the heroes he adored. If the public had afforded him more encouragement, we should have had a series of transcripts and translations spreading over many years. Fortunately, sheer force of circumstances pushed Borrow into another literary channel and gave us his prose books. Borrow’s lyrical genius is hardly a matter for discussion; it simply does not exist, in spite of Allan Cunningham’s eulogies. Most of his verse is artificial, stilted, and in the most violent contrast with the vigorous naturalism of his prose. He seemed to have a lyrical sense, but no capacity for recording its impressions. The result is a mass of doggerel, here and there lightened and vivified by a stanza or two of real beauty, happening simply where a concourse of chances gave him subject, imaginative idea, and words which harmonised. These flashes of inspiration, however, are rare.