The Welsh and Their Literature. A Prose Essay.
This Essay was in fact a review, by Borrow himself, of his own work The Sleeping Bard.
“In the autumn [of 1860] Borrow determined to call attention to it [The Sleeping Bard] himself. He revamped an old article he had written in 1830, entitled The Welsh and their Literature, and sent it to Mr. Murray for The Quarterly Review. . . . The modern literature and things of Wales were not introduced into the article . . . and it appeared anonymously in The Quarterly Review for January, 1861. It is in fact Borrow’s own (and the only) review of The Sleeping Bard, which, however, had the decisive result of selling off the whole edition in a month.”—[Knapp’s Life and Correspondence of George Borrow, 1899, vol. ii, pp. 195–196.]
The Manuscript of this Essay, or Review, is not at present forthcoming. But, fortunately, the MS. of certain paragraphs with which Borrow brought the Essay to a conclusion, and which the Editor in the exercise of his editorial function quite properly struck out, have been preserved. The barefaced manner in which Borrow anonymously praised and advertised his own work fully justified the Editor’s action. I print these paragraphs below. My principal reason for doing so is this, that the closing lines
afford evidence of Borrow’s authorship of other portions of Gill’s Introduction to his Edition of Kelly’s Manx Grammar, 1859, beyond those which until now have been attributed to his pen:
“Our having mentioned The Romany Rye gives us an opportunity of saying a few words concerning that work, to the merits of which, and likewise to those of Lavengro, of which it is the sequel, adequate justice has never been awarded. It is a truly remarkable book, abounding not only with strange and amusing adventure, but with deep learning communicated in a highly agreeable form. We owe it an amende honorable for not having in our recent essay on Buddhism quoted from it some remarkable passages on that superstition, which are to be found in a conversation between the hero of the tale and the man in black. Never was the subject of Buddhism treated in a manner so masterly and original. But the book exhibits what is infinitely more precious than the deepest learning, more desirable than the most amusing treasury of adventure, a fearless, honest spirit, a resolution to tell the truth however strange the truth may appear to the world.
“A remarkable proof of this is to be found in what is said in it respecting the Italians. It is all very well at the present day, after the miracles lately performed in Italy by her sons, to say that Italy is the land to which we must look for great men; that it is not merely the country of singers, fiddlers, improvisatori, and linguists, but of men, of beings who may emphatically be called men. But who, three or four years ago, would have ventured to say as much? Why there was one and only one who ventured to say so, and that was George Borrow in his work entitled The Romany Rye. Many other things equally bold and true he has said in that work, and also in its predecessor Lavengro.
“In conclusion we wish to give Mr. Borrow a piece of advice, namely, that with all convenient speed he publish whatever works he has written and has not yet committed to the press. Life is very precarious, and when an author dies, his unpublished writings are too frequently either lost to the world, or presented in a shape which all but stultifies them. Of Mr. Borrow’s unpublished writings there is a catalogue at the end of The Romany Rye, and a most remarkable catalogue it is, comprising works on all kinds of interesting subjects. Of these, the one which we are most eager to see is that which is called Wild Wales, which we have no doubt whenever it appears will be welcomed as heartily as The Bible in Spain was seventeen years ago, a book which first laid open the mysterious peninsula to the eyes of the world, and that the book on Wales will be followed by the one which is called Wanderings in quest of Manx Literature. Now the title alone of that book is worth a library of commonplace works, for it gives the world an inkling of a thing it never before dreamed of, namely, that the little Celtic Isle of Man has a vernacular literature. What a pity if the book itself should be eventually lost! Here some person will doubtless exclaim, ‘Perhaps the title is all book, and there is no book behind it; what can Mr. Borrow know of Manx literature?’ Stay, friend, stay! A Manx grammar has just appeared, edited by a learned and highly respectable Manx clergyman, in the preface to which are some beautiful and highly curious notices of Manx vernacular Gallic literature, which are, however, confessedly not written by the learned Manx clergyman, nor by any other learned Manxman, but by George Borrow, an Englishman, the author of The Bible in Spain and The Romany Rye.”
A number of translations from Welsh Poetry were introduced by Borrow into this Essay. They were all, as he explained in a footnote, derived from his projected Songs of Europe. With the exception of an occasional stray couplet, or single line, the following list includes them all:—
1. From Iolo Goch’s “Ode to the Plough Man.” [The mighty Hu with mead would pay]
Reprinted, with several changes in the text, in Wild Wales, 1862, Vol. iii, pp. 292–293.
A further extract from the same Ode, “If with small things we Hu compare” etc., is given in a footnote on p. 40.