Though all the learning 'neath the skies,
And th' houries all of paradise,
The Lord should place before my eyes,
O Lord! I'd nothing crave but Thee.
When I through paradise shall stray,
Its houries and delights survey,
Full little gust awake will they;
O Lord! I'll nothing crave but Thee.
For Hadgee Ahmed is my name,
My heart with love of God doth flame;
Here and above I'll bide the same;
O Lord! I nothing crave but Thee.
Nor was this the only literary labor performed by Mr. Borrow while at St. Petersburgh: to the "Targum" he appended a translation of "The Talisman," and other pieces from the Russian of Alexander Pushkin. He also edited the Gospel in the Mandchou Tartar dialect while residing in that city. In connection with the latter undertaking there is an anecdote told of which, like the story of his making horse-shoes, shows his resources, and redounds to his credit. It runs thus:—"It was known that a fountain of types in the Mandchou Tartar character existed at a certain house in the city of St. Petersburgh, but there was no one to be found who could set them up. In this emergency the young editor demanded to inspect the types; they were brought forth in a rusty state from a cellar; on which, resolved to see his editorial labors complete, he cleaned the types himself, and set them up with his own hand."
Of his journeyings in Spain Mr. Borrow has been his own biographer; but here again his higher claims to distinction are lightly touched on, or not named. In 1837 a book was printed at Madrid, having the following curious title-page:
"Embèo e Mafaró Lucas. Brotoboro randado andré la chipe griega, acáana chibado andré o Romanó, ó chipe es Zincales de Sese.
"El Evangelio segun S. Lucas, traducido al Romaní, ó dialecto de los Gitanos de España. 1837."
And this work is no other than the remarkable antecedent of the "Zincali,"—the translation of St. Luke's Gospel into the Gipsy dialect of Spain.[A] Of the Bible in Spain it is unnecessary to speak; there can be no better evidence of the estimation it is held in than the fact of its having been translated into French and German, while it has run through at least thirty thousand copies at home. But it is on the "Zincali" that Borrow's reputation will maintain its firm footing; the originality and research involved in its production, the labors and dangers it entailed, are duly appreciated at home and abroad. During the past year a highly interesting account of the Gipsies and other wandering people of Norway, written in Danish, was published at Christiana; it is entitled "Beretning om Fante—eller Landstrygerfolket i Norge" (Account of the Fant, or Wandering People of Norway), by Eilert Sundt. At the twenty-third page of this work, the Danish author, in allusion to the subject of this notice, says: "This Borrow is a remarkable man. As agent for the British Bible Society he has undertaken journeys into remote lands, and acquainted from his early youth, not only with many European languages, but likewise with the Rommani of the English Gipsies, he sought up with zest the Gipsies every where, and became their faithful missionary. He has made himself so thoroughly master of their ways and customs that he soon passed for one of their blood. He slept in their tents in the forests of Russia and Hungary, visited them in their robber caves in the mountainous pass regions of Italy, lived with them five entire years (towards 1840) in Spain, where he, for his endeavors to distribute the Gospel in that Catholic land, was imprisoned with the very worst of them for a time in the dungeons of Madrid. He at last went over to North Africa, and sought after his Tartars even there. It is true, no one has taken equal pains with Borrow to introduce himself among this rude and barbarous people, but on that account he has been enabled better than any other to depict the many mysteries of this race; and the frequent impressions which his book has undergone within a short period, show with what interest the English public have received his graphic descriptions."
Of the extraordinary acquisitions of Mr. Borrow in languages, a pleasant story is told by Sir William Napier, who, looking into a courtyard, from the window of a Spanish inn, heard a man converse successively in a dozen tongues, so fluently and so perfectly, that he was puzzled to decide what was his country,—Germany, Holland, France, Italy, Russia, Portugal, or Spain; and coming down he joined his circle, asked the question of him, and was astonished by the information that he was an English Bible agent. Between the historian of the Peninsular War and the missionary an intimacy sprung up, which we believe has continued without any interruption to the present time.