g, as he then was, with the date of
receipt, presumably the day _after_ the letters were written.

[90]

'PROSPECTUS

It is proposed to publish, in Two Volumes Octavo Price to Subscribers
L1, 1s., to Non Subscribers L1, 4s.

THE SONGS OF SCANDINAVIA

Translated by

Dr. BOWRING and Mr. BORROW.

Dedicated to the King of Denmark, by permission of His Majesty.

* * * * *

The First Volume will contain about One Hundred Specimens of the Ancient
Popular Ballads of North-Western Europe, arranged under the heads of
Heroic, Supernatural, Historical, and Domestic Poems.

The Second Volume will represent the Modern School of Danish Poetry,
from the time of Tullin, giving the most remarkable lyrical productions
of Ewald, Oelenschlaeger, Baggesen, Ingemann, and many others.'

This four-page leaflet contains two blank pages for lists of
subscribers, who apparently did not come, and the project seems to have
been abandoned.

[91] The prospectus, already quoted, bears the imprint: Printed by
Richard Taylor, Red Lion Court, Fleet Street.

CHAPTER XV

BORROW AND THE BIBLE SOCIETY

That George Borrow should have become an agent for the Bible Society,
then in the third decade of its flourishing career, has naturally
excited doubts as to his moral honesty. The position was truly a
contrast to an earlier ideal contained in the letter to his Norwich
friend, Roger Kerrison, that we have already given, in which, with all
the zest of a Shelley, he declares that he intends to live in London,
'write plays, poetry, etc., abuse religion, and get myself prosecuted.'
But that was in 1824, and Borrow had suffered great tribulation in the
intervening eight years. He had acquired many languages, wandered far
and written much, all too little of which had found a publisher. There
was plenty of time for his religious outlook to have changed in the
interval, and in any case Borrow was no theologian. The negative outlook
of 'Godless Billy Taylor,' and the positive outlook of certain
Evangelical friends with whom he was now on visiting terms, were of
small account compared with the imperative need of making a living--and
then there was the passionate longing of his nature for a wider
sphere--for travelling activity which should not be dependent alone upon
the vagabond's crust. What matter if, as Harriet Martineau--most
generous and also most malicious of women, with much kinship with Borrow
in tempera