ets of
its Bibles from the three authorised sources of production--the King's
printers who hold a patent, and the universities of Oxford and
Cambridge, which hold licences to print--these exclusive privileges
being granted in order that the text of the Bible should be maintained
with accuracy.

[95] Let me here acknowledge with gratitude my indebtedness to that fine
work _The History of the British Foreign Bible Society_ (1904-10,
Murray), by William Canton, which is worthy of the accomplished author
of _The Invisible Playmate_. An earlier history of the Society, by the
Rev. George Browne, published in 1859, has necessarily been superseded
by Mr. Canton's book.

[96] Canton's _History of the Bible Society_, vol. i. 195.

[97] _Ibid._, vol. ii. 127.

[98] In _Letters from George Borrow to the Bible Society_ (Hodder and
Stoughton), 1911.

[99] See _Memoirs of John Venning, Esq., formerly of St. Petersburgh and
late of Norwich. With Numerous Notices from his Manuscripts relative to
the Imperial Family of Russia_. By Thulia S. Henderson. London: Knight
and Son, 1862. Borrow's name is not once mentioned, but there is a
slight reference to him on pages 148 and 149.

CHAPTER XVI

ST. PETERSBURG AND JOHN P. HASFELD

Borrow travelled by way of Hamburg and Luebeck to Travemuende, whence he
went by sea to St. Petersburg, where he arrived on the twentieth of
August 1833. He was back in London in September 1835, and thus it will
be seen that he spent two years in Russia. After the hard life he had
led, everything was now rose-coloured. 'Petersburg is the finest city in
the world,' he wrote to Mr. Jowett; 'neither London nor Paris nor any
other European capital which I have visited has sufficient pretensions
to enter into comparison with it in respect to beauty and grandeur.' But
the striking thing about Borrow in these early years was his capacity
for making friends. He had not been a week in St. Petersburg before he
had gained the regard of one, William Glen, who, in 1825, had been
engaged by the Bible Society to translate the Old Testament into
Persian. The clever Scot, of whom Borrow was informed by a competent
judge that he was 'a Persian scholar of the first water,' was probably
too heretical for the Society which recalled him, much to his chagrin.
'He is a very learned man, but of very simple and unassuming manners,'
wrote Borrow to Jowett.[100] His version of the _Psalms_ appeared in
1830, and of _Proverbs_