[Illustration: TITLE-PAGE OF FIRST EDITION OF ROMANY TRANSLATION OF THE
GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE]

[Illustration: TWO PAGES FROM BORROW'S CORRECTED PROOF SHEETS OF ROMANY
TRANSLATION OF THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE]

FOOTNOTES:

[155] Yet one critic of Borrow--Jane H. Findlater, in the _Cornhill
Magazine_, November 1899--actually says that '_The Bible in Spain_ was
perhaps the most ill-advised title that a well-written book ever
laboured under, giving, as it does, the idea that the book is a
prolonged tract.'

[156] Borrow had really written a great deal of the book in Spain. The
'notebook' contained many of his adventures, and moreover on August 20,
1836, the _Athenaeum_, published two long letters from him under the
title of 'The Gypsies in Russia and in Spain,' opening with the
following preliminary announcement:

We have been obligingly favoured with the following extracts from
letters of an intelligent gentleman, whose literary labours, the least
important of his life, we not long since highly praised, but whose name
we are not at liberty, on this occasion, to make public. They contain
some curious and interesting facts relating to the condition of this
peculiar people in very distant countries.

The first letter is dated September 23, 1835, and gives an account of
his experiences with the gypsies in Russia. The whole of this account he
incorporated in _The Gypsies of Spain_. Following this there are two
columns, dated Madrid, July 19, 1836, in which he gives an account of
the gypsies in Spain. All the episodes that he relates he incorporated
in _The Bible in Spain_. The two letters so plainly indicate that all
the time Borrow was in Spain his mind was more filled with the subject
of the gypsies than with any other question. He did his work well for
the Bible Society no doubt, and gave them their money's worth, but there
is a humorous note in the fact that Borrow should have utilised his
position as a missionary--for so we must count him--to make himself so
thoroughly acquainted with gypsy folklore and gypsy songs and dances as
these two fragments by an 'intelligent gentleman' imply. It is not
strange that under the circumstances Borrow did not wish that his name
should be made public.

[157] This was Miss Catherine Gurney, who was born in 1776, in Magdalen
Street, Norwich, and died at Lowestoft in 1850, aged seventy-five. She
twice presided over the Earlham home. The brother referred to was Joseph
John Gurney.