[158] _Letters of George Borrow to the British and Foreign Bible
Society_. Published by direction of the Committee. Edited by T. H.
Darlow. Hodder and Stoughton, 1911.

[159] Samuel Smiles: _A Publisher and his Friends_, vol. ii. p. 485.

[160] _The Bible in Spain; or The Journeys, Adventures, and
Imprisonments of an Englishman in an Attempt to Circulate the Scriptures
in the Peninsula_. By George Borrow, author of _The Gypsies of Spain_.
In three volumes. London: John Murray, Albemarle St., 1843.

[161] Herbert Jenkins: _Life_, p. 341.

[162] Knapp's _Life_, vol. i. p. 398. In the _Annals of the Harford
Family_, edited by Alice Harford (Westminster Press, 1909), there is an
account of this gathering in a letter from J. Harford-Battersby to
Louisa Harford. There was present 'the amusing author of _The Bible in
Spain_, a man who is remarkable for his extraordinary powers as a
linguist, and for the originality of his character, not to speak of the
wonderful adventures he narrates, and the ease and facility with which
he tells them. He kept us laughing a good part of breakfast time by the
oddity of his remarks, as well as the positiveness of his assertions,
often rather startling, and, like his books, partaking of the
marvellous.'

[163] 4750 copies were sold in the three volume form in 1843, and a
sixth and cheaper edition the same year sold 9000 copies.

CHAPTER XXIII

RICHARD FORD

The most distinguished of Borrow's friends in the years that succeeded
his return from Spain was Richard Ford, whose interests were so largely
wrapped-up in the story of that country. Ford was possessed of a very
interesting personality, which was not revealed to the public until Mr.
Rowland E. Prothero issued his excellent biography[164] in 1905,
although Ford died in 1858. This delay is the more astonishing as Ford's
_Handbook for Travellers in Spain_ was one of the most famous books of
its day. Ford's father, Sir Richard Ford, was a friend of William Pitt,
and twice sat in Parliament, being at one time Under-Secretary of State
for the Home Department. He ended his official career as a police
magistrate at Bow Street, but deserves to be better known to fame as the
creator of the mounted police force of London. Ford was born with a
silver spoon in his mouth, inheriting a fortune from his father, and
from his mother an extraordinary taste for art. Although called to the
bar he never practised, but spent his time in travelling