of such a book that I
have seen, although there is plenty of new manuscript in my Borrow
collection to have made such a book possible had Borrow been encouraged
by his publisher and the public to write it.

[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF THE FIRST PAGE OF _WILD WALES_

_From the original Manuscript in the possession of the Author of 'George
Borrow and his Circle.'_]

To J. Evan Williams, Esq.

22 HEREFORD SQUARE, BROMPTON, _Decr. 31, 1863._

DEAR SIR,--I have received your letter and thank you for the
kind manner in which you are pleased to express yourself
concerning me. Now for your questions. With respect to Lope De
Vega's ghost story, I beg to say that I am thinking of
publishing a supplement to my _Wild Wales_ in which, amongst
other things, I shall give a full account of the tale and point
out where it is to be found. You cannot imagine the number of
letters I receive on the subject of that ghost story. With
regard to the Sclavonian languages, I wish to observe that they
are all well deserving of study. The Servian and Bohemian
contain a great many old traditionary songs, and the latter
possesses a curious though not very extensive prose literature.
The Polish has, I may say, been rendered immortal by the
writings of Mickiewicz, whose 'Conrad Wallenrod' is probably
the most remarkable poem of the present century. The Russian,
however, is the most important of all the Sclavonian tongues,
not on account of its literature but because it is spoken by
fifty millions of people, it being the dominant speech from the
Gulf of Finland to the frontiers of China. There is a
remarkable similarity both in sound and sense between many
Russian and Welsh words, for example 'tchelo' ([Russian]) is
the Russian for forehead, 'tal' is Welsh for the same; 'iasnhy'
(neuter 'iasnoe') is the Russian for clear or radiant, 'iesin'
the Welsh, so that if it were grammatical in Russian to place
the adjective after the noun as is the custom in Welsh, the
Welsh compound 'Taliesin' (Radiant forehead) might be rendered
in Russian by 'Tchel[=o]iasnoe,' which would be wondrously like
the Welsh name; unfortunately, however, Russian grammar would
compel any one wishing to Russianise 'Taliesin' to say not
'Tchel[=o]iasnoe' but 'Iasnoetchelo.'--Yours truly,

GEORGE BO