E BORROW.

[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF A POEM FROM _TARGUM_

A Translation from the French by George Borrow

My Eighteenth Year

Where is my eighteenth year? far back
Upon life's variegated track;
Yet fondly oft I turn my eye,
And for my eighteenth year I sigh.

Each pleasure then I took with zest,
And hope was inmate of my breast,
Enchanting hope, consoling thing,
The plucker out of sorrow's sting.

The sun above shone brighter then
Fairer were women, kinder men
If tears I shed they soon were o'er
And I was happier than before.]

Now with the achieved success of _The Bible in Spain_ and the leisure of
a happy home Borrow could for the moment think of the ambition of
'twelve years ago'--an ambition to put before the public some of the
results of his marvellous industry. The labours of the dark, black years
between 1825 and 1830 might now perchance see the light. Three such
books got themselves published, as we have seen, _Romantic Ballads_,
_Targum_, and _The Talisman_. _The Sleeping Bard_ had been translated
and offered to 'a little Welsh bookseller' of Smithfield in 1830, who,
however, said, when he had read it, 'were I to print it I should be
ruined.' That fate followed the book to the end, and Borrow was
premature when he said in his Preface to _The Sleeping Bard_ that such
folly is on the decline, because he found 'Albemarle Street in '60
willing to publish a harmless but plain-speaking book which Smithfield
shrank from in '30.' At the last moment John Murray refused to publish,
but seems to have agreed to give his imprint to the title-page. Borrow
published the book at his own expense, it being set up by James Matthew
Denew, of 72 Hall Plain, Great Yarmouth. Fourteen years later--in
1874--Mr. Murray made some amends by publishing _Romano Lavo-Lil_, in
which are many fine translations from the Romany, and that, during his
lifetime, was the 'beginning and the end' of Borrow's essays in
publishing so far as his translations were concerned. Webber, the
bookseller of Ipswich, did indeed issue _The Turkish Jester_--advertised
as ready for publication in 1857--in 1884, and Jarrold of Norwich _The
Death of Balder_ in 1889; but enthusiasts have asked in vain for _Celtic
Bards_, _Chiefs and Kings_, _Songs of Europe_, and _Northern Skalds,
Kings and Earls_. It is not recorded whether Borrow offered these to any
publisher other than 'Glorious John' of Albemarle S