writings,
and the many manuscripts that he left behind him. But on the general
question let us hear Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton:--

It should never be forgotten that Borrow was, before everything
else, a poet.... By poet I do not mean merely a man who is
skilled in writing lyrics and sonnets and that kind of thing,
but primarily a man who has the poetic gift of seeing through
'the show of things,' and knowing where he is--the gift of
drinking deeply of the waters of life, and of feeling grateful
to Nature for so sweet a draught.'[245]

Possibly Mr. Watts-Dunton did not contemplate his idea being applied to
Borrow's verse translations, but all the same the quality of poetic
imagination may be found here in abundance. The little Welsh bookseller
of Smithfield said to Borrow in reference to _The Sleeping Bard_:

Were I to print it I should be ruined; the terrible description
of vice and torment would frighten the genteel part of the
English public out of its wits, and I should to a certainty be
prosecuted by Sir James Scarlett. I am much obliged to you for
the trouble you have given yourself on my account--but, Myn
Diawl! I had no idea, till I had read him in English, that Elis
Wyn had been such a terrible fellow.

And here the little Welsh bookseller paid Borrow a signal compliment. In
the main Borrow provided a prose translation of _The Sleeping Bard_. In
_Targum_ however, he showed himself a quite gifted balladist, far
removed from the literary standard of _Romantic Ballads_ ten years
earlier. Space does not permit of any quotation in this chapter, and I
must be content here to declare that the spirit of poetry came over
Borrow on many occasions. The whole of Borrow's _Songs of Scandinavia_
will ultimately be published, although for eighty and more years[246]
the pile of neatly written manuscript of that book, which is now in my
possession, has appealed for publication in vain. There will be found,
in such a ballad as _Orm Ungerswayne_, for example, a practical
demonstration that Borrow had the root of the matter in him. It is true
that Borrow's limited acquaintance with English poetry was a serious
drawback to great achievement, and his many translations from his
favourite Welsh bard Goronwy Owen that are before me are too much under
the influence of Pope. In addition to the _Songs of Scandinavia_ I have
before me certain other ballads in manuscrip