THE REAL ADVENTURES AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF GEORGE BORROW.

Generally, we believe, Lavengro, though it has sold well everywhere, has not been very much praised. It has been conceded that the author of "the Bible in Spain" must be a Crichton, but his last performance looked overmuch like trifling with the credulity of his readers. We find in Colburn's New Monthly Magazine for April a sort of vindication of Borrow, which embraces some curious particulars of his career, and quote the following passages, which cannot fail to interest his American readers:

"We have yet to learn where our author was during the years intervening from the epoch of the dingle to the date of Spanish travel; that he was neither in mind nor body inactive, ample testimony may be adduced, not only in the form of writings made public during that interval, but in the internal evidence afforded by them of laborious research. In a work published at St. Petersburgh in 1835, known but to few, entitled "Targum; or, Metrical Translations from Thirty Languages and Dialects, by George Borrow," we find indications of how those intervening years were spent. He says, in the preface to this work, "The following pieces, selections from a huge and undigested mass of translation, accumulated during several years devoted to philological pursuits, are with much diffidence offered to the public," &c. These translations are remarkable for force and correct emphasis, and afford demonstration of what power the author possesses over metre. We shall cite but few examples, however, for it is believed that not only that huge mass, but many an additional song and ballad now is digested, and lies side by side with the glorious "Kæmpe Viser," the "Ab Gwilym," and other learned translations, by means of which it may be hoped that the gifted Borrow will ere long vindicate his lasting claim to scholarship—a claim to which it is to be feared he is indifferent, for he is no boaster, and does himself no justice; or, if he boasts at all, prefers, as with a species of self-sarcasm, the mention of his lesser, on which he dwells with zest, to that of his greater and more enduring triumphs. The "Targum" consists of translations from the following languages: Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Tartar, Tibetian, Chinese, Mandchou, Russian, Malo-Russian, Polish, Finnish, Anglo-Saxon, Ancient Norse, Suabian, German, Dutch, Danish, Ancient Danish, Swedish, Ancient Irish, Irish, Gaellic, Ancient British, Cambrian British, Greek, Modern Greek, Latin, Provençal, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Rommany. A few specimens from this work may be acceptable to the English reader—a work so rare, that the authorities of a German university not long ago sent a person to St. Petersburgh to endeavor to discover a copy:"

ODE TO GOD.

FROM THE HEBREW.

PRAYER.

FROM THE ARABIC.

O LORD! I NOTHING CRAVE BUT THEE.

FROM THE TARTAR.

Nor was this the only literary labor performed by Mr. Borrow while at St. Petersburgh: to the "Targum" he appended a translation of "The Talisman," and other pieces from the Russian of Alexander Pushkin. He also edited the Gospel in the Mandchou Tartar dialect while residing in that city. In connection with the latter undertaking there is an anecdote told of which, like the story of his making horse-shoes, shows his resources, and redounds to his credit. It runs thus:—"It was known that a fountain of types in the Mandchou Tartar character existed at a certain house in the city of St. Petersburgh, but there was no one to be found who could set them up. In this emergency the young editor demanded to inspect the types; they were brought forth in a rusty state from a cellar; on which, resolved to see his editorial labors complete, he cleaned the types himself, and set them up with his own hand."

Of his journeyings in Spain Mr. Borrow has been his own biographer; but here again his higher claims to distinction are lightly touched on, or not named. In 1837 a book was printed at Madrid, having the following curious title-page:

"Embèo e Mafaró Lucas. Brotoboro randado andré la chipe griega, acáana chibado andré o Romanó, ó chipe es Zincales de Sese.

"El Evangelio segun S. Lucas, traducido al Romaní, ó dialecto de los Gitanos de España. 1837."

And this work is no other than the remarkable antecedent of the "Zincali,"—the translation of St. Luke's Gospel into the Gipsy dialect of Spain.[A] Of the Bible in Spain it is unnecessary to speak; there can be no better evidence of the estimation it is held in than the fact of its having been translated into French and German, while it has run through at least thirty thousand copies at home. But it is on the "Zincali" that Borrow's reputation will maintain its firm footing; the originality and research involved in its production, the labors and dangers it entailed, are duly appreciated at home and abroad. During the past year a highly interesting account of the Gipsies and other wandering people of Norway, written in Danish, was published at Christiana; it is entitled "Beretning om Fante—eller Landstrygerfolket i Norge" (Account of the Fant, or Wandering People of Norway), by Eilert Sundt. At the twenty-third page of this work, the Danish author, in allusion to the subject of this notice, says: "This Borrow is a remarkable man. As agent for the British Bible Society he has undertaken journeys into remote lands, and acquainted from his early youth, not only with many European languages, but likewise with the Rommani of the English Gipsies, he sought up with zest the Gipsies every where, and became their faithful missionary. He has made himself so thoroughly master of their ways and customs that he soon passed for one of their blood. He slept in their tents in the forests of Russia and Hungary, visited them in their robber caves in the mountainous pass regions of Italy, lived with them five entire years (towards 1840) in Spain, where he, for his endeavors to distribute the Gospel in that Catholic land, was imprisoned with the very worst of them for a time in the dungeons of Madrid. He at last went over to North Africa, and sought after his Tartars even there. It is true, no one has taken equal pains with Borrow to introduce himself among this rude and barbarous people, but on that account he has been enabled better than any other to depict the many mysteries of this race; and the frequent impressions which his book has undergone within a short period, show with what interest the English public have received his graphic descriptions."

Of the extraordinary acquisitions of Mr. Borrow in languages, a pleasant story is told by Sir William Napier, who, looking into a courtyard, from the window of a Spanish inn, heard a man converse successively in a dozen tongues, so fluently and so perfectly, that he was puzzled to decide what was his country,—Germany, Holland, France, Italy, Russia, Portugal, or Spain; and coming down he joined his circle, asked the question of him, and was astonished by the information that he was an English Bible agent. Between the historian of the Peninsular War and the missionary an intimacy sprung up, which we believe has continued without any interruption to the present time.