FACSIMILE OF THE TITLE-PAGE OF 'WILD WALES,' 368
_From the original Manuscript in the possession of the Author of 'George Borrow and his Circle.'_
FACSIMILE OF THE FIRST PAGE OF 'WILD WALES,' 370
_From the original Manuscript in the possession of the Author of 'George Borrow and his Circle.'_
_A Translation from the French by George Borrow._
BORROW AS A PROFESSOR OF LANGUAGES--AN ADVERTISEMENT, 409
A PAGE OF THE MANUSCRIPT OF BORROW'S 'SONGS OF SCANDINAVIA'--AN UNPUBLISHED WORK, 411
A LETTER FROM BORROW TO HIS WIFE WRITTEN FROM ROME IN HIS CONTINENTAL JOURNEY OF 1844, 418
It is now exactly seventeen years ago since I published a volume not dissimilar in form to this under the title of _Charlotte Brontë and her Circle_. The title had then an element of novelty, Dante Gabriel Rossetti's _Dante and his Circle_, at the time the only book of this particular character, having quite another aim. There are now some twenty or more biographies based upon a similar plan.[1] The method has its convenience where there are earlier lives of a given writer, as one can in this way differentiate the book from previous efforts by making one's hero stand out among his friends. Some such apology, I feel, is necessary, because, in these days of the multiplication of books, every book, at least other than a work of imagination, requires ample apology. In _Charlotte Brontë and her Circle_ I was able to claim that, even though following in the footsteps of Mrs. Gaskell, I had added some four hundred new letters by Charlotte Brontë to the world's knowledge of that interesting woman, and still more considerably enlarged our knowledge of her sister Emily. This achievement has been generously acknowledged, and I am most proud of the testimony of the most accomplished of living biographers, Sir George Otto Trevelyan, who once rendered me the following quite spontaneous tribute:
We have lately read _aloud_ for the second time your Brontë book; let alone private readings. It is unique in plan and excellence, and I am greatly obliged to you for it. Apart from the pleasure of the book, the form of it has always interested me as a professional biographer. It certainly is novel; and in this case I am pretty sure that it is right.