ght the money should not go to London, but John prevailed, and so
came up to London to interview B. R. Haydon, who, owning himself
confoundedly hard up, at once accepted the commission. But George comes
in as Haydon's _beau ideal_ for that face of Pharaoh the artist desired
to paint; later on Borrow asked Haydon for a sitting, saying he would
"sooner lose a thousand pounds than not have the honour of appearing in
the picture." No trace of any such portrait can be found. Haydon's
portrait of Hawkes hangs in St. Andrew's Hall in close proximity to that
of his friend "T.O.," painted by Philip Westcott.

[Picture: Marshland Shales]

"I have often thought," says Borrow, very characteristically, "what a
capital picture might have been made by my brother's friend, if, instead
of making the mayor issue out of the Norman arch, he had painted him
moving under the sign of the Checquers (_sic_), or the Three Brewers,
with mace--yes, with mace--the mace appears in the picture issuing out of
the Norman arch behind the mayor--but likewise with Snap, and with
whiffler, quart pot, and frying-pan, Billy Blind, and Owlenglass, Mr.
Petulengro, and Pakomovna."

Borrow's real literary career had begun with the translation of "Faustus"
(1825), a rather lurid German work by F. von Klinger, one of whose plays,
_Sturm und Drang_, gave the name to a whole period of German literature.
The book was received very unfavourably, but Borrow meant having his
Danish Ballads published, and in 1826 they were issued by S. Wilkin,
Upper Haymarket, Norwich, in an edition of five hundred copies, of which
two hundred were reserved for Norwich and sold at half a guinea each
copy; the rest went to London. Allan Cunningham wrote a very eulogistic
metrical dedication. The subscription list reveals a very varied list of
subscribers, including Bishop Bathurst, Benjamin Haydon, Thomas Campbell,
and John Thurtell, who was hanged before the book appeared. Borrow's
biographers generally treat these ballads with scarcely veiled contempt,
though Lockhart, whose brilliant renderings of Spanish ballads are
unsurpassed, wrote of his complete skill in the Scandinavian languages,
and his "copious body of translations from their popular minstrelsies,
not at all to be confounded with that of certain versifiers. . . . His
Norse ditties have the unforgeable stamp of authenticity on every line."
W. Bodham Donne, a well-known critic, even went so far as