d from one cause alone,--the
fact that up to the present moment only his earliest and, in the majority
of cases, his least successful efforts have been available to students of
his work.

In 1826, when Borrow passed his _Romantic Ballads_ through the Press, he
had already acquired a working knowledge of numerous languages and
dialects, but of his native tongue he had still to become a master. In
1826 his appreciation of the requirements of English Prosody was of a
vague description, his sense of the rhythm of verse was crude, and the
attention he paid to the exigencies of rhyme was inadequate. Hence the
majority of his Ballads, beyond the fact that they were faithful
reproductions of the originals from which they had been laboriously
translated, were of no particular value.

But to Borrow himself they were objects of a regard which amounted to
affection, and there can be no question that throughout a considerable
portion of his adventurous life he looked to his Ballads to win for him
whatever measure of literary fame it might eventually be his fortune to
gain. In _Lavengro_, and other of his prose works, he repeatedly
referred to his "bundle of Ballads"; and I doubt whether he ever really
relinquished all hope of placing them before the public until the last
decade of his life had well advanced.

That the Ballad Poetry of the old Northern Races should have held a
strong attraction for Borrow is not to be wondered at. His restless
nature and his roving habits were well in tune with the spirit of the old
Heroic Ballads; whilst his taste for all that was mythical or vagabond
(vagabond in the literal, and not in the conventional, sense of the word)
would prompt him to welcome with no common eagerness the old Poems
dealing with matters supernatural and legendary. Has he not himself
recorded how, when fatigued upon a tiring march, he roused his flagging
spirits by shouting the refrain "_Look out_, _look out_, _Svend
Vonved_!"?

In 1829, three years after the _Romantic Ballads_ had struggled into
existence, Borrow made an effort to place them before a larger public in
a more complete and imposing form. In collaboration with Dr. (afterwards
Sir John) Bowring he projected a work which should contain the best of
his old Ballads, together with many new ones, the whole to be supported
by the addition of others from the pen of Dr. Bowring. {0a} A Prospectus
was drawn up and issued in December, 1829, and at least two examp