form and, not to be deterred by the
coldness of heartless London publishers, issued them by subscription.
Three copies of the slim octavo book lie before me, with separate
title-pages:

(1) Romantic Ballads, Translated from the Danish; and
Miscellaneous Pieces by George Borrow. Norwich: Printed and
Published by S. Wilkin, Upper Haymarket, 1826.

(2) Romantic Ballads, Translated from the Danish; and
Miscellaneous Pieces by George Borrow. London: Published by
John Taylor, Waterloo Place, Pall Mall, 1826.

(3) Romantic Ballads, Translated from the Danish; and
Miscellaneous Pieces, by George Borrow. London: Published by
Wightman and Cramp, 24 Paternoster Row, 1826.[63]

The book contains an introduction in verse by Allan Cunningham, whose
acquaintance Borrow seems to have made in London. It commences:

Sing, sing, my friend, breathe life again
Through Norway's song and Denmark's strain:
On flowing Thames and Forth, in flood,
Pour Haco's war-song, fierce and rude.

Cunningham had not himself climbed very far up the literary ladder in
1825, although he was forty-one years of age. At one time a stonemason
in a Scots village, he had entered Chantrey's studio, and was
'superintendent of the works' to that eminent sculptor at the time when
Borrow called upon him in London, and made an acquaintance which never
seems to have extended beyond this courtesy to the younger man's _Danish
Ballads_. The point of sympathy of course was that in the year 1825
Cunningham had published _The Songs of Scotland, Ancient and Modern_.
But Allan Cunningham, whose _Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters_
is his best remembered book to-day, scarcely comes into this story.
There are four letters from Cunningham to Borrow in Dr. Knapp's _Life_,
and two from Borrow to Cunningham. The latter gave his young friend much
good advice. He told him, for example, to send copies of his book to the
newspapers--to the _Literary Gazette_ in particular, and 'Walter Scott
must not be forgotten.' Dr. Knapp thinks that the newspapers were
forgotten, and that Borrow neglected to send to them. In any case not a
single review appeared. But it is not exactly true that Borrow ignored
the usual practice of authors so entirely as Dr. Knapp supposes. There
is a letter to Borrow among my Borrow Papers from Francis Palgrave the
historian, who became Sir Francis