Palgrave seven years later, which
throws some light upon the subject:

To George Borrow

PARLIAMENT ST., _17 June 1826._

MY DEAR SIR,--I am very much obliged to you for the opportunity
that you have afforded me of perusing your spirited and
faithful translating of the Danish ballads. Mr. Allan
Cunningham, who, as you will know, is an ancient minstrel
himself, says that they are more true to the originals and more
truly poetical than any that he has yet seen. I have delivered
one copy to Mr. Lockhart, the new editor of the _Quarterly
Review_, and I hope he will notice it as it deserves. Murray
would probably be inclined to publish your translations.--I
remain, dear sir, your obedient and faithful servant,

FRANCIS PALGRAVE.

It is probable that he did also send a copy to Scott, and it is Dr.
Knapp's theory that 'that busy writer forgot to acknowledge the
courtesy.' It may be that this is so. It has been the source of many a
literary prejudice. Carlyle had a bitterness in his heart against Scott
for much the same cause. Rarely indeed can the struggling author endure
to be ignored by the radiantly successful one. It must have been the
more galling in that a few years earlier Scott had been lifted by the
ballad from obscurity to fame. Borrow did not in any case lack
encouragement from Allan Cunningham: 'I like your Danish ballads much,'
he writes. 'Get out of bed, George Borrow, and be sick or sleepy no
longer. A fellow who can give us such exquisite Danish ballads has no
right to repose.'[64] Borrow, on his side, thanks Cunningham for his
'noble lines,' and tells him that he has got 'half of his _Songs of
Scotland_ by heart.'

Five hundred copies of the _Romantic Ballads_ were printed in Norwich by
S. Wilkin, about two hundred being subscribed for, mainly in that city,
the other three hundred being dispatched to London--to Taylor, whose
name appears on the London title-page, although he seems to have passed
on the book very quickly to Wightman and Cramp, for what reason we are
not informed. Borrow tells us that the two hundred subscriptions of half
a guinea 'amply paid expenses,' but he must have been cruelly
disappointed, as he was doomed to be more than once in his career, by
the lack of public appreciation outside of Norwich. Yet there were many
reasons for this. If Scott had made the ballad popular, he had also
destroyed it for