ongs of Ab Gwilym, some ten thousand lines, into
English rhyme. I have also learnt Danish, and have rendered the old book
of Ballads into English metre. I have learned many other tongues, and
have acquired some knowledge even of Hebrew and Arabic." He read and
conversed with William Taylor; he read alone in the Guildhall of Norwich,
where the Corporation Library offered him the books from which he gained
"his knowledge of Anglo-Saxon and early English, Welsh or British,
Northern or Scandinavian learning"--so writes Dr. Knapp, who has seen the
"neat young pencilled notes" of Borrow in Edmund Lhuyd's 'Archaeologia
Britannica' and the 'Danica Literatura Antiquissima' of Olaus Wormius,
etc. He tells us himself that he passed entire nights in reading an old
Danish book, till he was almost blind.

In 1823 Borrow began to publish his translations. Taylor introduced him
to Thomas Campbell, then editor of the "New Monthly," and to Sir Richard
Phillips, editor and proprietor of the "Monthly Magazine." Both editors
printed Borrow's works.

Sir Richard Phillips was particularly flattering: he used Borrow's
article on "Danish Poetry and Ballad Writing" and about six hundred lines
of translation from German, Danish, Swedish and Dutch poetry in the first
year of the connection, usually with the signature, "George Olaus
Borrow." I will quote only one specimen, his version of Goethe's "Erl
King" ("Monthly Magazine," December, 1823):

Who is it that gallops so late on the wild!
O it is the father that carries his child!
He presses him close in his circling arm,
To save him from cold, and to shield him from harm.

"Dear baby, what makes ye your countenance hide?"
"Spur, father, your courser and rowel his side;
The Erl-King is chasing us over the heath;"
"Peace, baby, thou seest a vapoury wreath?"

"Dear boy, come with me, and I'll join in your sport,
And show ye the place where the fairies resort;
My mother, who dwells in the cool pleasant mine
Shall clothe thee in garments so fair and so fine."

"My father, my father, in mercy attend,
And hear what is said by the whispering fiend."
"Be quiet, be quiet, my dearly-loved child;
'Tis naught but the wind as it stirs in the wild."

"Dear baby, if thou wilt but venture with me,
My daughter shall dandle thy form on her knee;
My daughter, who dwells where the moon-shadows play,
Shall lull ye to sleep with the song of th