To the Rev.A.Brandram (ENDORSED:recd.Sept.28,1838)MADRID,19SEPR.1838,No.16CALLE SANTIAGO.
REVD.AND DEAR SIR,-I write this to inform you that for the last ten days I have been confined to my bed by a fever.I am now better,and hope in a few days to be able to proceed to Saragossa,which is the only road open.
I bore up against my illness as long as I could,but it became too powerful for me.By good fortune I obtained a decent physician,a Dr.Hacayo,who had studied medicine in England,and aided by him and the strength of my constitution I got the better of my attack,which however was a dreadfully severe one.
I hope my next letter will be from Bordeaux.I cannot write more at present,for I am very feeble.
I remain,Revd.and dear Sir,truly yours,G.BORROW.
Account of Proceedings in the Peninsula GENTLEMEN OF THE COMMITTEE OF THE BRITISH AND FOREIGN BIBLE SOCIETY-I beg leave to call your attention to the following statements.
They relate to my proceedings during the period which embraces my second sojourn in Spain -to my labours in a literary point of view -to my travels in a very remarkable country,the motive in which they originated and the result to which they led -to my success in the distribution of the Scripture,and to the opposition and encouragement which I have experienced.As my chief objects are brevity and distinctness I shall at once enter upon my subject,abstaining from reflections of every kind,which in most cases only tend to embarrass,being anxious to communicate facts alone,with most of which,it is true,you are already tolerably well acquainted,but upon all and every of which I am eager to be carefully and categorically questioned.It is neither my wish nor my interest to conceal one particular of what I have been doing.
And with these few prefatory observations I commence.
In the first place,my literary labours.Having on my former visit to Spain obtained from the then Prime Minister Isturitz and his Cabinet permission and encouragement for the undertaking,Ipublished on my return an edition of the New Testament at Madrid,a copy of which I now present to you for the first time.This work,executed at the office of Borrego,the most fashionable printer at Madrid,who had been recommended to me by Isturitz himself and most particularly by my excellent friend Mr.O'Shea,is a publication which I conceive no member of the Committee will consider as calculated to cast discredit on the Bible Society,it being printed on excellent English paper and well bound,but principally and above all from the fact of its exhibiting scarcely one typographical error,every proof having been read thrice by myself and once or more times by the first scholar in Spain.
I subsequently published the Gospel of Saint Luke in the Rommany and Biscayan languages.With respect to the first,I beg leave to observe that no work printed in Spain ever caused so great and so general a sensation,not so much amongst the Gypsies,that peculiar people,for whom it was intended,as amongst the Spaniards themselves,who,though they look upon the Roma with some degree of contempt as a low and thievish race of outcasts,nevertheless take a strange interest in all that concerns them,it having been from time immemorial their practice,more especially of the dissolute young nobility,to cultivate the acquaintance of the Gitanos as they are popularly called,probably attracted by the wild wit of the latter and the lascivious dances of the females.The apparition therefore of the Gospel of Saint Luke at Madrid in the peculiar jargon of these people was hailed as a strange novelty and almost as a wonder,and I believe was particularly instrumental in bruiting the name of the Bible Society far and wide through Spain,and in creating a feeling far from inimical towards it and its proceedings.I will here take the liberty to relate an anecdote illustrative of the estimation in which this little work was held at Madrid.The Committee are already aware that a seizure was made of many copies of Saint Luke in the Rommany and Biscayan languages,in the establishment at which they were exposed for sale,which copies were deposited in the office of the Civil Governor.Shortly before my departure a royal edict was published,authorising all the public libraries to provide themselves with copies of the said works on account of their philological merit;whereupon,on application being made to the office,it was discovered that the copies of the Gospel in Basque were safe and forthcoming,whilst every one of the sequestered copies of the Gitano Gospel had been plundered by hands unknown.The consequence was that I was myself applied to by then agents of the public libraries of Valencia and other places,who paid me the price of the copies which they received,assuring me at the same time that they were authorised to purchase them at whatever price which might be demanded.
Respecting the Gospel in Basque I have less to say.It was originally translated into the dialect of Guipuscoa by Dr.Oteiza,and subsequently received corrections and alterations from myself.
It can scarcely be said to have been published,it having been prohibited and copies of it seized on the second day of its appearance.But it is in my power to state that it is anxiously expected in the Basque provinces,where books in the aboriginal tongue are both scarce and dear,and that several applications have been made at San Sebastian and in other towns where Basque is the predominating language.
