dialect, including the Gospel of St Matthew and Amyot's Manchu-French
Dictionary. His instructions were to learn the language and come up
for examination in six months' time. Possibly the time limit was
suggested by Borrow himself, for he had said that he believed he
could master any tongue in a few months.

After two or three weeks of incessant study of a language that Amyot
says "one may acquire in five or six years," Borrow, who, it should
be remembered, possessed no grammar of the tongue, wrote to Mr
Jowett:


"It is, then, your opinion that, from the lack of anything in the
form of Grammar, I have scarcely made any progress towards the
attainment of Manchu: {97a} perhaps you will not be perfectly
miserable at being informed that you were never more mistaken in your
life. I can already, with the assistance of Amyot, translate Manchu
with no great difficulty, and am perfectly qualified to write a
critique on the version of St Matthew's Gospel, which I brought with
me into the country . . . I will now conclude by beseeching you to
send me, as soon as possible, WHATEVER CAN SERVE TO ENLIGHTEN ME IN
RESPECT TO MANCHU GRAMMAR, for, had I a Grammar, I should in a
month's time be able to send a Manchu translation of Jonah."


The racy style of Borrow's letters must have been something of a
revelation to the Bible Society's officers, who seem to have shown
great tact and consideration in dealing with their self-confident
correspondent There is something magnificent in the letters that
Borrow wrote about this period; their directness and virility, their