to assist him to obtain some sort of employment. It may be, as has
been said, and as seems extremely probable, that Bowring used his
"facility in acquiring and translating tongues deliberately as a
ladder to an administrative post abroad," {86a} but if Borrow "put a
wrong construction upon his sympathy" and was led into "a veritable
cul-de-sac of literature," {86b} it was no fault of Bowring's.

Borrow's relations with Dr Bowring continued to be most cordial for
many years, as his letters show. "Pray excuse me for troubling you
with these lines," he writes years later; "I write to you, as usual,
for assistance in my projects, convinced that you will withhold none
which it may be in your power to afford, more especially when by so
doing you will perhaps be promoting the happiness of our fellow-
creatures." This is very significant as indicating the nature of the
relations between the two men.

Borrow was to experience yet another disappointment. A Welsh
bookseller, living in the neighbourhood of Smithfield, commissioned
him to translate into English Elis Wyn's The Sleeping Bard, a book
printed originally in 1703. The bookseller foresaw for the volume a
large sale, not only in England but in Wales; but "on the eve of
committing it to the press, however, the Cambrian-Briton felt his
small heart give way within him. 'Were I to print it,' said he, 'I
should be ruined; the terrible descriptions of vice and torment would
frighten the genteel part of the English public out of its wits, and
I should to a certainty be prosecuted by Sir James Scarlett . . . Myn
Diawl! I had no idea, till I had read him in English, that Elis Wyn
had been such a terrible fellow.'" {87a}

With this Borrow had to be content and retire from the presence of