(_a_) "As in religion what is bones to philosophy is milk to faith" (pp. iii-iv). (_b_) "A literary man, however, is like a silkworm employed and wrapped up in his own work" (p. 163). After his exposure in _Notes and Queries_ Gyll dropped genealogy, heraldry, and topography as though they were so many living coals. But, though he dreaded the fire, he was still bent on making the world ring with the name of Gyll. Spanish literature, which was at that time cultivated in these islands by such men as Chorley, FitzGerald, Archbishop Trench, Denis Florence Mac-Carthy and Ormsby, seemed to him a promising field in which he should find no dangerous rivals. In the _History of Wraysbury_ (p. 146) he included his own name among the "names of literary and distinguished characters of Wraysbury," and under the date 1860, he mentions his "Translation from the Spanish of Don Guzmán de Alfarache." I presume this was a version of Mateo Alemán's picaresque novel, but I can find no trace of it. At the age of sixty-four the extraordinary Gyll furbished up the few words of Spanish which he had learned in Mexico thirty-five years earlier, and courageously started as a translator of Cervantes. His versions are the worst ever published in any tongue. But criticism was impotent against his self-complacency. A true literary man, he lived--to use his own happy phrase--"like a silkworm employed and wrapped up in his own work." On the whole his was a prosperous career. Carpers might do their worst, but the solid facts remain. Gyll had practically blotted out the stain of the stationer's shop and the aldermanship; he had obtained permission to write his name with a _y_: he had elbowed his way into county-histories, into Burke's _Landed Gentry_ and into Burke's _General Armory_; he had published such works as, in all probability, the world will never see again. He appreciated these performances to the full, and he revelled in gazing on the south window in Wraysbury Church, of which he writes (_History of Wraysbury_, p. 123): "At the summit are two small openings of painted glass, and in the centre is a quatrefoil in which the letters G. W. J. G. are convoluted.... The play of colours on the monuments when the sun is brilliant, affords a pleasing variegation." What more could the mind of man desire? Gordon Willoughby James Gyll died on April 6, 1878. [111] See p. viii. of Gyll's version: "Dedicated by Cervantes, to his Excellency Don Joseph Moniño, Count of Florida Blanca, Knight of the Grand Cross of the Royal Order of K. Charles III." The fact is, of course, that Gyll translated from _Los seis libros de Galatea_, reprinted in 1784 by Antonio de Sancha with a dedication to Floridablanca. The words--"Dedicated by Cervantes"--are interpolated by Gyll. Floridablanca died in 1808, nearly two hundred years after Cervantes. [112] Evidently a misprint for Silena.