Letters of George Borrow to the British and Foreign Bible SocietyBorrow, George
Religion
Letters of George Borrow to the British and Foreign Bible Society
Borrow, George
Authors, English -- 19th century -- Correspondence; British and Foreign Bible Society; English letters
Now permit me to propose a very important question to you. What is to be
done with the volumes when the work shall have passed through the press?
As I am sure you will feel at a loss to give a satisfactory answer, allow
me to propose the only plan which appears feasible. Believe me when I
say that it is not the result of a few moments' cogitation. I have mused
on it much and often. I mused on it when off Cape Finisterre in the
tempest, in the cut-throat passes of the Morena, and on the plains of La
Mancha, as I jogged along a little way ahead of the smuggler. It is
this.
As soon as the work is printed and bound, I will ride forth from Madrid
into the wildest parts of Spain, where the Word is most wanted, and where
it seems next to an impossibility to introduce it. I will go through the
whole of the Asturias and Galicia, and along the entire line of the
Pyrenees, not forgetting to visit every part of Biscay. To accomplish
this I must have horses and a man to take care of them. To purchase
horses will be much more economical than to hire them, as the hire of an
animal for a journey of only thirty leagues generally amounts to nearly
its full value; the purchase of three horses will not amount to more than
36 pounds, and a servant may be obtained for 9d. per day and his board.
I will take with me 1200 copies, which I will engage to dispose of, for
little or much, to the wild people of the wild regions which I intend to
visit. As for the rest of the edition it must be disposed of, if
possible, in a different way--I may say the usual way; part must be
entrusted to booksellers, part to colporteurs, and a depot must be
established at Madrid. Such work is every person's work, and to any one
may be confided the execution of it; it is a mere affair of trade. What
I wish to be employed in is what, I am well aware, no other individual
will undertake to do: namely, to scatter the Word upon the mountains,
amongst the valleys and the inmost recesses of the worst and most
dangerous parts of Spain, where the people are more fierce, fanatic and,
in a word, Carlist,--parts where bookshops are unknown, and where none of
those means can be resorted to for the spread of the Bible which can be
used in the more civilised portions of the kingdom.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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