Part 11

BORROW, GEORGE HENRY (1803-1881), English traveller, linguist and author, was born at East Dereham, Norfolk, on the 5th of July 1803, of a middle-class Cornish family. His father was a recruiting officer, and his mother a Norfolk lady of French extraction. From 1816 to 1818 Borrow attended, with no very great profit, the grammar school at Norwich. After leaving school he was articled to a firm of Norwich solicitors, where he neglected the law, but gave a great deal of desultory attention to languages. He was encouraged in these studies by William Taylor, the friend of Southey. On the death of his father, in 1824 he went to London to seek his fortune as a literary adventurer. In 1826 he published a volume of _Romantic Ballads_ translated from the Danish. Engaged by Sir Richard Phillips, the publisher, as a hack-writer at starvation wages, his experiences in London were bitter indeed. His struggles at last became so dire that if he would escape Chatterton's doom, he must leave London and either return to Norwich and share his mother's narrow income, or turn to account in some way the magnificent physical strength with which nature had endowed him. Determining on the latter of these courses, he left London on tramp. As he stood considerably more than 6 ft. in height, was a fairly trained athlete, and had a countenance of extraordinary impressiveness, if not of commanding beauty--Greek in type with a dash of the Hebrew--we may assume that there had never before appeared on the English high-roads so majestic-looking a tramp as he who, on an afternoon in May, left his squalid lodging with bundle and stick to begin life on the roads. Shaping his course to the south-west, he soon found himself on Salisbury Plain. And then his extraordinary adventures began. After a while he became a travelling hedge-smith, and it was while pursuing this avocation that he made the acquaintance of the splendid road-girl, born at Long Melford workhouse, whom he has immortalized under the name of Isopel Berners. He was now brought much into contact with the gipsies, and this fact gave him the most important subject-matter for his writings. For picturesque as is Borrow's style, it is this subject-matter of his, the Romany world of Great Britain, which--if his pictures of that world are true--will keep his writings alive. Now that the better class of gipsies are migrating so rapidly to America that scarcely any are left in England, Borrow's pictures of them are challenged as being too idealistic. It is unfortunate that no one who knew Borrow, and the gryengroes or horse-dealers with whom he associated, and whom he depicted, has ever written about him and them. Full of "documents" as is Dr Knapp's painstaking biography, it cannot be said to give a vital picture of Borrow and his surroundings during this most interesting period of his life. It is this same peculiar class of gipsies (the gryengroes) with whom the present writer was brought into contact, and he can only refer, in justification of Borrow's descriptions of them, to certain publications of his own, where the whole question is discussed at length, and where he has set out to prove that Borrow's pictures of the section of the English gipsies he knew are not idealized. But there is one great blemish in _all_ Borrow's dramatic scenes of gipsy life, wheresoever they may be laid. This was pointed out by the gentleman who "read" _Zincali_ for Mr Murray, the publisher:--

"The dialogues are amongst the best parts of the book; but in several of them the tone of the speakers, of those especially who are in humble life, is too correct and elevated, and therefore out of character. This takes away from their effect. I think it would be very advisable that Mr Borrow should go over them with reference to this point, simplifying a few of the terms of expression and introducing a few contractions--_don'ts, can'ts_, &c. This would improve them greatly."

It is the same with his pictures of the English gipsies. The reader has only to compare the dialogues between gipsies given in that photographic study of Romany life, _In Gipsy Tents_, by F.H. Groome, with the dialogues in _Lavengro_ and _The Romany Rye_, to see how the illusion in Borrow's narrative is disturbed by the uncolloquial locutions of the speakers. It is true, no doubt, that all Romanies, especially perhaps the English and Hungarian, have a passion for the use of high-sounding words, and the present writer has shown this in his remarks upon the Czigany Czindol, who is said to have taught the Czigany language to the archduke Joseph, often called the "Gipsy Archduke." But after all allowance is made for this racial peculiarity, Borrow's presentation of it considerably weakens our belief in Mr and Mrs Petulengro, Ursula, and the rest, to find them using complex sentences and bookish words which, even among English people, are rarely heard in conversation. As to the deep impression that Borrow made upon his gipsy friends, that is partly explained by the singular nobility of his appearance, for the gipsies of all countries are extremely sensitive upon matters of this kind. The silvery whiteness of the thick crop of hair which Borrow retained to the last seemed to add in a remarkable way to the nobility of his hairless face, but also it gave to the face a kind of strange look "not a bit like a Gorgio's," to use the words of one of his gipsy friends. Moreover, the shy, defiant, stand-off way which Borrow assumed in the company of his social equals left him entirely when he was with the gipsies. The result of this was that these wanderers knew him better than did his own countrymen.

Seven years after the events recorded in _Lavengro_ and _The Romany Rye_ Borrow obtained the post of agent to the Bible Society, in which capacity he visited St Petersburg (1833-1835) (where he published _Targum_, a collection of translations), and Spain, Portugal and Morocco (1835-1839). From 1837 to 1839 he acted as correspondent to the _Morning Herald_. The result of these travels and adventures was the publication, in 1841, of _Zincali, or The Gypsies in Spain_, the original MS. of which, in the hands of the present writer, shows how careful was Borrow's method of work. In 1843 appeared _The Bible in Spain_, when suddenly Borrow became famous. Every page of the book glows with freshness, picturesqueness and vivacity. In 1840 he married Mary Clarke, the widow of a naval officer, and permanently settled at Oulton Broad, near Lowestoft, with her and her daughter. Here he began to write again. Very likely Borrow would never have told the world about his vagabond life in England as a hedge-smith had not _The Bible in Spain_ made him famous as a wanderer. _Lavengro_ appeared in 1851 with a success which, compared with that of _The Bible in Spain_, was only partial. He was much chagrined at this, and although _Lavengro_ broke off in the midst of a scene in the Dingle, and only broke off there because the three volumes would hold no more, it was not until 1857 that he published the sequel, _The Romany Rye_. In 1844 he travelled in south-eastern Europe, and in 1854 he made a tour with his step-daughter in Wales. This tour he described in _Wild Wales_, published in 1862. In 1874 he brought out a volume of ill-digested material upon the Romany tongue, _Romano Lavo-lil, or Word-book of the Gypsy Language_, a book which has been exhaustively analysed and criticized by Mr John Sampson. In the summer of 1874 he left London, bade adieu to Mr Murray and a few friends, and returned to Oulton. On the 26th of July 1881 he was found dead in his house at Oulton, in his seventy-ninth year.

Borrow was indisputably a linguist of wide knowledge, though he was not a scholar in the strict sense. The variety of his attainments is shown by his translation of the Church of England _Homilies_ into Manchu, of the Gospel of St Luke into the Git dialect of the Gitanos, of _The Sleeping Bard_ from the Cambrian-British, and of _Bluebeard_ into Turkish. But it is not Borrow's linguistic accomplishments that have kept his name fresh, and will continue to keep it fresh for many a generation to come. It is his character, his unique character as expressed, or partially expressed, in his books. Among all the "remarkable individuals" (to use his favourite expression) who during the middle of the 19th century figured in the world of letters, Borrow was surely the most eccentric, the most whimsical, and in many ways the most extraordinary. There was scarcely a point in which he resembled any other writer of his time. With regard to _Lavengro_ and _The Romany Rye_, there has been very much discussion as to how much _Dichtung_ is mingled with the _Wahrheit_ in those fascinating books. Had it not been for the amazingly clumsy pieces of fiction which he threw into the narrative, few readers would have doubted the autobiographical nature of the two books. Such incidents as are here alluded to shed an air of unreality over the whole. It has been said by Dr Knapp that Borrow never created a character, and that to one who thoroughly knows the times and Borrow's writings the originals are easily recognizable. This is true, no doubt, as regards people whom he knew at Norwich, and indeed generally as regards those he knew before the period of his gipsy wanderings. It must not be supposed, however, that such a character as the man who "touched" to avert the evil chance is in any sense a portrait of an individual with whom he had been brought into contact. The character has so many of Borrow's own eccentricities that it might rather be called a portrait of himself. There was nothing that Borrow strove against with more energy than the curious impulse, which he seems to have shared with Dr Johnson, to touch the objects along his path in order to save himself from the evil chance. He never conquered the superstition. In walking through Richmond Park with the present writer he would step out of his way constantly to touch a tree, and he was offended if the friend he was with seemed to observe it. Many of the peculiarities of the man who taught himself Chinese in order to distract his mind from painful thoughts were also Borrow's own. (T. W.-D.)

BORSIPPA (_Barsip_ in the Babylonian and Assyrian inscriptions; _Borsif_ in the Talmud; mod. Birs or Birs-Nimrud), the Greek name of an ancient city about 15 m. S.W. of Babylon and 10 m. from Hillah, on the Nahr Hindieh, or Hindieh canal, formerly known as "the Euphrates of Borsippa," and even during the Arabic period called "the river of Birs." Borsippa was the sister city of Babylon, and is often called in the inscriptions Babylon II., also the "city without equal." Its patron god was Nebo or Nabu. Like Babylon Borsippa is not mentioned in the oldest inscriptions, but comes into importance first after Khammurabi had made Babylon the capital of the whole land, somewhere before 2000 B.C. He built or rebuilt the temple E-Zida at this place, dedicating it, however, to Marduk (Bel-Merodach). But although Khammurabi himself does not seem to have honoured Nebo (q.v.), subsequent kings recognized him as the deity of E-Zida and made him the son of Marduk (q.v.). Each new year his image was taken to visit his father, in Babylon, who in his turn gave him escort homeward, and his temple was second in wealth and importance only to E-Saggila, the temple of Marduk in Babylon. As with Babylon, so with Borsippa, the time of Nebuchadrezzar was the period of its greatest prosperity. In general Borsippa shared the fate of Babylon, falling into decay after the time of Alexander, and finally in the middle ages into ruins. The site of the ancient city is represented by two large ruin mounds. Of these the north-westerly, the lower of the two, but the larger in superficial area, is called Ibrahim Khalil, from a _ziara_, or shrine, of Abraham, the friend of God, which stands on its highest point. According to Arabic lore, based on Jewish legends, at this spot Nimrod sought to throw Abraham into a fiery furnace, from which he was saved by the grace of God. Excavations were first conducted here by the French Expedition Scientifique en Mesopotamie in 1852, with small result. In 1879 and 1880 Hormuzd Rassam conducted more extensive, although unsystematic, excavations in this mound, finding a considerable quantity of inscribed tablets and the like, now in the British Museum; but by far the greater part of this ruin still remains unexplored. The south-westerly mound, the Birs proper, is probably the most conspicuous and striking ruin in all Irak. On the top of a hill over 100 ft. high rises a pointed mass of vitrified brick split down the centre, over 40 ft. high, about which lie huge masses of vitrified brick, some as much as 15 ft. in diameter, and also single enamelled bricks, generally bearing an inscription of Nebuchadrezzar, twisted, curled and broken, apparently by great heat. Jewish and Arabic tradition makes this the Tower of Babel, which was supposed to have been destroyed by lightning. Excavations conducted here by Sir Henry Rawlinson in 1854 showed it to be the stage tower or _ziggurat_, called the "house of the seven divisions of heaven and earth," of E-Zida, the temple of Nebo. On a large platform rose seven solid terraces, each smaller than the one below it, the lowest being 272 ft. square and 26 ft. high. Each of these terraces was faced with bricks of a different colour. The approach to this _ziggurat_ was toward the north-east, and on this side lay also the principal rooms of the temple of which this was the tower. These rooms were partly excavated by Hormuzd Rassam in 1879-1880. In its final form this temple and tower were the work of Nebuchadrezzar, but from the clay cylinders found by Sir Henry Rawlinson in two of the corners of the tower it appears that he restored an incomplete _ziggurat_ of a former king, "which was long since fallen into decay." Some of the best authorities believe that it was this ambitious but incomplete and ruinous _ziggurat_, existing before the time of Nebuchadrezzar, which gave occasion to or afforded local attachment for the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel.

AUTHORITIES.--H.C. Rawlinson, _Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society_ (1860); J. Oppert, _Expedition scientifique en Mesopotamie_ (Paris, 1863); F. Delitzsch, _Wo lag das Paradies?_ (Leipzig, 1881); J.P. Peters, _Nippur_ (New York and London, 1896); H. Rassam, _Asshur and the Land of Nimrod_ (London and New York, 1897); M. Jastrow, _Religion of Babylonia and Assyria_ (Boston, 1898); see also BABYLON, BABEL. (J. P. Pe.)

BORT, or BOART, an inferior kind of diamond, unfit for cutting but useful as an abrasive agent. The typical bort occurs in small spherical masses, of greyish colour, rough or drusy on the surface, and showing on fracture a radiate crystalline structure. These masses, known in Brazil as bolas, are often called "shot bort" or "round bort." Much of the bort consists of irregular aggregates of imperfect crystals. In trade, the term bort is extended to all small and impure diamonds, and crystalline fragments of diamond, useless as gem-stones. A large proportion of the output of some of the South African mines consists of such material. This bort is crushed in steel mortars to form diamond powder, which is largely used in lapidaries' work.

BORY DE SAINT-VINCENT, JEAN BAPTISTE GEORGE MARIE (1780-1846), French naturalist, was born at Agen in 1780. He was sent as naturalist with Captain Nicholas Baudin's expedition to Australia in 1798, but left the vessel at Mauritius, and spent two years in exploring Reunion and other islands. Joining the army on his return, he was present at the battles of Ulm and Austerlitz, and in 1808 went to Spain with Marshal Soult. His attachment to the Napoleonic dynasty and dislike to the Bourbons were shown in various ways during 1815, and his name was consequently placed on the list of the proscribed; but after wandering in disguise from place to place he was allowed quietly to return to Paris in 1820. In 1829 he was placed at the head of a scientific expedition to the Morea, and in 1839 he had charge of the exploration of Algeria. He died on the 23rd of December 1846. He was editor of the _Dictionnaire classique d'histoire naturelle_, and among his separate productions were:--_Essais sur les Iles Fortunees_ (1802); _Voyage dans les Iles d'Afrique_ (1803); _Voyage souterrain, ou description du plateau de Saint-Pierre de Maestricht et de ses vastes cryptes_ (1821); _L'Homme, essai zoologique sur le genre humain_ (1827); _Resume de la geographie de la Peninsule_ (1838).

BORZHOM, a watering-place of Russian Transcaucasia, in the government of Tiflis, and 93 m. by rail W. of the city of Tiflis. Pop. (1897) 5800. It is situated at an altitude of 2750 ft. in the Borzhom gorge, a narrow rift in the Little Caucasus mountains, and on the Kura. Its warm climate, its two hot springs (71-1/2 deg.-82 deg. Fahr.) and its beautiful parks make it a favourite summer resort, and give it its popular name of "the pearl of Caucasus." The bottled mineral waters are very extensively exported.

BOS, LAMBERT (1670-1717), Dutch scholar and critic, was born at Workum in Friesland, where his father was headmaster of the school. He went to the university of Franeker (suppressed by Napoleon in 1811), and was appointed professor of Greek there in 1704; after an uneventful life he died at Franeker in 1717. His most famous work, _Ellipses Graecae_ (1702), was translated into English by John Seager (1830); and his _Antiquitates Graecae_ (1714) passed through several editions. He also published _Vetus Testamentum_, Ex Versione lxx. Interpretum (1709); notes on Thomas Magister (1698); _Exercitationes Philologicae_ (1700); _Animadversiones ad Scriptores quosdam Graecos_ (1715); and two small treatises on Accents and Greek Syntax.

BOSA, a seaport and episcopal see on the W. coast of Sardinia, in the province of Cagliari, 30 m. W. of Macomer by rail. Pop. (1901) 6846. The height above the town is crowned by a castle of the Malaspina family. The cathedral, founded in the 12th century, restored in the 15th, and rebuilt in 1806, is fine. There are some tanneries, and the fishing industry is important, but the coral production of Sicily has entirely destroyed that of Bosa since 1887. The district produces oil and wine. The present town of Bosa was founded in 1112 by the Malaspina, 1-1/2 m. from the site of the ancient town (Bosa or Calmedia), where a well-preserved church still exists. The old town is of Roman origin, but is only mentioned by Pliny and Ptolemy, and as a station on the coast-road in the Itineraries (_Corp. Inscr. Lat._ x. 7939 seq.). One of the inscriptions preserved in the old cathedral records the erection of four silver statues, of Antoninus Pius, his wife Faustina and their two sons.

BOSBOOM-TOUSSAINT, ANNA LOUISA GEERTRUIDA (1812-1886), Dutch novelist, was born at Alkmaar in north Holland on the 16th of September 1812. Her father, named Toussaint, a local chemist of Huguenot descent, gave her a fair education, and at an early period of her career she developed a taste for historical research, fostered, perhaps, by a forced indoor life, the result of weak health. In 1851 she married the Dutch painter, Johannes Bosboom (1817-1891), and thereafter was known as Mrs Bosboom-Toussaint. Her first romance, _Almagro_, appeared in 1837, followed by the _Graaf van Devonshire_ (_The Earl of Devonshire_) in 1838; the _Engelschen te Rome_ (_The English at Rome_) in 1840, and _Het Huis Lauernesse (The House of Lauernesse_) in 1841, an episode of the Reformation, translated into many European languages. These stories, mainly founded upon some of the most interesting epochs of Dutch history, betrayed a remarkable grasp of facts and situations, combined with an undoubted mastery over her mother tongue, though her style is sometimes involved, and not always faultless. Ten years (1840-1850) were mainly devoted to further studies, the result of which was revealed in 1851-1854, when her _Leycester in Nederland_ (3 vols.), _Vrouwen van het Leycestersche Tydperk (Women of Leicester's Epoch_, 3 vols.), and _Gideon Florensz_ (3 vols.) appeared, a series dealing with Robert Dudley's adventures in the Low Countries. After 1870 Mrs Bosboom-Toussaint abandoned historical romance for the modern society novel, but her _Delftsche Wonderdokter (The Necromancer of Delft_, 1871, 3 vols.) and _Majoor Frans_ (1875, 3 vols.) did not command the success of her earlier works. _Major Frank_ has been translated into English (1885). She died at the Hague on the 13th of April 1886. Her novels have been published there in a collected edition (1885-1888, 25 vols.).

BOSC, LOUIS AUGUSTIN GUILLAUME (1759-1828), French naturalist, was born at Paris on the 29th of January 1759. He was educated at the college of Dijon, where he showed a taste for botany, and he followed up his studies in Paris at the Jardin des Plantes, where he made the acquaintance of Mme M.J.P. Roland. At the age of eighteen he obtained a government appointment, and he rose to be one of the chief officials in the postal department. Under the ministry of J.M. Roland in 1792 he also held the post of superintendent of prisons, but the violent outbreaks of 1793 drove him from office, and compelled him to take refuge in flight. For some months he lay concealed at Sainte-Radegonde, in the forest of Montmorency, barely subsisting on roots and vegetables. He was enabled to return to Paris on the fall of Robespierre, and under the title _Appel a l'impartiale posterite par la citoyenne Roland_ published a manuscript Mme Roland had entrusted to him before her execution. Soon afterwards he set out for America, resolving to explore the natural riches of that country. The immense materials he gathered were never published in a complete form, but much went to enrich the works of B.G.E. de Lacepede, P.A. Latreille and others. After his return, on the establishment of the Directory, he was reinstated in his old office. Of this he was again deprived by the _coup d'etat_ of 1799, and for a time he was in great destitution; but by his copious contributions to scientific literature he contrived to support himself and to lay the foundations of a solid reputation. He was engaged on the new _Dictionnaire d'histoire naturelle_, and on the _Encyclopedie methodique_, he edited the _Dictionnaire raisonne et universel d'agriculture_, and was one of the editors of the _Annales de l'agriculture francaise_. He was made inspector of the gardens at Versailles, and of the public nurseries belonging to the ministry of the interior. The last years of his life were devoted to an elaborate work on the vine, for which he had amassed an immense quantity of materials, but his death at Paris on the 10th of July 1828 prevented its completion.