What’s interesting is that I’m pretty sure the beautiful quote about ghosts that he attributes to Carlyle is actually Borges himself (or at least, when I search for it, all I find is Borges “quoting” it, not any original). So the absence of citing chapter and verse has a little more to it sometimes...

You’re reading an English translation of a spanish paraphrase of something he possibly only read in Spanish translation to begin woth. Here’s the Carlyle quote.

> The English Johnson longed, all his life, to see one; but could not, though he went to Cock Lane, and thence to the church-vaults, and tapped on coffins. Foolish Doctor! Did he never, with the mind's eye as well as with the body's, look round him into that full tide of human Life he so loved; did he never so much as look into Himself? The good Doctor was a Ghost, as actual and authentic as heart could wish; well-nigh a million of Ghosts were travelling the streets by his side. Once more I say, sweep away the illusion of Time; compress the threescore years into three minutes: what else was he, what else are we? Are we not Spirits, that are shaped into a body, into an Appearance; and that fade away again into air and Invisibility? This is no metaphor, it is a simple scientific fact: we start out of Nothingness, take figure, and are Apparitions; round us, as round the veriest spectre, is Eternity; and to Eternity minutes are as years and aeons. Come there not tones of Love and Faith, as from celestial harp-strings, like the Song of beatified Souls? And again, do not we squeak and gibber (in our discordant, screech-owlish debatings and recriminatings); and glide bodeful, and feeble, and fearful; or uproar (poltern), and revel in our mad Dance of the Dead,—till the scent of the morning air summons us to our still Home; and dreamy Night becomes awake and Day? Where now is Alexander of Macedon: does the steel Host, that yelled in fierce battle-shouts at Issus and Arbela, remain behind him; or have they all vanished utterly, even as perturbed Goblins must? Napoleon too, and his Moscow Retreats and Austerlitz Campaigns! Was it all other than the veriest Spectre-hunt; which has now, with its howling tumult that made Night hideous, flitted away?—Ghosts! There are nigh a thousand million walking the Earth openly at noontide; some half-hundred have vanished from it, some half-hundred have arisen in it, ere thy watch ticks once.

It is unlikely that Borges preferred Carlyle in Spanish translation: “He learned to read English before Spanish and did most of his reading as a child in the former language.” [1]

[1] https://www.borges.pitt.edu/sites/default/files/1110.pdf

Actually, Borges disliked translations. He read books in their original languages.

It's true that Borges read books in their original languages, but he also did translations himself and even stated that a translation could improve upon the original--although I doubt that he'd say that his own translations were so-improved.

Thank you! This is great, much appreciated.

I noticed that too, as well as how darn well read Borges is. A true delight of an essay.