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diff --git a/30887-h/30887-h.htm b/30887-h/30887-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a14af8b --- /dev/null +++ b/30887-h/30887-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,958 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>George Borrow, by Thomas Seccombe</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + P.gutsumm { margin-left: 5%;} + P.poetry {margin-left: 3%; } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4, H5 { + text-align: left; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + table { border-collapse: collapse; } +table {margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;} + td { vertical-align: top; border: 1px solid black;} + td p { margin: 0.2em; } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: small; + text-align: right; + font-weight: normal; + color: gray; + } + img { border: none; } + img.dc { float: left; width: 50px; height: 50px; } + div.gapspace { height: 0.8em; } + div.gapline { height: 0.8em; width: 30%; } + div.gapdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 50%; + margin-left: 25%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; margin-left:40%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + .citation {vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none;} + img.floatleft { float: left; + margin-right: 1em; + margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.floatright { float: right; + margin-left: 1em; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.clearcenter {display: block; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em} + --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg eBook, George Borrow, by Thomas Seccombe, Edited by +James Thursfield + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: George Borrow + Times Literary Supplement, 10th July 1903 + + +Author: Thomas Seccombe + +Editor: James Thursfield + +Release Date: January 7, 2010 [eBook #30887] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GEORGE BORROW*** +</pre> +<p>Transcribed from the July 10th, 1903, Times Literary +Supplement by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p> +<h1><!-- page 213--><a name="page213"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 213</span>GEORGE BORROW. <a +name="citation213a"></a><a href="#footnote213a" +class="citation">[213a]</a></h1> +<p>It is a singular coincidence, perhaps, that during one and the +same summer we should be celebrating centenaries of Samuel Pepys +and George Borrow. Pepys died in the early summer of 1703; +Borrow was born in July, 1803. Unlike each other in almost +every respect, they are <i>dui palor</i>, <a +name="citation213b"></a><a href="#footnote213b" +class="citation">[213b]</a> as Borrow would say, in one very +material point. The reputation of each of them has risen to +such a point that, except for injudicious and exaggerated praise, +it can have little to fear in the future; and in each case this +reputation is based primarily upon autobiography. Among the +world’s autobiographers the author of +“Lavengro” is entitled, we feel sure, to rank with +St. Augustine, Cellini, Pepys, Rousseau, Franklin; and, for +truthfulness, it is very probable, if we could only estimate it +properly, that he would have to be put at the top of the +class. His nearest competitor in this respect would +undoubtedly be Pepys, and the veracity in both cases not the +result of a double share of innate truthfulness, but very largely +an accident, due to lack of invention and an absence of that +powerful literary style which in the case of a Leigh Hunt or a +Stevenson distorts everything that passes through it. In +Pepys the malignity of the literary fairy is more than +compensated by the worthy secretary’s insatiable appetite +for life; in Borrow by the <i>wanderlust</i> or extraordinary +passion and faculty for adventure, which makes his best books +such an ambrosial hash of sorcery, Jews, Gentiles, gipsies, +prisons, half-in-halves, <i>cosas de España</i>—what +you will.</p> +<p>George Henry Borrow, to give him for once his full baptismal +name, was born at East Dereham, “a beautiful little town in +the western division of Norfolk,” on July 5, 1803. +His father, who came of an old Cornish family, was in his +forty-fifth year when Borrow was born, having married ten years +previously Anne Perfrement, of a family which had migrated from +Dauphiné in the days of Dutch William. The father +was captain in a marching regiment, the West Norfolk +Militia. Like Sterne’s therefore, Borrow’s +early life was nomadic, and his school-life was broken between +Edinburgh, Clonmel, and Norwich. But his real mentors were +found in this last city, where he came in contact with a French +<i>emigré</i> named d’Éterville. Here, +too, he fell under the influence of “godless Billy” +Taylor, and dreamt of writing plays and poems and abusing +religion. Here, too, while he ought to have been studying +law, he was claiming acquaintance with gipsies, bruisers, and +shady characters, such as the notorious Thurtell. A more +dangerous influence to Borrow than any, perhaps, was that of Sir +John Bowring, a plausible polyglot, who deliberately used his +facility in acquiring and translating tongues as a ladder to an +administrative post abroad. Borrow, as was perhaps natural, +put a wrong construction upon his sympathy, and his apparently +disinterested ambition to leave no poetic fragment in Russian, +Swedish, Polish, Servian, Bohemian, or Hungarian unrendered into +English. He determined to emulate a purpose so lofty in its +detachment, and the mistake cost him dear, for it led him for +long years into a veritable <i>cul de sac</i> of literature; it +led also to the accentuation of that pseudo-philological mania +which played such havoc with the ordinary development of rational +ideas in a man in many respects so sane as Borrow.</p> +<p>An entirely erroneous belief in the marketable value of Danish +ballads, Welsh triads, Russian folk-songs, and the like in rococo +English translations after the Bowring pattern led Borrow to +exchange an attorney’s office for a garret in +Grub-street. His immediate ambition was something between +Goldsmith’s and Chatterton’s ballads, Homeric odes, +epics, plays; he was, at all hazards, to write something +grand—“to be stared at, lifted on peoples’ +shoulders.” He found his Griffiths in Sir Richard +Phillips, the radical alderman and philanthropic sweater, under +whose tender mercies he rapidly developed a suicidal tendency, +until in May, 1825, a windfall of £20 enabled him to break +his chain and escape to the highway and the dingle and the +picturesque group of moochers and gipsies enshrined for ever in +the pages of “Lavengro.” The central portion of +this marvellous composition is occupied by the Dingle episode, in +which Lavengro (the “word-master,” Borrow’s +gipsy name for himself) is revealed to us in conflict with +“the flaming Tinman” and in colloquy with his Romany +friend, Jasper Petulengro, with a subtle papistical propagandist, +“the man in black,” with the typical gipsy chi, +Ursula, and with the peerless Isopel Berners. His account +of his relations with her we take to be strictly and almost +literally accurate. He was powerfully attracted by the +magnanimity of spirit no less than by the physical charm of this +Brynhildic damsel, tall, straight, and blonde, with loose-flowing +flaxen hair, and with a carriage, especially of the neck and +shoulders, which reminded the postilion of a certain marchioness +of his acquaintance. But Borrow was of a cold temperament, +a despiser and mistruster of young women, whom he regarded +primarily as invaluable repositories of nursery lore, folk-song, +tradition, and similar toys, about which his male friends were +apt to be reticent. The attraction was so strong that he +had serious thoughts of emigrating with “the beauteous +Queen of the Dingle,” but he dallied with the idea with +characteristic waywardness until it was too late. He sought +to postpone awkward decisions, to divert himself and amuse Isopel +by making his charmer learn Armenian—the language which he +happened at the time to be studying. Isopel bore with it +for some time, but the imposition of the verb “to +love” in Armenian convinced her that the word-master was +not only insane, but also inhuman. Love-making and Armenian +do not go well together, and Belle could not feel that the man +who proposed to conjugate the verb “to love” in +Armenian was master of his intentions in plain English. It +was even so. The man of tongues lacked speech wherewith to +make manifest his passion; the vocabulary of the word-master was +insufficient to convince the workhouse girl of one of the +plainest meanings a man can well have. When the distracted +Borrow had reached the decision that it was high time to give +over his “mocking and scoffing,” and returned with +this resolve to the dingle, Isopel Berners had quitted it, never +to return. She ran away to the nearest sea-port, and took +shipping to America. Lavengro with some anguish steeled his +heart against following her. The scene of these +transactions was a wooded glen or dingle a few miles from +Willenhall, in Staffordshire, where Lavengro and Isopel were +encamped in their respective tents, having as their neighbours +the gipsy clan of which Jasper was the chief. Upon the +whole the Dingle chapters are perhaps the most brilliant and the +most enduring that Borrow ever achieved. Their interest is +greatly enhanced by the fact that they are probably a naked +transcript from actual fact, for Borrow was a poor hand at +invention. He rarely, if ever, invented a character. +His surest source of inspiration was the unadorned truth.</p> +<p>After the experience of a summer in the open, Borrow, who was +now twenty-two, relapsed into the indifferent versification of +Danish ballads and Welsh bards, was severely fleeced in obscure +journeyings in Southern Europe, and so gained some experience for +future use, vainly sought a post, on the strength of his +linguistic attainments, as an assistant in the British Museum +Library, and was reduced to writing reactionary political leaders +for a Norwich paper; he was, in fact, waiting, like Mr. Micawber, +for something to turn up, or, in his own graphic phrase, +“digging holes in the sand and filling them up +again.”</p> +<p>His deliverance was effected in rather a singular +manner. About 1833 he became acquainted with the Skeppers +of Oulton Hall, in that pleasant stretch of country which borders +on the river Waveney. By Mrs. Clarke (afterwards Mrs. +Borrow), the widowed sister of the owner of the Hall, he was +introduced to the Rev. Francis Cunningham, rector of Pakefield, a +fine type of the Evangelical clergyman of a past generation, who +had married the sister of Joseph John Gurney. It seemed to +this good man that Borrow’s gift of tongues might well be +employed in the service of the Bible Society, of which the famous +Norfolk Quaker was an influential member. The hour of the +former would-be martyr to infidelity had now come; he was taken +into the regular service of the society upon an average salary of +about £250, in addition to expenses, and was employed as +editor, translator, and colporteur of Bibles in strange +lands. The labours of the next eight years of his life were +as fruitful and honourable as those of the preceding eight had +been desultory and obscure. His first commission was to go +to St. Petersburg and there edit and superintend the setting up +and printing of Lipóftsof’s version of the New +Testament into Manchu. Borrow acquired the language and +performed his task with an almost incredible expedition. He +also learned Russian, and in the summer of 1835 proposed to the +society that he should himself distribute the work which he had +seen through the press upon the confines of the Far East. +This scheme was scotched by the refusal of the Russian Government +to grant him the necessary authorization and passports. But +Borrow’s energies were transferred to a project which +scarcely, if at all, less deserves the epithet Quixotic. It +was to disseminate a Castilian translation of the Vulgate (made +by Father Scio at Valencia between 1790 and 1793) in Spain and +Portugal. To disperse Bibles in Papua or in Park-lane were, +it might be argued, an enterprise fully as hopeful as to scatter +them in Galicia or La Mancha; but this is neither here nor there, +and the stimulus that was lacking in other directions was +abundantly supplied to the society and their emissary by the fact +that, according to the <i>regla quinta</i> of the old Index, all +Spanish versions of the Bible or of any part of it were +absolutely forbidden, and that as a necessary consequence the +Bible was a book as unfamiliar in Spain as it was held to be +dangerous and revolutionary. Spain was to Borrow what the +Harley Ministry was to Swift. It seemed to develop in him +an almost superhuman activity and power; and, fond of cant as +Borrow’s employers too often were, it is infinitely to +their credit that they not only tolerated but even applauded the +unconventional epistles which he wrote to them of his exploits +during his three long journeys in Spain, which with two brief +intervals occupied him from November, 1835, down to April, +1840. These letters with the addition of a few chapters and +a number of insignificant changes made up “The Bible in +Spain,” which was published by John Murray on December 10, +1812, when “El Gitano,” as the enthusiastic Ford +dubbed the author, literally woke up to find himself +famous. His experience for a season was that of “the +man Sterne”; he dined with peers, Ambassadors, and Bishops, +and, like Major Pendennis, was particularly complacent with +Bishops. We might here for a moment compare his position to +that of Johnson in 1763. He had gone down into the arena +and fought his wild beasts, and had come up triumphant, as +Johnson had done after the Dictionary. He still had +difficulties to meet and debts to face, for he had gradually +become estranged from “the sub-committee,” and the +Bible Society suddenly found that “no sphere remained open +in which his services could be utilized.” +Fortunately, he had provided for his future, not by obtaining a +pension, but by marrying, in April, 1840, an old ally of his, +Mary Clarke, a widow with a good jointure (over £400 a +year), a skilful hand at dumplings and treacle posset, and +“an excellent woman of business.” He was now +fifteen years older than when he had “lost” +Isopel. The motives which prompted this scorner of +matrimony to marry a woman seven or eight years his senior were +similar, it may be surmised, to those which actuated Disraeli on +his marriage. The compact was based upon convenience and +mutual esteem, and there is no reason to doubt that it conduced +not only to Borrow’s comfort and security, but also to his +happiness. There were no children. The +“daughter” whose accomplishments Borrow celebrated in +the exordium to “Wild Wales” was his stepdaughter, +Henrietta Clarke. He seemed now in an enviable position, +with a small but agreeable freehold on the banks of Oulton Broad, +able to indulge in “idleness and the pride of +literature” to his heart’s content. If he had +had a “club” or a Boswell about him, he might still +have been tolerably happy. But he was not a clubbable man, +Borrow! Nevertheless it was during the years that followed +that, like Johnson, he achieved his best title to fame, the +wondrous five volumes of autobiography so capriciously planned +and so strangely entitled “Lavengro—Romany +Rye.” The stimulus in his case was largely, we +believe, if not mainly, pecuniary. “Money is our best +friend” he wrote to his wife in 1844. He wanted a +purse of his own to travel and give dinners with, for the edge of +episcopal hospitality was already wearing off. He desired +too, no doubt, to put a coping stone to his fame. Already +in January, 1843, he wrote to his publisher that he had begun +upon a Robinson Borrow, and Murray, Ford, and other friends threw +up their caps. The publisher may have well seen a veritable +gold mine in prospect. One has only to imagine the fervent +curiosity which the personal element in “The Bible in +Spain,” so suggestive of mystery and romance, must have +exalted in the reading public of 1843, to perceive that any such +anticipation was fully warranted by the facts of the case. +Here was a book which bore upon its title-page its passport to +Sunday reading as a good, serious, missionary work, but for which +it was manifest, as the surprised and delighted reader proceeded, +that not Bishop Heber or the good Schwartz, but Mendoza and +Lesage had been taken as models. May not people well have +wondered (the good, pious English folk, to whom +“luck” was a scandal, as the Bible Society’s +secretary wrote to Borrow) what manner of man this +muleteer-missionary might be? The incongruity was only +heightened by familiarity with Borrow’s Pharaoh-like +visage, abundant grey hair, and tall blonde Scandinavian figure, +which reminded those who came under his spell of those roving +Northmen of the days of simple medieval devotion, who were wont +to signalize their conversion from heathen darkness by a +Mediterranean venture, combining the characters of a piratical +cruise and a pious pilgrimage. But if publisher and client +were justified in believing that they <!-- page 214--><a +name="page214"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 214</span>had +discovered an autobiographical El Dorado, they were, none the +less, to be sadly undeceived.</p> +<p>To whatever cause the disappointment may be attributed, it was +certainly not due to any lack of pains on the part of Don +Jorge. The labour which he bestowed upon his Life was +immense, quite disproportionate to his previous efforts. +“The Gypsies in Spain,” for instance, was built up +upon already existing jottings, extracts, and notes, very loosely +thrown together; while “The Bible in Spain” itself +was, in regard to its composition, nothing more than an <i>olla +podrida</i> of journalized letters. But he wrote +“Lavengro,” as it were, with his life’s +blood. It cost him the same agony that parts of +“David Copperfield” cost Dickens, while he had none +of Dickens’s trained fluency or descriptive power. +His lack of ease in writing often gives a wrong impression of +insincerity or artificiality. Most of his apostrophes, even +the most strained, are expressions of genuine feeling, which he +was simply incapable of assimilating to the prevailing tone of +the book, that of a <i>novéla picaresca</i>. His +determination to be original and to tell the truth, to avoid all +padding and second-hand ideas, kept him on the rack; yet he +persevered, working hard at the Life with intervals of +discouragement for no less than six years. +“Lavengro” eventually appeared, in three volumes, in +February, 1851, and was received not merely with coldness and +unconcern, but with hostile carping and even derision. The +critics and Borrow pronounced themselves mutually +disillusioned. It was natural that a man like Borrow should +magnify and should misinterpret this unexpected blow.</p> +<p>The attitude of his critics was due to a very complex system +of causes. The English have always been the most +self-complacent of peoples, and 1851 was perhaps the one year in +the whole of our history when this little weakness reached its +climax. The Oxford Movement, with Newman and Ward as its +prophets, had been succeeded by the Manchester Movement, upon +which Cobden and Macaulay had long been busily engaged in +shedding the most brilliant rays of the prevailing Whig optimism; +factories, railways, penny postage, free trade, commercial +expansion, universal peace and plenty, industrial exhibitions, +religious toleration, general education—these were the +watchwords of the day, and all these things alike were repulsive +in the highest degree to George Borrow. He was as +conservative as a gipsy or a tramp, while his hatred of novelty +was worthy of the race among whom <i>Vaya usted con Dios</i>, +<i>y que no haya Novedad</i>! is a common form of +valediction. His hatred of æsthetic culture, of +sentimental toleration, and of the modern woman amounted to a +positive mania. Of the great writers of his own century he +never spoke unless it were to condemn, as in the case of Scott, +Wordsworth, Thackeray, and Keats, of whom he once asked, +“Have they not been trying to resuscitate him?” +In his conversations with Agnes Strickland and Miss Cobbe, as +recorded by the latter, he appears to have behaved like an +escaped lunatic, while, upon the occasion of his meeting with +Anna Gurney, we know that he literally took to flight and ran +without stopping from Sheringham to the Old Tucker’s Inn at +Cromer. An interview with Mrs. Browning or George Eliot +would have probably driven him stark staring mad. Another +stumbling block to the critics of 1851 was the peculiar dryness, +if we may so describe it, of Borrow’s style. He could +respond to the thrill of natural beauty. He could enjoy and +find utterance for his mood when it came upon him, just as he +could enjoy a tankard of old ale or linger to gaze upon a +sympathetic face; but he refused to pamper such feelings, still +more to simulate them; he refused to allow himself to become the +creature of literary or poetic ecstasy; he refused to indulge in +the fashionable debauch of <i>dilettante</i> melancholy. +His life was in many ways the reverse of normal, but he insisted +in writing about it quite naturally, “as if there were +nothing in it.” It is perfectly true, then; Borrow is +dry. What needs to be appreciated is that his dryness is +not that of dry rot, but the dryness of high elevation, of a +somewhat solitary and craggy humour—the dryness of +“Robinson Crusoe,” of “Gil Blas,” of +“Hadji Baba,” and, we might add, of “Don +Quixote.” There is an absence of verdure. You +will not find much sentiment in Borrow. As to +word-painting, picturesque glamour and deference to the +prejudices of earnest people, a quality so dearly prized by +Englishmen of every rank and period, Borrow would have none of +them. You will find none of them in his works; but you will +find “part of the secret, brother,” especially in the +Dingle. For there Borrow is at his best, in the open air, +among the gipsies—with Jasper, Pakomovna, Tawno, Ursula, +the Man in Black, and Belle Berners, interlocutors in dialogues +of the greenwood unrivalled since the heyday of the forest of +Arden. Once more “Lavengro” badly belied the +expectations of those who were looking out for another +“Eothen”; and finally, apart the author’s +objectionable and reactionary prejudices, there were other and +obvious faults about the book (mainly of literary detail, style, +and arrangement) which were abundantly manifest to the strenuous +critics of 1851. What these gentry did not perceive was the +unique character of the book—its truth, its reality, its +open-air quality, its distinctive humour, its dramatic power, the +genius which revealed to Borrow instinctively the literary form +and the picaresque manner which formed the right, nay the +inevitable, setting of the particular story that he had to +tell.</p> +<p>Borrow’s previous success only served to emphasize the +bitterness of his defeat, for so he regarded the failure of his +originality to carry his darling “Lavengro” through +the breakers. He complained that he had “had the +honour” of being rancorously abused by every unmanly +scoundrel, every sycophantic lackey, and every political and +religious renegade in the kingdom. His fury was that of an +angry bull tormented by gnats. His worst passions were +aroused, his most violent prejudices confirmed. But the +abuse did not divert him by a hairbreadth from his preconceived +plan. He proceeded with deliberation to carry on in +“The Romany Rye” the story so abruptly suspended at +the close of the hundredth chapter of +“Lavengro.” The first chapters of “The +Romany Rye” (which was not actually published until May, +1857) are quite equal to anything that Borrow ever wrote. +The book falls off a little towards the close, which is, if +possible, even more abrupt and inconclusive than that of +“Lavengro” itself. In the appendix, the +bigotries, hatreds, and centrifugal propensities which made up +the George Borrow of 1850–57 were emphasized and underlined +for the benefit of the flunkeys, vipers, and “yahoos” +who had dared to asperse his autobiography. He never +carried his story on from 1825 to 1832 or wrote the once +projected “Bible in Russia”; perhaps he never meant +to do so; but, even if he had, we more than doubt whether they +would have approached in value the first 116 chapters of his +immortal autobiography. His remaining work was the detailed +journal of a vacation tour in “Wild Wales,” which was +in no way inferior to its predecessors in literary value, though +it is considerably below them in general interest. Wild +people and old word-music, in its “native wood-notes +wild,” were a passion with Borrow to the last, and helped +to save him from himself. He suffered terribly from horror +of death, religious gloom (“the horrors”), +solitariness, and disappointment. He experienced a series +of rebuffs, failing in succession to obtain a Consulship, a seat +on the quorum, employment in China, and a manuscript-hunting +mission from the British Museum. His unrivalled +qualifications as a linguist failed to obtain for him posts for +which he was eminently fitted, but to which he saw inferior men +preferred. If a roving commission or an administrative post +could have been found for him abroad, by preference in the East +as he himself desired, hard work might have gone far to exorcise +his melancholy, and we might have had from his pen contributions +to the study of Eastern life that would have added lustre to a +group of writers already represented in England by Curzon and +Kinglake, Lane and Morier, Palgrave and Burton. With +Burton’s love of roving adventure, of strange tongues, and +of anthropology in its widest sense, the author of “The +Bible in Spain” had many points in common. As it was, +with brief intervals of solitary excursion in the “Celtic +fringe” or the Near East, Borrow remained glooming at home, +working himself up into a state of nervous excitement bordering +upon dementia about a neighbour’s dog or a railway +bisecting his wife’s land. The gloom, of course, was +not chronic. There were days upon which he was himself +again, the old George Borrow. Generally speaking, his days +and years were passed in a moody inactivity, now at Oulton, then +at Yarmouth, next in London, finally at Oulton again, where he +“died, as he had lived, alone” on July 26, +1881. It seemed for the time as if he had outlived his +reputation. Appearances are proverbially deceptive.</p> +<p>George Borrow’s life and works are one and the same +thing. Few great writers have been more persistently +autobiographical than Borrow was. Boswell, said Johnson +once, had only two subjects, Dr. Johnson and James Boswell, and +he, the Doctor, was heartily sick of both; but Borrow had only +one subject—himself, from which he practically never +wandered. The merry gests and marvellous exploits of the +incomparable George Borrow—these form the unique theme of +our Gitano Crusoe. But it is not enough to say that +Borrow’s autobiographical methods are unique. His +life is presented to us in four panels, each as unlike the others +as it is possible to be in size, shape, texture, and +surface. The scale varies as much as that of an ordnance +map, sometimes 25 inches to the mile, at others five miles to the +inch. The colours upon the palette are artfully changed, +details are sometimes obtruded, at others significantly +hidden. A casual glance obscures rather than reveals the +fact that, whether he is writing of his early life and struggles +(“Lavengro,” i.–lviii.), of one vivid Bohemian +episode of his early manhood +(“Lavengro”—“Romany Rye”), of the +crowning triumph of his maturity (“Bible in Spain”), +or of a vacation tour during the autumn of a disappointed life +(“Wild Wales”), Borrow was always working upon the +same model, with the same desperate and conscientious zeal, with +the same extraordinary gust and vigour, with the same genius, the +same bias, the same limitations.</p> +<p>As a man of letters he must be judged primarily as a +biographer, and, if this be done, it will be found that Borrow +has achieved the great object of biography; he has transmitted a +great personality. The blemishes in his work are not +particularly hard to find. Inadvertently we may have been +betrayed into indicating one or two of them. But it is not +by any means safe ground. With the exception of Jane Austen +(and temporarily speaking, perhaps Charles Dickens) there is +hardly any literary character whom it is so dangerous to approach +without passports and periphrases (securing retreat, if +necessary) and plentiful kow-tows as George Borrow. Among +all literary clansmen you shall hardly find one more implacable, +more fierce, or more blindly fanatical than your Borrovian. +Charles Lamb is almost the only author we can think of (out of +Scotland) who is worshipped by his admirers with quite the same +canine sort of affection. But the cult of Lamb is +restricted largely to briefless Templars, to University men and +“Oxford M.A.’s”; the Borrovian is drawn from a +lower social stratum, from printers, librarians, booksellers, and +others who seldom read books, from indexers, dictionary makers, +and such harmless drudges of literature. To men of such +close and restricted horizons the breath of the Romany Rye is as +that of “the wind on the heath, brother.” Hence +the stern and unbending jealousy of their cult. Real +literary enthusiasts of advanced years are almost as rare in our +streets as elderly naval men of the peculiar type discovered by +Mr. Gilbert. Yet a chance word in a London thoroughfare has +before now elicited this ingenuous confession of faith: +“I’d walk any distance to see anything belonging to +George Borrow or to read anything fresh of his. Lord bless +you, I almost worship that man!”</p> +<h2>Footnotes:</h2> +<p><a name="footnote213a"></a><a href="#citation213a" +class="footnote">[213a]</a> It was not the policy of the +Times Literary Supplement to give the name of the author. +For completeness the author is Thomas Seccombe, and the editor of +the TLS. at the time was James Thursfield.—DP.</p> +<p><a name="footnote213b"></a><a href="#citation213b" +class="footnote">[213b]</a> Two brothers. See +“Gypsies in Spain,” Preface to Second Edition.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GEORGE BORROW***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 30887-h.htm or 30887-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/0/8/8/30887 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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