[212] Ibid., vol. iv. p. 85 (Macmillan).
[213] First published in The Sphere, October 31, 1903. The letter was written to Mr. James Hooper of Norwich.
[214] Works of Edward FitzGerald, vol. ii. p. 135 (Macmillan).
[215] Published by Dr. Knapp in Borrow's Life, vol. ii. p. 348 (Murray).
[216] We learn from FitzGerald that Borrow's eyesight gave way about this time, and his wife had to keep all books from him.
[217] There are two or three references to Borrow in William Bodham Donne and his Friends, edited by Catharine B. Johnson (Methuen). The most important of these is in a letter from Donne to Bernard Barton, dated from Bury St. Edmunds, September 12th, 1848:
'We have had a great man here, and I have been walking with him and aiding him to eat salmon and mutton and drink port—George Borrow; and what is more, we fell in with some gypsies and I heard the speech of Egypt, which sounded wonderously like a medley of broken Spanish and dog Latin. Borrow's face lighted by the red turf fire of the tent was worth looking at. He is ashy white now, but twenty years ago, when his hair was like a raven's wing, he must have been hard to discriminate from a born Bohemian. Borrow is best on the tramp, if you can walk four and a half miles per hour—as I can with ease and do by choice—and can walk fifteen of them at a stretch—which I can compass also—then he will talk Iliads of adventures even better than his printed ones. He cannot abide those amateur pedestrians who saunter, and in his chair he is given to groan and be contradictory. But on Newmarket Heath, in Rougham Woods, he is at home, and specially when he meets with a thorough vagabond like your present correspondent.'
In June 1874 FitzGerald writes to Donne:
'I saw in some Athenæum a somewhat contemptuous notice of G. B.'s Rommany Lil or whatever the name is. I can easily understand that B. should not meddle with science of any sort; but some years ago he would not have liked to be told so; however, old age may have cooled him now.'
[218] Mr. Robert Cooke was a partner in John Murray's firm at this time.