are those people, and what could have brought them into that strange situation?’ I asked myself; and now the seed of curiosity, which had so long lain dormant, began to expand, and I vowed to myself to become speedily acquainted with the whole history of the people in the boat. After looking on the picture till every mark and line in it were familiar to me, I turned over various leaves till I came to another engraving; a new source of wonder—a low sandy beach on which the furious sea was breaking in mountain-like billows; cloud and rack deformed the firmament, which wore a dull and leaden-like hue; gulls and other aquatic fowls were toppling upon the blast, or skimming over the tops of the maddening waves—‘Mercy upon him! he must be drowned!’ I exclaimed, as my eyes fell upon a poor wretch who appeared to be striving to reach the shore; he was upon his legs, but was evidently half smothered with the brine; high above his head curled a horrible billow, as if to engulf him for ever. ‘He must be drowned! he must be drowned!’ I almost shrieked, and dropped the book. I soon snatched it up again, and now my eye lighted on a third picture; again a shore, but what a sweet and lovely one, and how I wished to be treading it; there were beautiful shells lying on the smooth white sand, some were empty like those I had occasionally seen on marble mantelpieces, but out of others peered the heads and bodies of wondrous crayfish; a wood of thick green trees skirted the beach and partly shaded it from the rays of the sun, which shone hot above, while blue waves slightly crested with foam were gently curling against it; there was a human figure upon the beach, wild and uncouth, clad in the skins of animals, with a huge cap on his head, a hatchet at his girdle, and in his hand a gun; his feet and legs were bare; he stood in an attitude of horror and surprise; his body was bent far back, and his eyes, which seemed starting out of his head, were fixed
upon a mark on the sand—a large distinct mark—a human footprint!
“Reader, is it necessary to name the book which now stood open in my hand, and whose very prints, feeble expounders of its wondrous lines, had produced within me emotions strange and novel? Scarcely, for it was a book which has exerted over the minds of Englishmen an influence certainly greater than any other of modern times, which has been in most people’s hands, and with the contents of which even those who cannot read are to a certain extent acquainted; a book from which the most luxuriant and fertile of our modern prose writers have drunk inspiration; a book, moreover, to which, from the hardy deeds which it narrates, and the spirit of strange and romantic enterprise which it tends to awaken, England owes many of her astonishing discoveries both by sea and land, and no inconsiderable part of her naval glory.
“Hail to thee, spirit of De Foe! What does not my own poor self owe to thee? England has better bards than either Greece or Rome, yet I could spare them easier far than De Foe, ‘unabashed De Foe,’ as the hunchbacked rhymer styled him.”
It was in this manner, he declares, that he “first took to the paths of knowledge,” and when he began his own “autobiography” he must have well remembered the opening of “Robinson Crusoe”:—“I was born in the year 1632, in the City of York, of a good family, though not of that country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen, named Kreutznaer, who first settled at Hull,” though Borrow himself would have written it: “I was born in the year 16---, in the City of Y---, of a good family, though not of that country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen, named Kruschen, who first settled at H---.” Probably he remembered also that other fictitious autobiography of Defoe’s, “The Adventures of Captain Singleton,” of the child who
was stolen and disposed of to a Gypsy and lived with his good Gypsy mother until she happened to be hanged, a little too soon for him to be “perfected in the strolling trade.” Defoe had told him long before Richard Ford that he need not be afraid of being low. He could always give the same excuse as Defoe in “Moll Flanders”—“as the best use is to be made even of the worst story, the moral, ’tis hoped, will keep the reader serious, even where the story might incline him to be otherwise.” In fact, Borrow did afterwards claim that his book set forth in as striking a way as any “the kindness and providence of God.” Even so, De Quincey suggested as an excuse in his “Confessions” the service possibly to be rendered to other opium-eaters. Borrow tells us in the twenty-second chapter of “Lavengro” how he sought for other books of adventure like “Robinson Crusoe”—which he will not mention by name!—and how he read many “books of singular power, but of coarse and prurient imagination.” One of these, “The English Rogue,” he describes as a book “written by a remarkable genius.” He might have remembered in its preface the author lamenting that, though it was meant for the life of a “witty extravagant,” readers would regard it as the author’s own life, “and notwithstanding all that hath been said to the contrary many still continue in this belief.” He might also have remembered that the apology for portraying so much vice was that the ugliness of it—“her vizard-mask being remov’d”—“cannot but cause in her (quondam) adorers, a loathing instead of loving.” The dirty hero runs away as a boy and on the very first day tires of nuts and blackberries and longs “to taste of the fleshpots again.” He sleeps in a barn until he is waked, pursued and caught by Gypsies. He agrees to stay with them, and they have a debauch of eating, drinking and fornication, which makes him well content to join the “Ragged Regiment.” They colour his face with walnut
juice so that he looks a “true son of an Egyptian.” Hundreds of pages are filled thereafter by tediously dragging in, mostly from other books, joyless and leering adventures of low dishonesty and low lust. Another book of the kind which Borrow knew was the life of Bamfylde Moore-Carew, born in 1693 at a Devonshire rectory. He hunted the deer with some of his schoolfellows from Tiverton and they played truant for fear of punishment. They fell in with some Gypsies feasting and carousing and asked to be allowed to “enlist into their company.” The Gypsies admitted them after the “requisite ceremonies” and “proper oaths.” The philosophy of Carew or his historian is worth noticing. He says of the Gypsies:
“There are perhaps no people so completely happy as they are, or enjoy so great a share of liberty. The king is elective by the whole people, but none are allowed to stand as candidates for that honour but such as have been long in their society, and perfectly studied the nature and institution of it; they must likewise have given repeated proofs of their personal wisdom, courage and capacity; this is better known as they always keep a public record or register of all remarkable (either good or bad) actions performed by any of their society, and they can have no temptation to make choice of any but the most worthy, as their king has no titles or legislative employments to bestow, which might influence or corrupt their judgments.
“The laws of these people are few and simple, but most exactly and punctually observed; the fundamental of which is that strong love and mutual regard for each member in particular and for the whole community in general, which is inculcated into them from the earliest infancy. . . . Experience has shown them that, by keeping up their nice sense of honour and shame, they are always enabled to keep their community in better order
than the most severe corporal punishments have been able to effect in other governments.