to spring fragments of philological instruction (often far from sound) upon his reader in the most unexpected places, that his ingenuity could devise. He then began to base hopes upon the book in proportion to its originality. At the last moment, however, the Author grew querulous about his work, distrustful of the reception that would be given to it, and even as to the advisability of producing it at all. Much yet remained to be done, but for a long time he refused, not only to forward new copy to Albemarle Street, but even to revise the proofs of that which he had already written, and it required all the dunning that Murray and the printer Woodfall dare apply before Lavengro with its altered sub-title (for at the last moment Borrow grew afraid of openly avowing his identity with the speaking likeness which he had created) could be announced as “just ready” in the Athenæum of Dec. 14th, 1850.
Lavengro; the Scholar, the Gypsy, the Priest, eventually appeared in three volumes on Feb. 7th, 1851. The autobiographical Lavengro stopped short in July 1825, at the conclusion of the hundredth chapter, with an abruptness worthy of the Sentimental Journey. The Author had succeeded in extending the area of mystery, but not in satisfying the public. Borrow’s confidences were so very different in complexion from those which the critics seemed to have expected, that they were taken aback and declared to the public almost with one accord that the writer’s eccentricities had developed into mannerisms, that his theories of life were political manifestoes, that his dialects were gibberish, and his
defiance of the orthodox canons of autobiography scarcely less than an outrage upon the public taste.
From the general public came a fusillade of requests to solve the prevailing mystery of the book. Was it fact or fiction?—or, if fact and fiction were blended, in what proportions? Borrow ought to have been prepared for a question so natural in the mouths of literary busy-bodies at any time, and especially at a time when partisan spirit was rampant, and the vitality of the lampoon as a factor in politics so far from extinct. To show his contempt alike for the critical verdict and the popular curiosity, after a quarrel, or at least a sharp coolness with John Murray, he published in two volumes, in May 1857, The Romany Rye, which carries on the story of Lavengro for just about a month further, namely, down towards the end of August 1825, and there again stops dead. Whether we regard coherence or the rate of progress, no more attempt at amendment is perceptible than can be discerned in the later as compared with the earlier volumes of Tristram Shandy. The peculiarities of the earlier volume are, indeed, here accentuated, while the Author had evidently only been confirmed by the lapse of years in the political philosophy to which he had already given expression. At the end was printed an appendix (a sort of catalogue raisonné of Borrovian prejudices), satirising with unmeasured bitterness the critics of Lavengro.
The resumption of a story after an interval of over six years, with appendages so extravagant, whether we regard their tenor or their length, and with an indifference
so sublime to the popular desire that he should get along with his personal narrative, was hardly calculated to conciliate critical opinion; but it had one capital effect. It drew from Whitwell Elwin, himself a Norfolk man, and a literary critic of the widest grasp and knowledge, this remarkable testimony: that far from exaggerating such incidents as were drawn from his own experience (not a few, as he himself could verify), Borrow’s descriptions were rather within the truth than beyond it. “However picturesquely they may be drawn, the lines are invariably those of nature. . . . There can be no doubt that the larger part, and possibly the whole of the work, is a narrative of actual occurrences.”
Here, then, is the heart of the mystery, or of the mystery that is apparent; the phenomenon is due primarily to the fact that Borrow’s book is so abnormally true as regards the matter, while in manner of presentation it is so strikingly original. There are superficial traces, no doubt, of not a few writers of the eighteenth century. In some of his effects Borrow reproduces Sterne: essentially Sternean, for instance, is the interview between the youthful author and the experienced Mr. Taggart.
“Well, young gentleman,” said Taggart to me one morning when we chanced to be alone, a few days after the affair of cancelling, “how do you like authorship?”
“I scarcely call authorship the drudgery I am engaged in,” said I.
“What do you call authorship?” said Taggart.
“I scarcely know,” said I; “that is, I can scarcely express what I think it.”
“Shall I help you out?” said Taggart, turning round his chair, and looking at me.
“If you like,” said I.
“To write something grand,” said Taggart, taking snuff; “to be stared at—lifted on people’s shoulders.”
“Well,” said I, “that is something like it.”
Taggart took snuff.
“Well,” said he, “why don’t you write something grand?”
“I have,” said I.
“What?” said Taggart.
“Why,” said I, “there are those ballads.”
Taggart took snuff.
“And those wonderful versions from Ab Gwilym.”
Taggart took snuff again.
“You seem to be very fond of snuff,” said I, looking at him angrily.
Taggart tapped his box.
“Have you taken it long?”
“Three-and-twenty years.”
“What snuff do you take?”
“Universal Mixture.”
“And you find it of use?”
Taggart tapped his box.
“In what respect?” said I.
“In many—there is nothing like it to get a man through; but for snuff I should scarcely be where I am now.”
“Have you been long here?”
“Three-and-twenty years.”
“Dear me,” said I; “and snuff brought you through? Give me a pinch—pah, I don’t like it,” and I sneezed.
“Take another pinch,” said Taggart.
“No,” said I; “I don’t like snuff.”
“Then you will never do for authorship; at least for this kind.”
“So I begin to think. What shall I do?”
“You were talking of a great work. What shall it be?”
Taggart took snuff.
“Do you think I could write one?”
Taggart uplifted his two forefingers as if to tap; he did not, however.
“It would require time,” said I, with half a sigh.
Taggart tapped his box.
“A great deal of time. I really think that my ballads—”
Taggart took snuff.
“If published, would do me credit. I’ll make an effort, and offer them to some other publisher.”
Taggart took a double quantity of snuff.
Equally Sterne-like is the conclusion to a chapter: “Italy—what was I going to say about Italy?”
Less superficial is the influence of Cervantes and his successors of the Picaresque school, down to the last and most representative of them in England, namely Defoe and Smollett. Profoundest of all, perhaps, is the influence of Defoe, of whose powers of intense realisation, exhibited in the best parts of Robinson Crusoe, we get a fine counterpart amid the outcasts in Mumper’s Lane. Bound up with the truthfulness and originality of the Author is that strange absence of sycophancy, which we may flatter ourselves is no exceptional thing, but which is in reality a very rare phenomenon in literature.