BY GEORGE BORROW, ESQ.
Author of "The Bible in Spain," "The Gipsies of Spain," &c. &c.
With a Portrait. 3 Vols. Post 8vo. 30s.
"We trust our extracts have exhibited enough of one at least of the many aspects of 'Lavengro' to convince the reader that neither is it a work to be read cursorily, nor to be handled easily, by any of the silver-fork school of critics. These volumes are indeed replete with life, with earnest sympathy for all genuine workers, with profound insight into the wants and wishes of the poor and uneducated, and a lofty disdain of the conventional 'shams' and pretensions which fetter the spirits or impede the energies of mankind. Nor is a feeling for the beautiful less conspicuous in its pages. A quiet market-town, environed by green meadows or bosomed in tufted trees; an old mercantile and ecclesiastical city, with a history stretching from the times of the Cæsars to the times of George III.; the treeless plain, the broad river, the holt, the dingle, the blacksmith's forge, are all in their turn sketched freely and vividly by Mr. Borrow's pencil. In his portraitures of ruder life he is unsurpassed; a dog-fight, a prize-fight, an ale-house kitchen, Greenwich Fair, a savage group of wandering tinkers, are delineated in words as Wilkie or Hogarth might have depicted them in colours. We are embarrassed by the riches spread before us.
"We have not touched upon the gipsy scenes in 'Lavengro' because in any work of Mr. Borrow's these will naturally be the first to draw the reader's attention. Neither have we aimed at abridging or forestalling any portions of a book which has a panoramic unity of its own, and of which scarcely a page is without its proper interest. If we have succeeded in persuading our readers to regard Mr. Borrow as partly an historian and partly as a poet, as well as to look for more in his volumes than mere excitement or amusement, our purpose is attained, and we may securely commend him to the goodly company he will find therein. 'Lavengro,' however, is not concluded; a fourth volume will explain and gather up much of what is now somewhat obscure and fragmentary, and impart a more definite character to the philological and physiological hints comprised in those now before us. Enough, indeed, and more than enough, is written to prove that the author possesses, in no ordinary measure, 'the vision and the faculty divine' for discerning and discriminating what is noble in man and what is beautiful in nature. We trust Mr. Borrow will speedily bring forth the remaining acts of his 'dream of adventure,' and with good heart and hope pursue his way rejoicing, regardless of the misconceptions or misrepresentations of critics who judge through a mist of conventionalities, and who themselves, whether travelled or untravelled, have not, like Lavengro, grappled with the deeper thoughts and veracities of human life."—Tait's Magazine.
ENGLAND IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY:
POLITICAL, SOCIAL, AND INDUSTRIAL.
BY WILLIAM JOHNSTON, ESQ.
2 Vols. Post 8vo. 18s.