cinity of Whitchurch, Waltham, and Overton"; in
December 1829 he read before the Royal Asiatic Society an excellent
Romany vocabulary of over four hundred words.

These were Borrow's chief predecessors, but the list could be largely
extended by making it include such names as those of Sir John Popham
(1531-1607), Lord Chief-Justice of England; Sir William Sinclair, Lord
Justice-General of Scotland from 1559; Mr. William Sympsoune, a great
Scottish doctor of medicine towards the close of the sixteenth century;
the Countess of Cassillis (1643), who did _not_ elope with Johnnie Faa;
Richard Head (_c._ 1637-86), the author of _The English Rogue_; William
Marsden (1754-1836), the Orientalist; John Wilson ("Christopher North,"
1785-1854); the Rev. John Baird, minister of Yetholm 1829-61; G. P. R.
James (1801-60), the novelist; and Sam Bough (1822-78), the landscape-
painter. And after Borrow come many; the following are but a few of
them:--John Phillip, R.A., Tom Taylor, the Rev. T. W. Norwood, George S.
Phillips ("January Searle"), Charles Kingsley, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu,
Mr. Charles Godfrey Leland ("Hans Breitmann"), Prof. Edward Henry Palmer,
Sir Richard Burton, Bath C. Smart, M.D., of Manchester, Mr. H. T.
Crofton, Major Whyte-Melville, Mr. Joseph Lucas, the Rev. R. N.
Sanderson, Dr. D. Fearon Ranking, Mr. David MacRitchie, Mr. G. R. Sims,
Mr. George Meredith, Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton, "F. W. Carew, M.D," and
Mr. John Sampson.

Thus, leaving aside all the foreign Romany Ryes, from the great engraver
Jacques Callot to the present Polish novelist Sienkiewicz, we see that
Borrow was not quite so _sui generis_ as he claimed for himself, and as
others have often claimed for him. The meagreness of his knowledge of
the Anglo-Gypsy dialect came out in his _Word-Book of the Romany_ (1874);
there must have been over a dozen Englishmen who have known it far better
than he. For his Spanish-Gypsy vocabulary in _The Zincali_ he certainly
drew largely either on Richard Bright's _Travels through Lower Hungary_
or on Bright's Spanish authority, whatever that may have been. His
knowledge of the strange history of the Gypsies was very elementary, of
their manners almost more so, and of their folk-lore practically _nil_.
And yet I would put George Borrow above every other writer on the
Gypsies. In _Lavengro_ and, to a less degree, in its sequel, _The Romany
Rye_, he communicates a subtle insight into Gypsydom that is totally
wanting