in the works--mainly philological--of Pott, Liebich, Paspati,
Miklosich, and their confreres. Take his first meeting with Gypsies in
the green lane near Norman Cross. There are flaws in it: he never would
have spoken of the Gypsy beldame as "my mother there," nor could he
possibly have guessed that the Romany _sap_ means "snake." Yet compare
it with Maggie Tulliver's Gypsy adventure in _The Mill on the Floss_: how
vivid and vigorous the one, how tame and commonplace the other. I am not
going to dilate on the beauties of _Lavengro_; they seem to me
sufficiently self-evident. But there is one point about the book that
deserves some considering, its credibility as autobiography. Professor
Knapp, Borrow's biographer, seems to place implicit confidence in
_Lavengro_; I find myself unable to agree with him. Borrow may really
have written the story of _Joseph Sell_ for a collection of Christmas
tales; he may really have camped for some weeks as a tinker near
Willenhall; "Belle Berners" may really have had some prototype; and he
may really have bought the splendid horse of the Willenhall
tavern-keeper, and sold it afterwards at Horncastle. But is the "Man in
Black," then, also a reality, and the "Reverend Mr. Platitude," who
thanks God that he has left all his Church of England prejudices in
Italy? in other words, did Tractarianism exist in 1825, eight years
before it was engendered by Keble's sermon? David Haggart, again, the
Scottish Jack Sheppard,--Borrow describes him as "a lad of some fifteen
years," with "prodigious breadth of chest," and as defeating in single
combat a full-grown baker's apprentice. Borrow well may have seen him,
for in July 1813 he really enlisted as a drummer in Borrow's father's
regiment, newly quartered in Edinburgh Castle; but he was not fifteen
then, only twelve years old. And the Jew pedlar scene in the first
chapter, and the old apple-woman's son in the sixty-second!

One might take equal exception to Borrow's pretended visits to Iceland,
Moultan, and Kiachta (he was never within three thousand miles of
Kiachta); to his translation of St. Luke's Gospel into Basque, of which
he had only the merest smattering; and to his statement to a Cornish
clergyman in 1854 that his "horrors" were due to the effects of Mrs.
Herne's poison--he had suffered from them seven years before his Gypsy
wanderings. But the strongest proof of his lax adherence to fact is
adduced by Professor Knapp himself. In