s hands, he carried away with
him into his retreat the antipathies and prejudices, the whimsical
dislikes and the half-real, half-sham disappointments and chagrins which
London, that fertile mother of megrims, had bred in him, and dropped them
all into the ink with which he wrote his famous book. Gentility he
forswore. Whatever else Lavengro might turn out, genteel he was not to
be; and sure enough, when Lavengro made his appearance in 1851 genteel he
most certainly was not.

There was not the same public to welcome the Gypsy as had hailed the
Colporteur. The pious phrases which had garnished so plentifully the
earlier book had now almost wholly disappeared. There is no evidence
that Lavengro ever offered Petulengro a Bible. Even the denunciations of
Popery have a dubious sound. What is sometimes called 'the religious
world' were no longer buyers of Borrow. Nor was 'the polite world' much
better pleased. The polite reader was both puzzled and annoyed. First
of all: Was the book true--autobiography or romance? A polite reader
objects to be made a fool of. One De Foe in a couple of centuries is
enough for a polite reader. Then the glorification of ale and of gypsies
and prize-fighters--would it not be better at once to dub the book
vulgar, and so have done with it for ever? An ill-regulated book, a
strange book, a mad book, a book which condemns the world's way. If I
may judge from the reviews, this is how _Lavengro_ struck many, but by no
means all. The book had its passionate admirers, its lovers from the
first. Men, women, and boys took it to their hearts. Happy day when
_Lavengro_ first fell into boyish hands. It brought adventure and the
spirit of adventure to your doorstep. No need painfully to walk to Hull,
and there take shipping with Robinson Crusoe; no need to sail round the
world with Captain Cook, or even to shoot lions in Bechuanaland with that
prince of missionaries, Mr. Robert Moffat; for were there not gypsies on
the common half a mile from one's homestead, and a dingle at the end of
the lane? But the general verdict was, '"Lavengro" has gone too far.'

Borrow was not the man to whistle and let the world go by. His advice to
his country men and women was: 'To be courteous to everybody as Lavengro
was, but always independent like him, and if people meddle with them, to
give them as good as they bring, even as he and Isopel Berners were in
the habit of doing; and it will be as well for h