im to observe that he by
no means advises women to be too womanly, but, bearing the conduct of
Isopel Berners in mind, to take their own parts, and if anybody strikes
them to strike again.'

This is not the spirit which is patient under reproof. Borrow was not
going to be sentenced by the gentility party. He would fulfil his
dukkeripen. _Lavengro_ having ended abruptly enough, Borrow took .up the
tale where he had left it off; and though he kept his admirers on the
tenter-hooks for six years, did at last in 1857 give to the world _The
Romany Rye_, to which he added an Appendix. Ah! that Appendix! It is
Borrow's Apologia, and therefore must be read. It is interesting and
amusing, and is therefore easily read. But it is a cruel and outrageous
bit of writing all the same, proving, were proof needed, that it is every
whit as easy to be spiteful and envious in dells as in drawing-rooms, and
as vain and egotistical on a Norfolk Broad as in Grosvenor Square. In
this Appendix Borrow defends 'Lavengro,' both the book and the man, at
some length, and with enormous spirit. At gentility in all its
manifestations he runs amuck. The Stuarts have a chapter to themselves.
Jacobites, old and new; Papists, old and new; and, alas! Sir Walter Scott
as the father of 'Charley o'er the Waterism,' all fall by turn under the
lash of Lavengro. The attack on the memory of Sir Walter is brutal. Not
so, we may be sure, did Pearce, and Cribb, and Spring, and Big Ben Brain,
and Broughton, heroes of renown, win name and fame in the brave days of
old. They never struck a man when he was down, or gloated over a rival's
fall. However, it will not do to get angry with George Borrow. One
could never keep it up. Still, the Appendix is a pity.

Next to Borrow's vagabondage, which, though I tremble to say it, has a
decidedly literary flavour, and his delightful _camaraderie_ or
willingness to hob-a-nob with everybody, I rank his eloquence. Great is
plot, though Borrow has but little, and that little mechanical;
delightful is incident, and Borrow is full of incident--e.g. the
poisoning scene in Chapter LXXI., where will you match it, unless it be
the very differently-treated scene of the robbers' cave in _The Heart of
Midlothian_? and glorious, too, is motion, and Borrow never stagnates,
never gathers moss or mould. But great also is eloquence. 'If a book be
eloquent,' says Mr. Stevenson, that most distinguished writer, 'its words
run thenc