o himself; something which bears you up and along as
does the mystery of the salt sea the swimmer. And this something lives
and stirs in almost every page of Borrow, whose restless, puzzling,
teasing personality pervades and animates the whole.

He is the true adventurer who leads his life, not on the Stock Exchange
amidst the bulls and bears, or in the House of Commons waiting to clutch
the golden keys, or in South Africa with the pioneers and promoters, but
with himself and his own vagrant moods and fancies. There was no need
for Borrow to travel far afield in search of adventures. Mumpers' Dell
was for him as good an environment as Mexico; a village in Spain or
Portugal served his turn as well as both the Indies; he was as likely to
meet adventures in Pall Mall as in the far Soudan. Strange things happen
to him wherever he goes; odd figures step from out the hedgerow and
engage him in wild converse; beggar-women read _Moll Flanders_ on London
Bridge; Armenian merchants cuff deaf and dumb clerks in London counting-
houses; prize-fighters, dog-fanciers, Methodist preachers, Romany ryes
and their rawnees move on and off. Why should not strange things happen
to Lavengro? Why should not strange folk suddenly make their appearance
before him and as suddenly take their departure? Is he not strange
himself? Did he not puzzle Mr. Petulengro, excite the admiration of Mrs.
Petulengro, the murderous hate of Mrs. Herne, and drive Isopel Berners
half distracted?

Nobody has, so far, attempted to write the life of George Borrow. Nor
can we wonder. How could any one dare to follow in the phosphorescent
track of _Lavengro_ and _The Romany Rye_, or add a line or a hue to the
portraits there contained of Borrow's father and mother--the gallant
soldier who had no chance, and whose most famous engagement took place,
not in Flanders, or in Egypt, or on the banks of the Indus or Oxus, but
in Hyde Park, his foe being Big Ben Brain; and the dame of the oval face,
olive complexion, and Grecian forehead, sitting in the dusky parlour in
the solitary house at the end of the retired court shaded by lofty
poplars? I pity 'the individual' whose task it should be to travel along
the enchanted wake either of Lavengro in England or Don Jorge in Spain.
Poor would be his part; no better than that of Arthur in 'The Bothie':--

And it was told, the Piper narrating and Arthur correcting,
Colouring he, dilating, magniloquent, glorying in p