efending himself against the critics who attacked him for intermingling
truth and fiction in "Lavengro," he afterwards wrote: "In the preface
'Lavengro' is stated to be a dream; and the writer takes this opportunity
of stating that he never said it was an autobiography; never authorised
any person to say that it was one; and that he has in innumerable
instances declared in public and in private, both before and after the
work was published, that it was not what is generally termed an
autobiography: but a set of people who pretend to write criticisms on
books, hating the author for various reasons, amongst others, because,
having the proper pride of a gentleman and a scholar, he did not in the
year 1843, choose to permit himself to be exhibited and made a zany of in
London, and especially because he will neither associate with, nor curry
favour with, them who are neither gentlemen nor scholars--attack his book
with abuse and calumny."

Interrogated by Mr. Theodore Watts as to the real nature of an
autobiography, Borrow asked the question, "What is an autobiography? Is
it a mere record of the incidents of a man's life? or is it a picture of
the man himself--his character, his soul?"

This, Mr. Watts thinks, was a very suggestive query of Borrow's with
regard to himself and his work. "That he sat down to write his own life
in 'Lavengro' I know. He had no idea then of departing from the strict
line of fact. Indeed, his letters to his friend, Mr. John Murray, would
alone be sufficient to establish this in spite of his calling 'Lavengro'
a dream. In the first volume he did almost confine himself to matters of
fact. But as he went on he clearly found that the ordinary tapestry into
which Destiny had woven the incidents of his life were not tinged with
sufficient depth of colour to satisfy his sense of wonder. . . . When he
wishes to dive very boldly into the 'abysmal deeps of personality,' he
speaks and moves partly behind the mask of some fictitious character . . .
Let it be remembered that it was this instinct of wonder, not the
instinct of the mere _poseur_, that impelled him to make certain
exaggerated statements about the characters themselves that are
introduced into his books."

The village of Oulton lies on the border of the marshland about a mile
from the most easterly point of England, and within hearing of the
beating of the billows of the wild North Sea. Borrow's home, which was
little more than a cottage