is perfectly true, then; Borrow is dry. What needs to be appreciated is
that his dryness is not that of dry rot, but the dryness of high
elevation, of a somewhat solitary and craggy humour--the dryness of
"Robinson Crusoe," of "Gil Blas," of "Hadji Baba," and, we might add, of
"Don Quixote." There is an absence of verdure. You will not find much
sentiment in Borrow. As to word-painting, picturesque glamour and
deference to the prejudices of earnest people, a quality so dearly prized
by Englishmen of every rank and period, Borrow would have none of them.
You will find none of them in his works; but you will find "part of the
secret, brother," especially in the Dingle. For there Borrow is at his
best, in the open air, among the gipsies--with Jasper, Pakomovna, Tawno,
Ursula, the Man in Black, and Belle Berners, interlocutors in dialogues
of the greenwood unrivalled since the heyday of the forest of Arden.
Once more "Lavengro" badly belied the expectations of those who were
looking out for another "Eothen"; and finally, apart the author's
objectionable and reactionary prejudices, there were other and obvious
faults about the book (mainly of literary detail, style, and arrangement)
which were abundantly manifest to the strenuous critics of 1851. What
these gentry did not perceive was the unique character of the book--its
truth, its reality, its open-air quality, its distinctive humour, its
dramatic power, the genius which revealed to Borrow instinctively the
literary form and the picaresque manner which formed the right, nay the
inevitable, setting of the particular story that he had to tell.

Borrow's previous success only served to emphasize the bitterness of his
defeat, for so he regarded the failure of his originality to carry his
darling "Lavengro" through the breakers. He complained that he had "had
the honour" of being rancorously abused by every unmanly scoundrel, every
sycophantic lackey, and every political and religious renegade in the
kingdom. His fury was that of an angry bull tormented by gnats. His
worst passions were aroused, his most violent prejudices confirmed. But
the abuse did not divert him by a hairbreadth from his preconceived plan.
He proceeded with deliberation to carry on in "The Romany Rye" the story
so abruptly suspended at the close of the hundredth chapter of
"Lavengro." The first chapters of "The Romany Rye" (which was not
actually published until May, 1857) are quite equal to anyt