ir merits, and their deficiencies lies in
this intense concentration of self. An appreciation of this quality
leads us to comprehend a good deal of Borrow's attitude towards men and
women. Reading _Lavengro_ and _The Romany Rye_ the reader is no less
struck by the remarkable interest that Borrow takes in the
people--especially the rough, uncultured people--whom he comes across, as
in the cheerful indifference with which he loses sight of them and passes
on to fresh characters. There is very little objective feeling in his
friendships; as flesh and blood personages with individualities of their
own--loves, hopes, faiths of their own--he seems to regard them scarcely
at all. They exist chiefly as material for his curiosity and
inquisitiveness. Hence there is a curious selfishness about him--not the
selfishness of a passionate, capricious nature, but the selfishness of a
self-absorbed and self-contained nature. Perhaps there was hidden away
somewhere in his nature a strain of tenderness, of altruistic affection,
which was reserved for a few chosen souls. But the warm human touch is
markedly absent from his writings, despite their undeniable charm.

Take the Isopel Berners episode. Whether Isopel Berners was a fiction of
the imagination or a character in real life matters not for my purpose.
At any rate the episode, his friendship with this Anglo-Saxon girl of the
road, is one of the distinctive features of both _Lavengro_ and _The
Romany Rye_. The attitude of Borrow towards her may safely be regarded
as a clear indication of the man's character.

A girl of fine physical presence and many engaging qualities such as were
bound to attract a man of Borrow's type, who had forsaken her friends to
throw in her lot with this fellow-wanderer on the road. Here were the
ready elements of a romance--of a friendship that should burn up with the
consuming power of love the baser elements of self in the man's
disposition, and transform his nature.

And what does he do?

He accepts her companionship, just as he might have accepted the
companionship of one of his landlords or ostlers; spends the time he
lived with her in the Dingle in teaching her Armenian, and when at last,
driven to desperation by his calculating coldness, she comes to take
farewell of him, he makes her a perfunctory offer of marriage, which she,
being a girl of fine mettle as well as of strong affection, naturally
declines. She leaves him, and after a few