, a letter from some one
explaining that the less inquiry about this or that point in Borrow's
career the better for Borrow. Take, for example, last Saturday's issue
of the journal I have named, where I find the following from a
correspondent:--

Dr. Knapp, from dictates of courtesy, left it unrevealed, and as he
could say nothing to Borrow's credit, passed the affair over in
silence, and on this point all well-wishers of Borrow's reputation
would be wise to take their cue from this biographer's example.

Now there is nothing more damnatory than a sentence of this kind. What
does it amount to? What is the 'it' that is unrevealed by the courteous
Dr. Knapp? It seems to amount to the charge that Borrow is accused of
gibbeting in his books the people he dislikes; this is what every great
imaginative writer has been charged with to the perplexing of dull
people. There are many characters in Dickens's novels which are supposed
to be a presentation of near relatives or friends. These he ought to
have treated with more kindliness. That heroic little woman, Miss
Bronte, gave a picture of Madame Heger, who kept a school at Brussels,
that conveyed, I doubt not, a very mistaken presentation of the subject
of her satire. Imaginative writers have always taken these liberties.
When the worst is said it simply amounts to this, that Borrow was a good
hater. Dr. Johnson said that he loved a good hater, and he might very
well have loved Borrow. Dante, whom we all now agree to idolize, treated
people even more roughly; he placed some of his acquaintances who had ill-
used him in the very lowest circles of hell. May I express a hope,
therefore, that this type of letter to the Norwich newspapers about Dr.
Knapp's "kindness" to Borrow's reputation may cease. If Dr. Knapp had
printed the whole of the facts we should know how to deal with them; but
this is one of his limitations as a biographer. He has not in the least
helped to a determination of Borrow's real character.

Had Borrow possessed a biographer so skilful with her pen as Mrs. Gaskell
in her _Life of Charlotte Bronte_, so keen-eyed for the dramatic note as
Sir George Trevelyan in his _Life of Macaulay_, he would have multiplied
readers for _Lavengro_. There are many people who have read the Bronte
novels from sheer sympathy with the writers that their biographer, Mrs.
Gaskell, had kindled. Let us not, however, be ungrateful to Dr. Knapp.
He has furnished