ds. {43}

It must not be supposed by any means that the interest of Borrow's two
autobiographical volumes is concentrated in the last eighteen chapters of
_Lavengro_ and the first sixteen chapters of the _Romany Rye_. The
quality of continuity is, it is true, best preserved in the dingle
episode. Artistically the Brynhildic figure of Isopel serves as the best
relief that could be found for Borrow's own "Titanic self." There is
undoubtedly a feeling of unity here which is hardly to be felt in any
other part of the Borrovian "Odyssey."

It is nevertheless true that, taken as a whole, a marked characteristic
of the two volumes is the evenness with which the charms are scattered
hither and thither betwixt the four covers. Attractive, therefore, as
the Isopel Berners episode unquestionably is, and convenient as it is to
the reader to have it detached for him in its unity, its perusal must not
be taken for a moment to absolve the lover of good literature from
traversing chapter by chapter, canto by canto, the whole of the Borrevian
epic. It is outside the dingle that he will have to look for the
faithfully described bewilderment of the old applewoman after the loss of
her book, and for the compassionate delineation of the old man with the
bees and the donkey who gave the young Rye to drink of mead at his
cottage, and was unashamed at having shed tears on the road. The most
heroic of the pugilistic encounters takes place, it is true, in the thick
of the dingle, but it is elsewhere that the reader will have to look for
the description of the memorable thrashing inflicted upon the bullying
stage-coachman by the "elderly individual" who followed the craft of
engraving, and learnt fisticuffs from Sergeant Broughton. In the same
neighbourhood he will find the admirable vignette of the old man who
could read the inscription on Chinese crockery pots, but could not tell
what's o'clock, and the life narratives of the jockey and of the inexpert
thimble-rigger, Murtagh, who was imprisoned three years for interrupting
the Pope's game at picquet, but finally won his way by card-sharping to
the very threshold of the Cardinalate. In the second half of the _Romany
Rye_, too, he will find the noble apostrophes to youth, and ale, and
England, "the true country for adventures," which he will compare, as
examples of Borrovian eloquence, with the stirring description of
embattled England in the third chapter of _Lavengro_, or the apostroph