orrow here does without cause. The gipsies reappear to
save the situation, and a kind of minor Belle Berners drama is played
out with Ursula, Jasper's sister. Then the story takes another of its
abrupt turns. Jasper, half in generosity it would appear, half in
waywardness, insists on Borrow purchasing a thorough-bred horse which is
for sale, advances the money, and despatches him across England to
Horncastle Fair to sell it. The usual Le Sagelike adventures occur, the
oddest of them being the hero's residence for some considerable time as
clerk and storekeeper at a great roadside inn. At last he reaches
Horncastle, and sells the horse to advantage. Then the story closes as
abruptly and mysteriously almost as that of _Lavengro_, with a long and
in parts, it must be confessed, rather dull conversation between the
hero, the Hungarian who has bought the horse, and the dealer who has
acted as go-between. This dealer, in honour of Borrow, of whom he has
heard through the gipsies, executes the wasteful and very meaningless
ceremony of throwing two bottles of old rose champagne, at a guinea
apiece, through the window. Even this is too dramatic a finale for
Borrow's unconquerable singularity, and he adds a short dialogue between
himself and a recruiting sergeant. And after this again there comes an
appendix containing an _apologia_ for _Lavengro_, a great deal more
polemic against Romanism, some historical views of more originality than
exactness, and a diatribe against gentility, Scotchmen, Scott, and other
black beasts of Borrow's. This appendix has received from some professed
admirers of the author a great deal more attention than it deserves. In
the first place, it was evidently written in a fit of personal pique; in
the second, it is chiefly argumentative, and Borrow had absolutely no
argumentative faculty. To say that it contains a great deal of quaint
and piquant writing is only to say that its writer wrote it, and though
the description of "Charlie-over-the-waterism" probably does not apply
to any being who ever lived, except to a few school-girls of both sexes,
it has a strong infusion of Borrow's satiric gift. As for the diatribes
against gentility, Borrow has only done very clumsily what Thackeray had
done long before without clumsiness. It can escape nobody who has read
his books with a seeing eye that he was himself exceedingly proud, not
merely of being a gentleman in the ethical sense, but of being one in
the sense