uld freely purchase, and hail them
with the merited applause.

He has a tale to tell us in _Lavengro_ of a certain _Life and Adventures
of Joseph Sell, the Great Traveller_, the purchase of which from him by
a publisher at the last moment saved him from starvation and enabled him
to take to the road, there to meet the many adventures that have become
immortal in the pages of _Lavengro_. Dr. Knapp has encouraged the idea
that _Joseph Sell_ was a real book, ignoring the fact that the very
title suggests doubts, and was probably meant to suggest them. In
Norfolk, as elsewhere, a 'sell' is a word in current slang used for an
imposture or a cheat, and doubtless Borrow meant to make merry with the
credulous. There was, we may be perfectly sure, no _Joseph Sell_, and it
is more reasonable to suppose that it was the sale of his translation of
Klinger's _Faustus_ that gave him the much needed money at this crisis.
Dr. Knapp pictures Borrow as carrying the manuscript of his translation
of _Faustus_ with him to London. There is not the slightest evidence of
this. It may be reasonably assumed that Borrow made the translation from
Klinger's novel during his sojourn in London. It is true the preface is
dated 'Norwich, April 1825,' but Borrow did not leave London until the
end of May 1825, that is to say, until after he had negotiated with 'W.
Simpkin and R. Marshall,' now the well-known firm of Simpkin and
Marshall, for the publication of the little volume. That firm,
unfortunately, has no record of the transaction. My impression is that
Borrow in his wandering after old volumes on crime for his great
compilation, _Celebrated Trials_, came across the French translation of
Klinger's novel published at Amsterdam. From that translation he
acknowledges that he borrowed the plate which serves as frontispiece--a
plate entitled 'The Corporation Feast.' It represents the corporation of
Frankfort at a banquet turned by the devil into various animals. It has
been erroneously assumed that Borrow had had something to do with the
designing of this plate, and that he had introduced the corporation of
Norwich in vivid portraiture into the picture. Borrow does, indeed,
interpolate a reference to Norwich into his translation of a not too
complimentary character, for at that time he had no very amiable
feelings towards his native city. Of the inhabitants of Frankfort he
says:

They found the people of the place modelled after so unsightly