liked to see you and discuss with you about
things of Spain and other gypsy lore and fancy topics, but of which at
present nothing do I understand. I shall not fail to take with me the
papers and documents which you kindly sent me to Cheltenham. I will make
them into a parcel and leave them with Messrs. Murray, so that you can
send for them whenever you like. I shall do my best to penetrate those
mysteries and that strange people. Mr. Murray, junior, writes in a
pleased tone respecting _The Bible in Spain_. I should like to write an
article on a subject so full of interest. Possibly my article on the
gypsies will appear in the next number, and in such case it will prove
more useful to you than if it appeared now. The life and memory of
reviews are very short. They appear like butterflies, and die in a day.
The dead and the departed have no friends. The living to the feast, the
dead to the grave. No sooner does a new number appear than the last one
is already forgotten and joins the things of the past. What do you
think? At a party recently in which a drawing was held, I drew the
_Krallis de los Zincali_. I beg to enclose the table (or index) for your
Majesty's guidance; really, I must have in my veins a few drops of the
genuine wanderer. Mr. Gagargos has been just appointed Spanish Consul in
Tunis, where he will not lack means for progressing in the Arabic
language and literature.--Yours, etc.,

R. F.

[166] _The Times_, April 12, 1843.

CHAPTER XXIV

IN EASTERN EUROPE

In 1844 Borrow set out for the most distant holiday that he was ever to
undertake. Passing through London in March 1844, he came under the
critical eye of Elizabeth Rigby, afterwards Lady Eastlake, that
formidable critic who four years later--in 1848--wrote the cruel review
of _Jane Eyre_ in _The Quarterly_ that gave so much pain to Charlotte
Bronte. She was not a nice woman. These sharp, 'clever' women-critics
rarely are; and Borrow never made a pleasant impression when such women
came across his path--instance Harriet Martineau, Frances Cobbe, and
Agnes Strickland. We should sympathise with him, and not count it for a
limitation, as some of his biographers have done. The future Lady
Eastlake thus disposes of Borrow in her one reference to him:

_March 20._--Borrow came in the evening; now a fine man, but a
most disagreeable one; a kind of character that would be most
dangerous in rebellious times--one that would suffer or