home.
As I told you before, I am quite well; indeed, in better health
than I have been for years, but it is very vexatious to be
stopped in the manner I have been. God bless you, my darling.
Write to my mother and kiss her.

G. BORROW.

FOOTNOTES:

[167] _Journals and Correspondence of Lady Eastlake_, edited by her
nephew, Charles Eastlake Smith, vol. i. p. 124. John Murray, 1895.

[168] _Life of Borrow_ by Herbert Jenkins, p. 361.

CHAPTER XXV

_LAVENGRO_

_The Bible in Spain_ bears on its title-page the date 1843, although my
copy makes it clear in Borrow's handwriting that it was really ready for
publication in the previous year.

[Illustration: [handwritten text]

Mary Borrow
With Her Husband's Love.
13 Dec'r 1842]

Borrow's handwriting had changed its character somewhat when he
inscribed to his wife a copy of his next book _Lavengro_ in 1851.

[Illustration: [handwritten text]

Mary Borrow
With Her Husband's Love.]

In the intervening eight or nine years he had travelled much--suffered
much. During all these years he had been thinking about, talking about,
his next book, making no secret of the fact that it was to be an
Autobiography. Even before _The Bible in Spain_ was issued he had
written to Mr. John Murray foreshadowing a book in which his father,
William Taylor, and others were to put in an appearance. In the
'Advertisement' to _The Romany Rye_ he tells us that 'the principal part
of _Lavengro_ was written in the year '43, that the whole of it was
completed before the termination of the year '46, and that it was in the
hands of the publisher in the year '48.' As the idea grew in his mind,
his friend, Richard Ford, gave him much sound advice:

Never mind nimminy-pimminy people thinking subjects _low_.
Things are low in manner of handling. Draw Nature in rags and
poverty, yet draw her truly, and how picturesque! I hate your
silver fork, kid glove, curly-haired school.[169]

And so in the following years, now to Ford, now to Murray, he traces his
progress, while in 1844 he tells Dawson Turner that he is 'at present
engaged in a kind of Biography in the Robinson Crusoe style.'[170] But
in the same year he went to Buda-Pesth, Venice, and Constantinople. The
first advertisement of the book appeared in _The Quarterly Review_ in
July 1848, when _Lavengro, An Autobiography_, was announced. Later in
the same yea