don _Daily
Chronicle_ of 30th April 1900 an article which had better not have been
written.

[192] Letter to _The Athenaeum_, July 22, 1893.

CHAPTER XXIX

IN SCOTLAND AND IRELAND

Borrow has himself given us--in _Lavengro_--a picturesque record of his
early experiences in Scotland. It is passing strange that he published
no account of his two visits to the North in maturer years. Why did he
not write _Wild Scotland_ as a companion volume to _Wild Wales_? He
preserved in little leather pocket-books or leather-covered
exercise-books copious notes of both tours. Two of his notebooks came
into the possession of the late Dr. Knapp, Borrow's first biographer,
and are thus described in his Bibliography:

_Note Book of a Tour in Scotland, the Orkneys and Shetland in
Oct. and Dec. 1858._ 1 large vol. leather.

_Note Book of Tours around Belfast and the Scottish Borders
from Stranraer to Berwick-upon-Tweed in July and August 1866._
1 vol. leather.

Of these Dr. Knapp made use only to give the routes of Borrow's journeys
so far as he was able to interpret them. It may be that he was doubtful
as to whether his purchase of the manuscript carried with it the
copyright of its contents, as it assuredly did not; it may be that he
quailed before the minute and almost undecipherable handwriting. But
similar notebooks are in my possession, and there are, happily, in
these days typists--you pay them by the hour, and it means an infinity
of time and patience--who will copy the most minute and the most obscure
documents. There are some of the notebooks of the Scottish tour of 1858
before me, and what is of far more importance--Borrow's letters to his
wife while on this tour. Borrow lost his mother in August 1858, and this
event was naturally a great blow to his heart. A week or two later he
suffered a cruel blow to his pride also, nothing less than the return of
the manuscript of his much-prized translation from the Welsh of _The
Sleeping Bard_--and this by his 'prince of publishers,' John Murray.
'There is no money in it,' said the publisher, and he was doubtless
right.[193] The two disasters were of different character, but both
unhinged him. He had already written _Wild Wales_, although it was not
to be published for another four years. He had caused to be
advertised--in 1857--a book on Cornwall, but it was never written in any
definitive form, and now our author had lost heart, and the Cornish
b