But
Borrow, in good truth, cared little for modern English literature. His
heart was entirely with the poets of other lands--the Scandinavians and
the Kelts. In Virgil he apparently took little interest, nor in the
great poetry of Greece, Rome and England, although we find a reference
to Theocritus and Dante in his books. Fortunately for his fame he had
read _Gil Blas_, _Don Quixote_, and, above all, _Robinson Crusoe_, which
last book, first read as a boy of six, coloured his whole life. Defoe
and Fielding and Bunyan were the English authors to whom he owed most.
Of Byron he has quaint things to say, and of Wordsworth things that are
neither quaint nor wise. We recall the man in the field in the
twenty-second chapter of _The Romany Rye_ who used Wordsworth's poetry
as a soporific. And throughout his life Borrow's position towards his
contemporaries in literature was ever contemptuous. He makes no mention
of Carlyle or Ruskin or Matthew Arnold, and they in their turn, it may
be added, make no mention of him or of his works. Thackeray he snubbed
on one of the few occasions they met, and Browning and Tennyson were
alike unrevealed to him. Borrow indeed stands quite apart from the great
literature of a period in which he was a striking and individual figure.
Lacking appreciation in this sphere of work, he wrote of 'the
contemptible trade of author,' counting it less creditable than that of
a jockey.

But all this is a digression from the progress of our narrative of the
advent of _The Romany Rye_. The book was published in an edition of 1000
copies in April 1857, and it took thirty years to dispose of 3750
copies. Not more than 2000 copies of his book were sold in Great Britain
during the twenty-three remaining years of Borrow's life. What wonder
that he was embittered by his failure! The reviews were far from
favourable, although Mr. Elwin wrote not unkindly in an article in the
_Quarterly Review_ called 'Roving Life in England.' No critic, however,
was as severe as _The Athenaeum_, which had called _Lavengro_
'balderdash' and referred to _The Romany Rye_ as the 'literary dough' of
an author 'whose dullest gypsy preparation we have now read.' In later
years, when, alas! it was too late, _The Athenaeum_, through the eloquent
pen of Theodore Watts, made good amends. But William Bodham Donne wrote
to Borrow with adequate enthusiasm:

To George Borrow, Esq.

12 ST. JAMES'S SQUARE, _May 24th, 1857._