cription--I should have answered the receipt of it before had I
not been very unwell. Should you come to these parts do me the favour to
look in upon me--it might do me good, and say the same thing from me to
my kind and true friend Robt. Cooke. His last visit to me did me much
good, and another might probably do me the same. What a horrible state
the country seems to be in, and no wonder--a monster-minister whose
principal aim seems to be the ruin of his native land, a parliament
either incompetent or indifferent. However, let us hope for the best.
Pray send my cordial respects to Mrs. Murray and kind regards to the
rest of your good family.--Ever sincerely yours,

GEORGE BORROW.'

[201] Mr. Sampson has written an admirable introduction to _The Romany
Rye_ in Methuen's 'Little Library,' but he goes rather far in his
suggestion that Borrow instead of writing 'Joseph Sell' for L20,
possibly obtained that sum by imitating 'the methods of Jerry Abershaw,
Galloping Dick,' or some of the 'fraternity of vagabonds' whose lives
Borrow had chronicled in his _Celebrated Trials_, in other words, that
he stole the money.

[202] _The Romany Rye_, Appendix, ch. vii.

[203] It is interesting to note that all the surviving members of Sir
Walter Scott's family belong to the Roman Catholic Church, as do certain
members of the family of Newman's opponent, Charles Kingsley. Several
members of Charles Dickens's family are also Roman Catholics.

[204] _Essays Critical and Historical_ by John Henry Cardinal Newman,
vol. i., Longmans. See also _Apologia pro Vita Sua_, pp. 96-97.

CHAPTER XXXI.

EDWARD FITZGERALD

Edward FitzGerald once declared that he was about the only friend with
whom Borrow had never quarrelled.[205] There was probably no reason for
this exceptional amity other than the 'genius for friendship' with which
FitzGerald has been rightly credited. There were certainly, however,
many points of likeness between the two men which might have kept them
at peace. Both had written copiously and out of all proportion to the
public demand for their work. Both revelled in translation. FitzGerald's
eight volumes in a magnificent American edition consists mainly of
translations from various tongues which no man presumably now reads. All
the world has read and will long continue to read his translation or
paraphrase of Omar Khayyam's _Rubaiyat_. 'Old Fitz,' as his friends
called him, lives by that, although h