e I put away almost all Books except Omar Khayyam! which I
could not help looking over in a Paddock covered with Buttercups and
brushed by a delicious Breeze, while a dainty racing Filly of Browne's
came startling up to wonder and to snuff about me.' The 'friend' of the
letter was of course Mr. W. K. Browne, who was more of an open air man
than a bookman.

[209] I am indebted to Mr. Edward Heron-Allen for the information that
this is the original of the last verse but one in FitzGerald's first
version of the _Rubaiyat_:

r 74. Ah Moon of my Delight, who knowest no wane, The Moon of Heaven is
rising once again, How oft, hereafter rising, shall she look Through
this same Garden after me--in vain.

The literal translation is:

[Persian]
Since no one will guarantee thee a to-morrow,
[Persian]
Make thou happy now this lovesick heart;
[Persian]
Drink wine in the moonlight, O Moon, for the Moon
[Persian]
Shall seek us long and shall not find us.

[210] _The Works of Edward FitzGerald_, vol. ii. p. 74 (Macmillan).

[211] _Letters of Edward FitzGerald_, vol. ii. p. 15.

[212] _Ibid._, vol. iv. p. 85 (Macmillan).

[213] First published in _The Sphere_, October 31, 1903. The letter was
written to Mr. James Hooper of Norwich.

[214] _Works of Edward FitzGerald_, vol. ii. p. 135 (Macmillan).

[215] Published by Dr. Knapp in _Borrow's Life_, vol. ii. p. 348
(Murray).

[216] We learn from FitzGerald that Borrow's eyesight gave way about
this time, and his wife had to keep all books from him.

[217] There are two or three references to Borrow in _William Bodham
Donne and his Friends_, edited by Catharine B. Johnson (Methuen). The
most important of these is in a letter from Donne to Bernard Barton,
dated from Bury St. Edmunds, September 12th, 1848:

'We have had a great man here, and I have been walking with him and
aiding him to eat salmon and mutton and drink port--George Borrow; and
what is more, we fell in with some gypsies and I heard the speech of
Egypt, which sounded wonderously like a medley of broken Spanish and dog
Latin. Borrow's face lighted by the red turf fire of the tent was worth
looking at. He is ashy white now, but twenty years ago, when his hair
was like a raven's wing, he must have been hard to discriminate from a
born Bohemian. Borrow is best on the tramp, if you can walk four and a
half miles per hour--as I can with ease and do by choice--and can walk
fifteen of them at a stretch--which I can co