. There are
none of the hairbreadth escapes and grim experiences of _The Bible in
Spain_, none of the romance and the glamour of _Lavengro_ and its
sequel, but there is good humour, a humour that does not obtain in the
three more important works, and there is an amazing amount of frank
candour of a biographical kind. We even have a reference to Isopel
Berners, referred to by Captain Bosvile as 'the young woman you used to
keep company with ... a fine young woman and a virtuous.' It is the
happiest of Borrow's books, and not unnaturally. He was having a genuine
holiday, and he had the companionship during a part of it of his wife
and daughter, of whom he was, as this book is partly written to prove,
very genuinely fond. He also enjoyed the singularly felicitous
experience of harking back upon some of his earliest memories. He was
able to retrace the steps he took in the Welsh language during his
boyhood:

That night I sat up very late reading the life of Twm O'r Nant,
written by himself in choice Welsh.... The life I had read in
my boyhood in an old Welsh magazine, and I now read it again
with great zest, and no wonder, as it is probably the most
remarkable autobiography ever penned.

It is in this ecstatic mood that he passes through Wales. Let me recall
the eulogy on 'Gronwy' Owen, and here it may be said that Borrow rarely
got his spelling correct of the proper names of his various literary
heroes, in the various Norse and Celtic tongues in which he
delighted.[227] But how much Borrow delighted in his poets may be seen
by his eulogy on Goronwy Owen, which in its pathos recalls Carlyle's
similar eulogies over poor German scholars who interested him, Jean Paul
Richter and Heyne, for example. Borrow ignored Owen's persistent
intemperance and general impracticability. Here and here only, indeed,
does he remind one of Carlyle.[228] He had a great capacity for
hero-worship, although the two were not interested in the same heroes.
His hero-worship of Owen took him over large tracks of country in search
of that poet's birthplace. He writes of the delight he takes in
inspecting the birth-places and haunts of poets. 'It is because I am
fond of poetry, poets, and their haunts, that I am come to
Anglesey.'[229] 'I proceeded on my way,' he says elsewhere, 'in high
spirits indeed, having now seen not only the tomb of the Tudors, but one
of those sober poets for which Anglesey has always been so famous.' A