had
very little patience, though, after some talk he consented to
attend a seance to be held that evening in Burns's
drawing-room. We sat together, and I had the pleasure of
hearing from time to time his grunts of disapproval. When the
discourse--'in trance'--was over, he asked me if I believed in
'this sort of thing,' and when I said I was simply an
investigator he remarked, 'That's all right, I, too, am an
investigator--of things in general--and it would not take me
long to sum up that little man (the medium) as a humbug, but a
very clever humbug.'

That evening I had a long walk and a talk with him, and after
that several other opportunities of talk, the last being one
night when I chanced upon him on Westminster Bridge. It was a
superb starlight night, and he was standing about midway over
the bridge gazing down into the river. When I approached him he
said: 'I have been standing here for twenty minutes looking
round and meditating. There is not another city like this in
the world, nor another bridge like this, nor a river, nor a
Parliament House like that--with its little men making little
laws--which the Lawgiver that made yonder stars--look at
them!--is continually confounding--and will confound. O, we
little men! How long before we are dust? And the stars there,
how they smile at our puny lives and tricks--here to-day, gone
to-morrow. And yet to-night how glorious it is to be here!'

So he rhapsodised. And then it was, 'Where can we get a bite
and sup? I've been footing it all day among the hills
there--the Surrey Hills--for a breath of fresh air.'

In appearance, at the time I knew him, Borrow was neither thin
nor stout, but well proportioned and apparently of great
strength.

During this sojourn in London, which was undertaken because Oulton and
Yarmouth did not agree with his wife, Borrow suffered the tragedy of her
loss. Borrow dragged on his existence in London for another five years,
a much broken man. It is extraordinary how little we know of Borrow
during that fourteen years' sojourn in London; how rarely we meet him in
the literary memoirs of this period. Happily one or two pleasant
friendships relieved the sadness of his days; and in particular the
reminiscences of Walter Theodore Watts-Dunton assist us to a more
correct appreciation of the Borrow