of these last years of London life.
Of Mr. Watts-Dunton's 'memories,' we shall write in our next chapter.
Here it remains only to note that Borrow still continued to interest
himself in his various efforts at translation, and in 1861 and 1862 the
editor of _Once a Week_ printed various ballads and stories from his
pen. The volumes of this periodical are before me, and I find
illustrations by Sir John Millais, Sir E. J. Poynter, Simeon Solomon and
George Du Maurier; stories by Mrs. Henry Wood and Harriet Martineau, and
articles by Walter Thornbury.

In 1862 _Wild Wales_ was published, as we have seen. In 1865 Henrietta
married William MacOubrey, and in the following year, Borrow and his
wife went to visit the pair in their Belfast home. In the beginning of
the year 1869 Mrs. Borrow died, aged seventy-three. There are few
records of the tragedy that are worth perpetuating.[236] Borrow consumed
his own smoke. With his wife's death his life was indeed a wreck. No
wonder he was so 'rude' to that least perceptive of women, Miss Cobbe.
Some four or five years more Borrow lingered on in London, cheered at
times by walks and talks with Gordon Hake and Watts-Dunton, and he then
returned to Oulton--a most friendless man:--

What land has let the dreamer from its gates,
What face beloved hides from him away?
A dreamer outcast from some world of dreams,
He goes for ever lonely on his way.

Like a great pine upon some Alpine height,
Torn by the winds and bent beneath the snow
Half overthrown by icy avalanche,
The lone of soul throughout the world must go.

Alone among his kind he stands alone,
Torn by the passions of his own strange heart,
Stoned by continual wreckage of his dreams,
He in the crowd for ever is apart.

Like the great pine that, rocking no sweet rest,
Swings no young birds to sleep upon the bough,
But where the raven only comes to croak--
'There lives no man more desolate than thou!'

FOOTNOTES:

[230] The frontispiece to the present volume is from the replica in the
possession of Borrow's executor, who has kindly permitted me to have it
photographed for the purpose. There are slight and interesting
variations from Mr. Murray's portrait. Phillips (1820-1868), the artist
of these pictures, is often confused with his father, Thomas
(1770-1845), the Royal Academician and a much superior painter, who, by
the way, painted many port