e time, contemplate writing upon
Borrow, and corresponded with Mrs. MacOubrey with this view; but the
affair fell through. As a son of Dr. Hake's he could not fail to know
Borrow. He wrote a brief article about him, in the _Dictionary of
National Biography_. But the two Hakes who were thrown across Borrow
most intimately were Thomas Hake and George Hake, the latter of whom
lately died in Africa. Thomas Hake, the eldest of the family, knew
Borrow in his own childhood, which the other members of the family did
not. After Dr. Gordon Hake went to live in Germany, after the Roehampton
home was broken up, I saw a good deal of Borrow. He always thought that
no one sympathised with him and understood him so thoroughly as I
did,--Ever most cordially yours,

'THEODORE WATTS-DUNTON.'

Since receiving this letter I have been in communication with Mr. Egmont
Hake, who generously offered to place his Borrow material at my
disposal, but this offer came too late to be of service. Mr. Hake will,
however, shortly publish his _Memoirs_ in which he will include some
interesting impressions of George Borrow which it has been my privilege
to read in manuscript.

[238] Dr. Hake was equally severe in his references to Thackeray, of
whom scarcely any one has spoken ill. 'Thackeray spent a good deal of
his time on stilts,' he says. '... He was a very disagreeable companion
to those who did not want to boast that they knew him.'--_Memoirs_, p.
86. 'Thackeray,' he says elsewhere, 'as if under the impression that
the party was invited to look at him, thought it necessary to
make a figure.... Borrow knew better how to behave in good
company.'--_Memoirs_, p. 166.

[239] _Theodore Watts-Dunton: Poet, Novelist, Critic_. By James Douglas.
Hodder and Stoughton, 1904, p. 96.

[240] 'Recollections of George Borrow,' by A. Egmont Hake in _The
Athenaeum_, Aug. 13, 1881.

[241] Borrow's hair was black until he was about twenty years of age,
when it turned white.

[242] _Chambers's Cyclopaedia of English Literature_, vol. iii. p. 430.

[243] _The Athenaeum_, September 3, 1881.

[244] _The Athenaeum_, September 10, 1881. I am indebted to my friend Mr.
John Collins Francis., of _The Athenaeum_ newspaper, for generously
placing the columns of that journal at my disposal for the purposes of
this book.

CHAPTER XXXV

BORROW'S UNPUBLISHED WRITINGS

To many in our day, less utilitarian than those of an earlier era,
Borrow must