sire_ to depart and be with Christ, which is _far better_." The path
of the just is as the shining light which shineth more and more unto the
_perfect day_. May our path be so lighted up--until the day break and
the shadows flee away. Dearest friend, do write soon. I am so anxious to
hear how Dr. MacOubrey is.--Your most affect. friend,

E. HARVEY.

CHAPTER XXXVII

THE AFTERMATH

'We are all Borrovians now.'--AUGUSTINE BIRRELL.

It is a curious fact that of only two men of distinction in English
letters in these later years can it be said that they lived to a good
old age and yet failed of recognition for work that is imperishable.
Many poets have died young--Shelley and Keats for example--to whom this
public recognition was refused in their lifetime. But given the
happiness of reaching middle age, this recognition has never failed. It
came, for example, to Wordsworth and Coleridge long after their best
work was done. It came with more promptness to all the great Victorian
novelists. This recognition did not come in their lifetime to two
Suffolk friends, Edward FitzGerald with _Omar Khayyam_ and George Borrow
with _Lavengro_. In the case of FitzGerald there was probably no
consciousness that he had produced a great poem. In any case his sunny
Irish temperament could easily have surmounted disappointment if he had
expected anything from the world in the way of literary fame. Borrow was
quite differently made. He was as intense an egoist as Rousseau, whose
work he had probably never read, and would not have appreciated if he
had read. He longed for the recognition of the multitude through his
books, and thoroughly enjoyed it when it was given to him for a
moment--for his _Bible in Spain_. Such appreciation as he received in
his lifetime was given to him for that book and for no other. There were
here and there enthusiasts for his _Lavengro_ and _Romany Rye_. Dr.
Jessopp has told us that he was one. But it was not until long after his
death that the word 'Borrovian'[261] came into the language. Not a
single great author among his contemporaries praised him for his
_Lavengro_, the book for which we most esteem him to-day. His name is
not mentioned by Carlyle or Tennyson or Ruskin in all their voluminous
works. Among the novelists also he is of no account. Dickens and
Thackeray and George Eliot knew him not. Charlotte Bronte does indeed
write of him with enthusiasm,[262] but she is alone among the