grand, and he
condemned the modern muse for "the violent desire to be smooth and
tuneful, forgetting that smoothness and tunefulness are nearly synonymous
with tameness and unmeaningness." He once said of Keats: "They are
attempting to resuscitate him, I believe." He regarded Wordsworth as a
soporific merely.

CHAPTER XII--LONDON

Early in 1824, and just before George Borrow's articles with the
solicitors expired, Captain Borrow died. He left all that he had to his
widow, with something for the maintenance and education of the younger
son during his minority. Borrow had already planned to go to London, to
write, to abuse religion and to get himself prosecuted. A month later,
the day after the expiration of his articles, before he had quite reached
his majority, he went up to London. He was "cast upon the world" in no
very hopeful condition. He had lately been laid up again--was it by the
"fear" or something else?--by a complaint which destroyed his strength,
impaired his understanding and threatened his life, as he wrote to a
friend: he was taking mercury for a cure. But he had his translations
from Ab Gwilym and his romantic ballads, and he believed in them. He
took them to Sir Richard Phillips, who did not believe in them, and had
moreover given up publishing. According to his own account, which is
very well known (Lavengro, chapter XXX.), Sir Richard suggested that he
should write something in the style of the "Dairyman's Daughter" instead.

Men of this generation, fortunate at least in this ignorance, probably
think of the "Dairyman's Daughter" as a fictitious title, like the
"Oxford Review" (which stood for "The Universal Review") and the "Newgate
Lives" (which should have been "Celebrated Trials," etc.). But such a
book really was published in 1811. It was an "authentic narrative" by a
clergyman of the Church of England named Legh Richmond, who thought it
"delightful to trace and discover the operations of Divine love among the
poorer classes of mankind." The book was about the conversion and holy
life and early death of a pale, delicate, consumptive dairyman's daughter
in the Isle of Wight. It became famous, was translated into many
languages, and was reprinted by some misguided or malevolent man not long
ago. I will give a specimen of the book which the writer of "Six-foot-
three" was asked to imitate:

"Travellers, as they pass through the country, usually stop to inquire
whose are t