no uneasiness at these years--but I am
sleepy, and must go to rest.'"

This is due to probably something more than a desire to make himself and
his past impressive. The man's story in several places reminds me of
Borrow, where, for instance, after he has realised his unpardonable sin,
he runs wild through Wales, "climbing mountains and wading streams, burnt
by the sun, drenched by the rain," so that for three years he hardly knew
what befel him, living with robbers and Gypsies, and once about to fling
himself into the sea from a lofty rock.

If it be true, as it is likely, that Borrow suffered in a more extended
manner than he showed in his accounts of the horrors, the time of the
suffering is still uncertain. Was it before his first escape from
London, as he says in "Lavengro"? Was it during his second long stay in
London or after his second escape? Or was it really not long before the
actual narrative was written in the 'forties? There is some reason for
thinking so. The most vivid description of "the horrors," and the
account of the touching gentleman and of Peter Williams, together with a
second reference to "the horrors" or the "evil one," all occur in a
section of "Lavengro" equal to hardly more than a sixth of the whole. And
further, when Borrow was writing "Wild Wales," or when he met the sickly
young man at the "Castle Inn" of Caernarvon, he thought of himself as
always having had "the health of an elephant." I should be inclined to
conclude at least that when he was forty great mental suffering was still
fresh in his mind, something worse than the heavy melancholy which
returned now and then when he was past fifty.

CHAPTER XVII--THE BIBLE SOCIETY: RUSSIA

From the phrase, "He said in '32," which Borrow uses of himself in
Chapter X. of the Appendix to "The Romany Rye," it was to be concluded
that he was writing political articles in 1832; and Dr. Knapp was able to
quote a manuscript of the time where he says that "there is no Radical
who would not rejoice to see his native land invaded by the bitterest of
her foreign enemies," etc., and also a letter, printed in the "Norfolk
Chronicle," on August 18, 1832, on the origin of the word "Tory."

At the end of this year he became friendly with the family of Skepper,
including the widowed Mrs. Mary Clarke, then 36 years old, who lived at
Oulton Hall, near Lowestoft, in Suffolk. With or through them he met the
Rev. Francis Cunningham, Vicar of St.