te that no
other person under the same circumstances would have distributed the
tenth part. Yet had I been utterly unsuccessful, it would have been
wrong to charge me with being so, after all I have undergone--and with
how little of that are you acquainted." {140} If Borrow had been as
revengeful as Dr. Knapp believed him, he would not have allowed Brandram
to escape an immortality of hate in "Lavengro" or "The Romany Rye."

Borrow irritated the Spanish Government yet a little more by issuing his
Gypsy "Luke," and in May, 1838, he was illegally imprisoned in the
_Carcel de Corte_, where he insisted upon staying until he was set free
with honour and the payment of his expenses. He vindicated his position
by a letter to a newspaper, pointing out that his Society was neither
sectarian nor political, and that he was their sole authorised agent.
This led directly to the breaking of his connection with the Bible
Society, who reprimanded him for his letter and virtually recalled him
from Spain.

Nevertheless Borrow made a series of excursions into the country to sell
his Testaments, until in August he was definitely recalled. He returned
to England, as he says himself, for "change of scene and air" after an
attack of fever. He obtained a new lease from the Bible Society and was
back in Spain at the end of 1838. Early in 1839 he made further
excursions with Antonio Lopez to sell his Testaments, until he had to
stop. Thereupon he went to Seville. He was still forming plans on
behalf of the Society. He wished to go to La Mancha, the worst part of
Spain, then through Saragossa and into France.

At Seville it was, in May, 1839, that Colonel Napier met him. Nobody
knew who, or of what nationality, he was--this "mysterious Unknown," the
white-haired young man, with dark eyes of almost supernatural penetration
and lustre, who gave himself out to be thirty instead of thirty-five, who
spoke English, French, Italian, Spanish, German, and Romaic to those who
best understood these languages. Borrow and Napier rode out together to
the ruins of Italica:

"We sat down," he says, "on a fragment of the walls; the "Unknown" began
to feel the vein of poetry creeping through his inward soul, and gave
vent to it by reciting, with great emphasis and effect, the following
well-known and beautiful lines:

"Cypress and ivy, weed and wallflower, grown
Matted and massed together, hillocks heap'd
On what were chambers, arch crush