to
a review by a few interpolations and extracts. Borrow would not have the
article touched. Both Lockhart and Ford advised him to send it to
"Fraser's" or another magazine where it was certain to be welcomed as a
Spanish essay by the author of "The Bible in Spain." But no: and the
article was never printed anywhere.

Yet Borrow was not settling down to authorship pure and simple. He flew
into a passion because a new railway line, in 1846, ran through his
estate. He flew into a passion, did nothing, and remained on his estates
until 1853, when he and his family went into lodgings at Yarmouth. I
have not discovered how much he profited by the intrusion of the railway,
except when he pilloried the contractor, his neighbour, Mr. Peto, as
Flamson, in the Appendix to "The Romany Rye." Then he tried again to be
put on the Commission of the Peace, with no success. He probably spent
much of his time in being either suspicious, or ambitious, or indignant.
In 1847, for example, he suspected his friend Dr. Bowring--his "only
friend" in 1842--of using his work to get for himself the consulship at
Canton, which he was professing to obtain for Borrow. The result was the
foaming abuse of "The Romany Rye," where Bowring is the old Radical. The
affair of the Sinai manuscripts followed close on this. All that he saw
of foreign lands was at the Exhibition of 1851, where he frequently
accosted foreigners in their own tongue, so that it began to be whispered
about that he was "uncanny": he excited so much remark that his daughter
thought it better to drag him away.

He was suffering from ill-health and untranquility of mind which gave his
mother anxiety, though his physical strength appears not to have
degenerated, for in 1853, at Yarmouth, he rescued a man out of a stormy
sea. He was an unpleasant companion for those whom he did not like or
could not get on with. Thackeray tried to get up a conversation with
him, his final effort being the question, "Have you seen my 'Snob Papers'
in 'Punch'?" To which Borrow answered: "In 'Punch'? It is a periodical
I never look at." He once met Miss Agnes Strickland:

"Borrow was unwilling to be introduced, but was prevailed on to submit.
He sat down at her side; before long she spoke with rapture of his works,
and asked his permission to send him a copy of her 'Queens of England.'
He exclaimed, 'For God's sake, don't, madam, I should not know where to
put them or what to do with them.'