ich is
there crossed out and "Life, a Drama" thenceforward substituted. Borrow's
corrections are worth the attention of anyone who cares for men and
books.

"Lavengro" now opens with the sentence: "On an evening of July, in the
year 18--, at East D---, a beautiful little town in a certain district of
East Anglia, I first saw the light."

The proof shows that Borrow preferred "a certain district of East Anglia"
to "The western division of Norfolk." Here the added shade of
indefiniteness can hardly seem valuable to any but the author himself. In
another place he prefers (chapter XIII.) the vague "one of the most
glorious of Homer's rhapsodies" to "the enchantments of Canidia, the
masterpiece of the prince of Roman poets."

In the second chapter he describes how, near Pett, in Sussex, as a child
less than three years old, he took up a viper without being injured or
even resisted, amid the alarms of his mother and elder brother. After
this description he comments:

"It is my firm belief that certain individuals possess an inherent power,
or fascination, over certain creatures, otherwise I should be unable to
account for many feats which I have witnessed, and, indeed, borne a share
in, connected with the taming of brutes and reptiles."

This was in the proof preceded by a passage at first modified and then
cut out, reading thus:

"In some parts of the world and more particularly in India there are
people who devote themselves to the pursuit and taming of serpents. Had
I been born in those regions I perhaps should have been what is termed a
snake charmer. That I had a genius for the profession, as probably all
have who follow it, I gave decided proof of the above instance as in
others which I shall have occasion subsequently to relate."

This he cut out presumably because it was too "informing" and too little
"wild and strange."

A little later in the same chapter he describes how, before he was four
years old, near Hythe, in Kent, he saw in a penthouse against an old
village church, "skulls of the old Danes":

"'Long ago' (said the sexton, with Borrow's aid), 'long ago they came
pirating into these parts: and then there chanced a mighty shipwreck, for
God was angry with them, and He sunk them; and their skulls, as they came
ashore, were placed here as a memorial. There were many more when I was
young, but now they are fast disappearing. Some of them must have
belonged to strange fellows, madam. Only see t