ads of England for a few months
together. At the same time it must be granted that Borrow had a morbid
fear of being dull or at least of being ordinary. He was a partly
conscious provider of entertainment when he made the book so thick with
incidents, scenes and portraits, and each incident, scene and portrait so
perfect after its kind. Where he overdoes his emphasis or refinement,
can only be decided by differing tastes. Some, for example, cannot abide
his description of the sleepless man who had at last discovered a perfect
opiate in Wordsworth's poetry. I find myself stopping short at the
effect of sherry and Popish leanings on the publican and his trade, and
still more the effect of his return to ale and commonsense religion: how
everyone bought his liquids and paid for them and wanted to treat him,
while the folk of his parish had already made him a churchwarden. This
might have been writ sarcastic by a witty Papist.

Probably Borrow used the device of recognition and reappearances to
satisfy a rather primitive taste in fiction, and to add to the mystery,
though I will again suggest that a man who travelled and went about among
men as he did would take less offence at these things. The
re-appearances of Jasper are natural enough, except at the ford when
Borrow is about to pass into Wales: those of Ardry less so. But when
Borrow contrives to hear more of the old china collector and of Isopel
also from the jockey, and shuffles about the postillion, Murtagh, the Man
in Black, and Platitude, and introduces Sir John Bowring for punishment,
he makes "The Romany Rye" much inferior to "Lavengro."

These devices never succeed, except where their extravagance makes us
laugh heartily--as when on Salisbury Plain he meets returning from Botany
Bay the long lost son of his old London Bridge apple-woman. The devices
are unnecessary and remain as stiffening stains upon a book that is
otherwise full of nature and human nature.

CHAPTER XXV--"LAVENGRO" AND "THE ROMANY RYE": THE CHARACTERS

As the atmosphere of the two autobiographical books is more intense and
pure than that of "The Bible in Spain," so the characters in it are more
elaborate. "The Bible in Spain" contained brilliant sketches and
suggestions of men and women. In the autobiography even the sketches are
intimate, like that of the "Anglo-Germanist," William Taylor; and they
are not less surprising than the Spanish sketches, from the Rommany chal
wh