mysteriously alive, very different
from every other man and especially from certain kinds of man. When you
look at a larch wood with a floor of fern in October at the end of
twilight, you are not content to have that wood described as so many
hundred poles growing on three acres of land, the property of a
manufacturer of gin. Still less was Borrow content to sit down at
Oulton, while the blast howled amid the pines which nearly surround his
lonely dwelling, and answer the genial Ford's questions one by one: "What
countries have you been in? What languages do you understand?" and so
on. Ford probably divined a book as substantial and well-furnished with
milestones as "The Bible in Spain," and he cheerfully told Borrow to make
the broth "thick and slab."

Ford, in fact, doubled the difficulty. Not only did Borrow feel that his
book must create a living soul, but the soul must be heroic to meet the
expectations of Ford and the public. The equestrian group had been easy
enough--himself mounted on Sidi Habismilk, with the swift Jew and the
Gypsy at his side--but the life of a man was a different matter. Nor was
the task eased by his exceptional memory. He claimed, as has been seen,
to remember the look of the viper seen in his third year. Later, in
"Lavengro," he meets a tinker and buys his stock-in-trade to set himself
up with. The tinker tries to put him off by tales of the Blazing Tinman
who has driven him from his beat. Borrow answers that he can manage the
Tinman one way or other, saying, "I know all kinds of strange words and
names, and, as I told you before, I sometimes hit people when they put me
out." At last the tinker consents to sell his pony and things on one
condition. "Tell me what's my name," he says; "if you can't, may I--."
Borrow answers: "Don't swear, it's a bad habit, neither pleasant nor
profitable. Your name is Slingsby--Jack Slingsby. There, don't stare,
there's nothing in my telling you your name: I've been in these parts
before, at least not very far from here. Ten years ago, when I was
little more than a child, I was about twenty miles from here in a post
chaise, at the door of an inn, and as I looked from the window of the
chaise, I saw you standing by a gutter, with a big tin ladle in your
hand, and somebody called you Jack Slingsby. I never forget anything I
hear or see; I can't, I wish I could. So there's nothing strange in my
knowing your name; indeed there's nothing strange