in anything, provided
you examine it to the bottom. Now what am I to give you for the things?"

(I once heard a Gypsy give a similar and equal display of memory.) Dr.
Knapp has corroborated several details of "Lavengro" which confirm
Borrow's opinion of his memory. Hearing the author whom he met on his
walk beyond Salisbury, speak of the "wine of 1811, the comet year,"
Borrow said that he remembered being in the market-place of Dereham,
looking at that comet. {30} Dr Knapp first makes sure exactly when
Borrow was at Dereham in 1811 and then that there was a comet visible
during that time. He proves also from newspapers of 1820 that the fight,
in the twenty sixth chapter of "Lavengro," ended in a thunderstorm like
that described by Borrow and used by Petulengro to forecast the violent
end of Thurtell.

Now a brute memory like that, which cannot be gainsaid, is not an
entirely good servant to a man who will not put down everything he can,
like a boy at an examination. The ordinary man probably recalls all that
is of importance in his past life, though he may not like to think so,
but a man with a memory like Borrow's or with a supply of diaries like
Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff's may well ask, "What is truth?" as Borrow
often did. The facts may convey a false impression which an omission or
a positive "lie" may correct.

{picture: A page from the author's proof copy of "Lavengro," showing
Borrow's significant corrections. (Photographed by kind permission of
Mr. Kyllmann and Mr. Thos. Seccombe.) Photo: W. J. Roberts: page30.jpg}

Just at first, as has been seen, a month after his Christmas wine with Mr
Petulengro, Borrow saw his life as a drama, perhaps as a melodrama, full
of Gypsies, jockeys and horses, wild men of many lands and several
murderers. "Capital subject," he repeated. That was when he saw himself
as an adventurer and Europe craning its neck to keep him in sight. But
he knew well, and after the first flush he remembered, that he was not
merely a robust walker, rider and philologist. When he was only eighteen
he was continually asking himself "What is truth?" "I had," he says,
"involved myself imperceptibly in a dreary labyrinth of doubt, and,
whichever way I turned, no reasonable prospect of extricating myself
appeared. The means by which I had brought myself into this situation
may be very briefly told; I had inquired into many matters, in order that
I might become wise, and I had read and pon