hine, and people who are anxious to
shine, can never tell a plain story. 'So I went with them to a music
booth, where they made me almost drunk with gin, and began to talk their
flash language, which I did not understand,' says, or is made to say,
Henry Simms, executed at Tyburn some seventy years before the time of
which I am speaking. I have always looked upon this sentence as a
masterpiece of the narrative style, it is so concise and yet so very
clear."

Borrow read Bunyan, Sterne and Smollett: he liked Byron's "Childe Harold"
and his "Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte";--he liked that portrait with all
Europe and all history for a background. Above all, he read Defoe, and
in the third chapter of "Lavengro" he has described his first sight of
"Robinson Crusoe" as a little child:

"The first object on which my eyes rested was a picture; it was
exceedingly well executed, at least the scene which it represented made a
vivid impression upon me, which would hardly have been the case had the
artist not been faithful to nature. A wild scene it was--a heavy sea and
rocky shore, with mountains in the background, above which the moon was
peering. Not far from the shore, upon the water, was a boat with two
figures in it, one of which stood at the bow, pointing with what I knew
to be a gun at a dreadful shape in the water; fire was flashing from the
muzzle of the gun, and the monster appeared to be transfixed. I almost
thought I heard its cry. I remained motionless, gazing upon the picture,
scarcely daring to draw my breath, lest the new and wondrous world should
vanish of which I had now obtained a glimpse. 'Who are those people, and
what could have brought them into that strange situation?' I asked
myself; and now the seed of curiosity, which had so long lain dormant,
began to expand, and I vowed to myself to become speedily acquainted with
the whole history of the people in the boat. After looking on the
picture till every mark and line in it were familiar to me, I turned over
various leaves till I came to another engraving; a new source of wonder--a
low sandy beach on which the furious sea was breaking in mountain-like
billows; cloud and rack deformed the firmament, which wore a dull and
leaden-like hue; gulls and other aquatic fowls were toppling upon the
blast, or skimming over the tops of the maddening waves--'Mercy upon him!
he must be drowned!' I exclaimed, as my eyes fell upon a poor wretch who
appeared to be strivin