situation in those countries or to attend any expedition thither, I pray you to lay hold of it, and no conduct of mine shall ever give you reason to repent it.

I remain, My Dear Sir, Your most obliged and obedient Servant, GEORGE BORROW.

P.S.--Present my best remembrances to Mrs B. and to Edgar, and tell them that they will both be starved. There is now a report in the street that twelve corn-stacks are blazing within twenty miles of this place. I have lately been wandering about Norfolk, and I am sorry to say that the minds of the peasantry are in a horrible state of excitement; I have repeatedly heard men and women in the harvest- field swear that not a grain of the corn they were cutting should be eaten, and that they would as lieve be hanged as live. I am afraid all this will end in a famine and a rustic war.

It was pride that prompted Borrow to ask Dr Bowring to stay his hand for the moment about a commission. There was no reasonable possibility of his being able to raise 500 pounds. Even if his mother had possessed it, which she did not, he would not have drained her resources of so large an amount. His subsequent attitude towards the Belgians was characteristic of him. To his acutely sensitive perceptions, failure to obtain an appointment he sought was a rebuff, and his whole nature rose up against what, at the moment, appeared to be an intolerable slight.

Nothing came of the project of collaboration between Bowring and Borrow beyond an article on Danish and Norwegian literature that appeared in The Foreign Quarterly Review (June 1830), in which Borrow supplied translations of the sixteen poems illustrating Bowring's text. In all probability the response to the prospectus was deemed inadequate, and Bowring did not wish to face a certain financial loss.

From Borrow's own letters there is no question that Dr Bowring was acting towards him in a most friendly manner, and really endeavouring to assist him to obtain some sort of employment. It may be, as has been said, and as seems extremely probable, that Bowring used his "facility in acquiring and translating tongues deliberately as a ladder to an administrative post abroad," {86a} but if Borrow "put a wrong construction upon his sympathy" and was led into "a veritable cul-de-sac of literature," {86b} it was no fault of Bowring's.

Borrow's relations with Dr Bowring continued to be most cordial for many years, as his letters show. "Pray excuse me for troubling you with these lines," he writes years later; "I write to you, as usual, for assistance in my projects, convinced that you will withhold none which it may be in your power to afford, more especially when by so doing you will perhaps be promoting the happiness of our fellow- creatures." This is very significant as indicating the nature of the relations between the two men.

Borrow was to experience yet another disappointment. A Welsh bookseller, living in the neighbourhood of Smithfield, commissioned him to translate into English Elis Wyn's The Sleeping Bard, a book printed originally in 1703. The bookseller foresaw for the volume a large sale, not only in England but in Wales; but "on the eve of committing it to the press, however, the Cambrian-Briton felt his small heart give way within him. 'Were I to print it,' said he, 'I should be ruined; the terrible descriptions of vice and torment would frighten the genteel part of the English public out of its wits, and I should to a certainty be prosecuted by Sir James Scarlett . . . Myn Diawl! I had no idea, till I had read him in English, that Elis Wyn had been such a terrible fellow.'" {87a}

With this Borrow had to be content and retire from the presence of the little bookseller, who told him he was "much obliged . . . for the trouble you have given yourself on my account," {87b} and his bundle of manuscript, containing nearly three thousand lines, the work probably of some months, was to be put aside for thirty years before eventually appearing in a limited edition.

It cannot be determined with exactness when Borrow relinquished the unequal struggle against adverse circumstances in London. He had met with sufficient discouragement to dishearten him from further effort. Perhaps his greatest misfortune was his disinclination to make friends with anybody save vagabonds. He could attract and earn the friendship of an apple-woman, thimble-riggers, tramps, thieves, gypsies, in short with any vagrant he chose to speak to; but his hatred of gentility was a great and grave obstacle in the way of his material advancement. His brother John seemed to recognise this; for in 1831 he wrote, "I am convinced that YOUR WANT OF SUCCESS IN LIFE is more owing to your being unlike other people than to any other cause."

It would appear that, finding nothing to do in London, Borrow once more became a wanderer. He was in London in March; but on 27th, 28th, and 29th July 1830 he was unquestionably in Paris. Writing about the Revolution of La Granja (August 1836) and of the energy, courage and activity of the war correspondents, he says:

"I saw them [the war correspondents] during the three days at Paris, mingled with canaille and gamins behind the barriers, whilst the mitraille was flying in all directions, and the desperate cuirassiers were dashing their fierce horses against these seemingly feeble bulwarks. There stood they, dotting down their observations in their pocket-books as unconcernedly as if reporting the proceedings of a reform meeting in Covent Garden or Finsbury Square." {88a}

This can have reference only to the "Three Glorious Days" of Revolution, 27th to 29th July 1830, during which Charles X. lost, and Louis-Philippe gained, a throne. He returned to Norwich sometime during the autumn of 1830. {88b} In November he was entering upon his epistolary duel with the Army Pay Office in connection with John's half-pay as a lieutenant in the West Norfolk Militia.

In 1826 John had gone to Mexico, then looked upon as a land of promise for young Englishmen, who might expect to find fortunes in its silver mines. Allday, brother of Roger Kerrison, was there, and John Borrow determined to join him. Obtaining a year's leave of absence from his colonel, together with permission to apply for an extension, he entered the service of the Real del Monte Company, receiving a salary of three hundred pounds a year. He arranged that his mother should have his half-pay, and it was in connection with this that George entered upon a correspondence with the Army Pay Office that was to extend over a period of fifteen months.

Originally John had arranged for the amounts to be remitted to Mexico, and he sent them back again to his mother. This involved heavy losses in connection with the bills of exchange, and wishing to avoid this tax, John sent to his brother an official copy of a Mexican Power of Attorney, which George strove to persuade the Army Pay Office was the original.

Tact was unfortunately not one of George Borrow's acquirements at this period, and in this correspondence he adopted an attitude that must have seriously prejudiced his case. "I am a solicitor myself, Sir," he states, and proceeds to threaten to bring the matter before Parliament. He writes to the Solicitor of the Treasury "as a member of the same honourable profession to which I was myself bred up," and demands whether he has not law, etc., on his side. The outcome of the correspondence was that the disembodied allowance was refused on the plea "that Lieutenant Borrow having been absent without Leave from the Training of the West Norfolk Militia has, under the provisions of the 12th Section of the Militia Pay and Clothing Act, forfeited his Allowance." In consequence, payment was made only for the amount due from 25th June 1829 to 24th December 1830. The whole tone of Borrow's letters was unfortunate for the cause he pleaded. He wrote to the Secretary of State for War as he might have written to the little Welsh bookseller with "the small heart." He was indignant at what he conceived to be an injustice, and was unable to dissemble his anger.

George had thought of joining his brother, but had not received any very marked encouragement to do so. John despised Mexican methods. On one occasion he writes apropos of George's suggestion of the army, "If you can raise the pewter, come out here rather than that, and ROB." One sage thing at least John is to be credited with, when he wrote to his brother, "Do not enter the army; it is a bad spec." It would have been for George Borrow.

Among the papers left at Borrow's death was a fragment of a political article in dispraise of the Radicals. The editorial "We" suggests that Borrow might possibly have been engaged in political journalism. The statement made by him that he "frequently spoke up for Wellington" {90a} may or may not have had reference to contributions to the press. The fragment itself proves nothing. Many would-be journalists write "leaders" that never see the case-room.

It is useless to speculate further regarding the period that Borrow himself elected to veil from the eyes, not only of his contemporaries, but those of another generation. Men who have overcome adverse conditions and achieved fame are not as a rule averse from publishing, or at least allowing to be known, the difficulties that they had to contend with. Borrow was in no sense of the word an ordinary man. He unquestionably suffered acutely during the years of failure, when it seemed likely that his life was to be wasted, barren of anything else save the acquirement of a score or more languages; keys that could open literary storehouses that nobody wanted to explore, to the very existence of which, in fact, the public was frigidly indifferent.

"Poor George . . . I wish he was making money . . . He works hard and remains poor," is the comment of his brother John, written in the autumn of 1830. To no small degree Borrow was responsible for his own failure, or perhaps it would be more just to say that he had been denied many of the attributes that make for success. His independence was aggressive, and it offended people. Even with the Welsh Preacher and his wife he refused to unbend.

"'What a disposition!'" Winifred had exclaimed, holding up her hands; "'and this is pride, genuine pride--that feeling which the world agrees to call so noble. Oh, how mean a thing is pride! never before did I see all the meanness of what is called pride!'" {91a}

This pride, magnificent as the loneliness of kings, and about as unproductive of a sympathetic view of life, always constituted a barrier in the way of Borrow's success. There were innumerable other obstacles: his choice of friends, his fierce denunciatory hatred of gentility, together with humbug, which he always seemed to confuse with it, the attacks of the "Horrors," his grave bearing, which no laugh ever disturbed, and, above all, his uncompromising hostility to the things that the world chose to consider excellent. The world in return could make nothing of a man who was a mass of moods and