days and years
were passed in a moody inactivity, now at Oulton, then at Yarmouth, next
in London, finally at Oulton again, where he "died, as he had lived,
alone" on July 26, 1881. It seemed for the time as if he had outlived
his reputation. Appearances are proverbially deceptive.

George Borrow's life and works are one and the same thing. Few great
writers have been more persistently autobiographical than Borrow was.
Boswell, said Johnson once, had only two subjects, Dr. Johnson and James
Boswell, and he, the Doctor, was heartily sick of both; but Borrow had
only one subject--himself, from which he practically never wandered. The
merry gests and marvellous exploits of the incomparable George
Borrow--these form the unique theme of our Gitano Crusoe. But it is not
enough to say that Borrow's autobiographical methods are unique. His
life is presented to us in four panels, each as unlike the others as it
is possible to be in size, shape, texture, and surface. The scale varies
as much as that of an ordnance map, sometimes 25 inches to the mile, at
others five miles to the inch. The colours upon the palette are artfully
changed, details are sometimes obtruded, at others significantly hidden.
A casual glance obscures rather than reveals the fact that, whether he is
writing of his early life and struggles ("Lavengro," i.-lviii.), of one
vivid Bohemian episode of his early manhood ("Lavengro"--"Romany Rye"),
of the crowning triumph of his maturity ("Bible in Spain"), or of a
vacation tour during the autumn of a disappointed life ("Wild Wales"),
Borrow was always working upon the same model, with the same desperate
and conscientious zeal, with the same extraordinary gust and vigour, with
the same genius, the same bias, the same limitations.

As a man of letters he must be judged primarily as a biographer, and, if
this be done, it will be found that Borrow has achieved the great object
of biography; he has transmitted a great personality. The blemishes in
his work are not particularly hard to find. Inadvertently we may have
been betrayed into indicating one or two of them. But it is not by any
means safe ground. With the exception of Jane Austen (and temporarily
speaking, perhaps Charles Dickens) there is hardly any literary character
whom it is so dangerous to approach without passports and periphrases
(securing retreat, if necessary) and plentiful kow-tows as George Borrow.
Among all literary clansmen you shall ha