nst following her. The scene of
these transactions was a wooded glen or dingle a few miles from
Willenhall, in Staffordshire, where Lavengro and Isopel were encamped in
their respective tents, having as their neighbours the gipsy clan of
which Jasper was the chief. Upon the whole the Dingle chapters are
perhaps the most brilliant and the most enduring that Borrow ever
achieved. Their interest is greatly enhanced by the fact that they are
probably a naked transcript from actual fact, for Borrow was a poor hand
at invention. He rarely, if ever, invented a character. His surest
source of inspiration was the unadorned truth.

After the experience of a summer in the open, Borrow, who was now
twenty-two, relapsed into the indifferent versification of Danish ballads
and Welsh bards, was severely fleeced in obscure journeyings in Southern
Europe, and so gained some experience for future use, vainly sought a
post, on the strength of his linguistic attainments, as an assistant in
the British Museum Library, and was reduced to writing reactionary
political leaders for a Norwich paper; he was, in fact, waiting, like Mr.
Micawber, for something to turn up, or, in his own graphic phrase,
"digging holes in the sand and filling them up again."

His deliverance was effected in rather a singular manner. About 1833 he
became acquainted with the Skeppers of Oulton Hall, in that pleasant
stretch of country which borders on the river Waveney. By Mrs. Clarke
(afterwards Mrs. Borrow), the widowed sister of the owner of the Hall, he
was introduced to the Rev. Francis Cunningham, rector of Pakefield, a
fine type of the Evangelical clergyman of a past generation, who had
married the sister of Joseph John Gurney. It seemed to this good man
that Borrow's gift of tongues might well be employed in the service of
the Bible Society, of which the famous Norfolk Quaker was an influential
member. The hour of the former would-be martyr to infidelity had now
come; he was taken into the regular service of the society upon an
average salary of about 250 pounds, in addition to expenses, and was
employed as editor, translator, and colporteur of Bibles in strange
lands. The labours of the next eight years of his life were as fruitful
and honourable as those of the preceding eight had been desultory and
obscure. His first commission was to go to St. Petersburg and there edit
and superintend the setting up and printing of Lipoftsof's version of the
New