sic of flow. Is "Lavengro" the work of a literary amateur who,
yielding at will to every kind of authorial self-indulgence, fails to
find artistic expression for the life moving within him--fails to project
an individuality that his friends knew to have been unique? Of other
writers of genius, admirable criticism may be made by those who have
never known them in the flesh. Is this because each of those others,
having passed from the stage of the literary amateur to that of the
literary artist, is able to pour the stream of his personality into the
literary mould and give to the world a true image of himself? It has
been my chance of life to be brought into personal relations with many
men of genius, but I feel that there are others who could write about
them more adequately than I. Does Borrow stand alone? The admirers of
his writings seem generally to think he does, for ever since I wrote my
brief and hasty obituary notice of him in 1881, I have been urged to
enlarge my reminiscences of him--urged not only by philologers and
gypsologists, but by many others in England, America, and Germany. But I
on my part have been for years urging upon the friend who introduced me
to him, and who knew him years ago,--knew him when he was the
comparatively young literary lion of East Anglia,--Dr. Gordon Hake, to do
what others are urging me to do. Not only has the author of "Parables
and Tales" more knowledge of the subject than any one else, but having a
greater reputation than I, he can speak with more authority, and having a
more brilliant pen than I, he can give a more vital picture than I can
hope to give of our common friend. If he is, as he seems to be, fully
determined not to depict Borrow in prose, let me urge him to continue in
verse that admirable description of him contained in one of the
well-known sonnets addressed to myself in "The New Day":--

"And he, the walking lord of gipsy lore!
How often 'mid the deer that grazed the Park,
Or in the fields and heath and windy moor,
Made musical with many a soaring lark,
Have we not held brisk commune with him there,
While Lavengro, then towering by your side,
With rose complexion and bright silvery hair,
Would stop amid his swift and lounging stride
To tell the legends of the fading race--
As at the summons of his piercing glance,
Its story peopling his brown eyes and face,
While you called up that pend