r its
fleshly trammels, the conquest we call death, but which he believed to be
life. His body was laid by the side of that of his wife at Brompton.

When I wrote his obituary notice in the _Athenaeum_ no little wonder was
expressed in various quarters that the "Walking Lord of Gypsy Lore" had
been walking so lately the earth.

And yet his "Bible in Spain" had still a regular sale. His "Lavengro"
and "Romany Rye" were still allowed by all competent critics to be among
the most delightful books in the language. Indeed, at his death, Borrow
was what he now is, and what he will continue to be long after Time has
played havoc with nine-tenths of the writers whose names are week by
week, and day by day, "paragraphed" in the papers as "literary
celebrities"--an English classic.

Apart from Borrow's undoubted genius as a writer the subject-matter of
his writings has an interest that will not wane but will go on growing.
The more the features of our "Beautiful England," to use his own phrase,
are changed by the multitudinous effects of the railway system, the more
attraction will readers find in books which depict her before her beauty
was marred--books which depict her in those antediluvian days when there
was such a thing as space in the island--when in England there was a
sense of distance, that sense without which there can be no romance--when
the stage-coach was in its glory--when the only magician who could convey
man and his belongings at any rate of speed beyond man's own walking rate
was the horse--the beloved horse whose praises Borrow loved to sing, and
whose ideal was reached in the mighty "Shales"--when the great high roads
were alive, not merely with the bustle of business, but with real
adventure for the traveller--days and scenes which Borrow better than any
one else could paint. A time will come, I say, when not only books full
of descriptive genius, like "Lavengro," but even such comparatively tame
descriptions of England as the "Gleanings in England and Wales" of the
now forgotten East Midlander, Samuel Jackson Pratt, will be read with a
new interest. But why was Borrow so entirely forgotten at the moment of
his death? Simply because, like many another man of genius and many a
scholar, he refused to figure in the literary arena--went on his way
quietly influencing the world, but mixing only with his private friends.

THEODORE WATTS.

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