ant of romance
To Petulengro with his boxing glory,
Your Amazonian Sinfi's noble story!"

II. IS THERE A KEY TO "LAVENGRO"?

Dr. Hake, however, and those others among Borrow's friends who are apt to
smile at the way in which critics of the highest intelligence will stand
baffled and bewildered before the eccentricities of "Lavengro" and "The
Romany Rye"--some critics treating the work as autobiography spoilt, and
some as spoilt fiction--forget that while it is easy to open a locked
door with a key, to open a locked door without a key is a very different
undertaking. On the subject of autobiographies and the autobiographic
method, I had several interesting talks with Borrow. I remember an
especial one that took place on Wimbledon Common, on a certain autumn
morning when I was pointing out to him the spot called Gypsy Ring. He
was in a very communicative mood that day, and more amenable to criticism
than he generally was. I had been speaking of certain bold coincidences
in "Lavengro" and "The Romany Rye"--especially that of Lavengro's meeting
by accident in the neighbourhood of Salisbury Plain the son of the very
apple-woman of London Bridge with whom he had made friends, and also of
such apparently manufactured situations as that of Lavengro's coming upon
the man whom Wordsworth's poetry had sent into a deep slumber in a
meadow.

"What is an autobiography?" he asked. "Is it a mere record of the
incidents of a man's life? or is it a picture of the man himself--his
character, his soul?"

Now this I think a very suggestive question of Borrow's with regard to
himself and his own work. That he sat down to write his own life in
"Lavengro" I know. He had no idea then of departing from the strict line
of fact. Indeed, his letters to his friend Mr. John Murray would alone
be sufficient to establish this in spite of his calling "Lavengro" a
dream. In the first volume he did almost confine himself to matters of
fact. But as he went on he clearly found that the ordinary tapestry into
which Destiny had woven the incidents of his life were not tinged with
sufficient depth of colour to satisfy his sense of wonder; for, let it be
remembered, that of love as a strong passion he had almost none. Surely
no one but Lavengro could have lived in a dingle with a girl like Belle
Berners, and passed the time in trying to teach her Armenian. Without
strong passion no very deeply coloured life-tapestry can, in the