nual meeting.
Still, this sceptical attitude is only part of the official duty of the
critic, just as, of course, Borrow's adventurous journeys into the most
remote and interesting parts of Spain were part of the duty of the
colporteur. The book is so delightful that, except when duty calls, no
one would willingly take any exception to any part or feature of it. The
constant change of scene, the romantic episodes of adventure, the
kaleidoscope of characters, the crisp dialogue, the quaint reflection
and comment relieve each other without a break. I do not know whether it
is really true to Spain and Spanish life, and, to tell the exact truth,
I do not in the least care. If it is not Spanish it is remarkably human
and remarkably literary, and those are the chief and principal things.

_Lavengro_, which followed, has all the merits of its predecessor and
more. It is a little spoilt in its later chapters by the purpose, the
antipapal purpose, which appears still more fully in _The Romany Rye_.
But the strong and singular individuality of its flavour as a whole
would have been more than sufficient to carry off a greater fault. There
are, I should suppose, few books the successive pictures of which leave
such an impression on the reader who is prepared to receive that
impression. The word picture is here rightly used, for in all Borrow's
books more or less, and in this particularly, the narrative is anything
but continuous. It is a succession of dissolving views which grow clear
and distinct for a time and then fade off into vagueness before once
more appearing distinctly; nor has this mode of dealing with a subject
ever been more successfully applied than in _Lavengro_. At the same time
the mode is one singularly difficult of treatment by any reviewer. To
describe _Lavengro_ with any chance of distinctness to those who have
not read it, it would be necessary to give a series of sketches in
words, like those famous ones of the pictures in _Jane Eyre_. East
Dereham, the Viper Collector, the French Prisoners at Norman Cross, the
Gipsy Encampment, the Sojourn in Edinburgh (with a passing view of
Scotch schoolboys only inferior, as everything is, to Sir Walter's
history of Green-breeks), the Irish Sojourn (with the horse whispering
and the "dog of peace,") the settlement in Norwich (with Borrow's
compulsory legal studies and his very uncompulsory excursions into
Italian, Hebrew, Welsh, Scandinavian, anything that obviously would n