rse impressed
Richard Jefferies and haunted him in his "Gamekeeper," "Meadow Thoughts,"
and elsewhere.

Sometimes he modified a showy phrase, and "when I became ambitious of the
title of Lavengro and strove to deserve it" was cut down to "when I
became a student." When he wrote of Cowper in the third chapter he said,
to justify Cowper's melancholy, that "Providence, whose ways are not our
ways, interposed, and with the withering blasts of misery nipped that
which otherwise might have terminated in fruit, noxious and lamentable";
but he substituted a mere "perhaps" for the words about Providence. In
the description of young Jasper he changed his "short arms like" his
father, into "long arms unlike."

In the fourteenth chapter Borrow describes his father's retirement from
the army after Waterloo, and his settling down at Norwich, so poor as to
be anxious for his children's future. He speaks of poor officers who
"had slight influence with the great who gave themselves very little
trouble either about them or their families." Originally he went on
thus, but cut out the words from the proof:

"Yet I have reason for concluding that they were not altogether
overlooked by a certain power still higher than even the aristocracy of
England and with yet more extensive influence in the affairs of the
world. I allude to Providence, which, it is said, never forsakes those
who trust in it, as I suppose these old soldiers did, for I have known
many instances in which their children have contrived to make their way
gallantly in the world, unaided by the patronage of the great, whilst
others who were possessed of it were most miserably shipwrecked, being
suddenly overset by some unexpected squall, against which it could avail
them nothing."

This change is a relief to the style. The next which I shall quote is
something more than that. It shows Borrow constructing the conversation
of his father and mother when they were considering his prospects at the
age of twelve. His father was complaining of the boy's Gypsy look, and
of his ways and manners, and of the strange company he kept in
Ireland--"people of evil report, of whom terrible things were said--horse-
witches and the like." His mother made the excuse: "But he thinks of
other things now." "Other languages, you mean," said his father. But in
the proof his mother adds to her speech, "He is no longer in Ireland,"
and the father takes her up with, "So much the better for h