"The Gypsies,"
saying that he had nothing but pleasant memories of the good old Romany
Rye:

"A grand old fellow he was--a fresh and hearty giant, holding his six-
feet-two or three inches as uprightly at eighty as he ever had at
eighteen. I believe that was his age, but may be wrong. Borrow was like
one of the old Norse heroes, whom he so much admired, or an old-fashioned
Gypsy bruiser, full of craft and merry tricks. One of these he played on
me, and I bear him no malice for it. The manner of the joke was this: I
had written a book on the English Gypsies and their language; but before
I announced it, I wrote a letter to Father George, telling him that I
proposed to print it, and asking his permission to dedicate it to him. He
did not answer the letter, but 'worked the tip' promptly enough, for he
immediately announced in the newspapers on the following Monday his 'Word-
book of the Romany Language,' 'with many pieces in Gypsy, illustrative of
the way of speaking and thinking of the English Gypsies, with specimens
of their poetry, and an account of various things relating to Gypsy life
in England.' This was exactly what I had told him that my book would
contain. . . . I had no ill-feeling about it.

"My obligations to him for 'Lavengro' and 'The Romany Rye' and his other
works are such as I owe to few men. I have enjoyed Gypsying more than
any other sport in the world, and I owe my love of it to George Borrow."

"The English Gypsies" appeared in 1873, and the "Romano Lavo-Lil" in
1874.

"Romano Lavo-Lil" contains a note on the English Gypsy language, a word-
book, some Gypsy songs and anecdotes with English translations, a list of
Gypsy names of English counties and towns, and accounts of several visits
to Gypsy camps in London and the country. It was hastily put together,
and the word-book, for example, did not include all the Romany used in
"Lavengro" and "The Romany Rye." There were now critics capable of
discovering other shortcomings.

Borrow's book was reviewed along with Leland's "English Gypsies" and Dr.
Miklosich's "Dialects and Migrations of the Gypsies in Europe," and he
was attacked for his derivations, his ignorance of philology and of other
writers on his subject, his sketchy knowledge of languages, his
interference with the purity of the idiom in his Romany specimens. His
Gypsy songs were found interesting, his translations, of course, bad. The
final opinion of the book as a book on the