n
these repressed indoor days, we like a swaggering man who does justice to
the size of the planet. We run after biographies of extraordinary
monarchs, poets, bandits, prostitutes, and see in them magnificent
expansions of our fragmentary, undeveloped, or mistaken selves. We love
strange mighty men, especially when they are dead and can no longer rob
us of property, sleep, or life: we can handle the great hero or
blackguard by the fireside as easily as a cat. Borrow, as his books
portray him, is admirably fitted to be our hero. He stood six-feet-two
and was so finely made that, in spite of his own statement which could
not be less than true, others have declared him six-feet-three and six-
feet-four. He could box, ride, walk, swim, and endure hardship. He was
adventurous. He was solitary. He was opinionated and a bully. He was
mysterious: he impressed all and puzzled many. He spoke thirty languages
and translated their poetry into verse.

Moreover, he ran away. He ran away from school as a boy. He ran away
from London as a youth. He ran away from England as a man. He ran away
from West Brompton as an old man, to the Gypsyries of London. He went
out into the wilderness and he savoured of it. His running away from
London has something grand and allegorical about it. It reminds me of
the Welshman on London Bridge, carrying a hazel stick which a strange old
man recognised as coming from Craig-y-Dinas, and at the old man's bidding
he went to Craig-y-Dinas and to the cave in it, and found Arthur and his
knights sleeping and a great treasure buried. . .

{picture: The Gipsyrie at Battersea. Photo: W. J. Roberts: page318.jpg}

In these days when it is a remarkable thing if an author has his pocket
picked, or narrowly escapes being in a ship that is wrecked, or takes
poison when he is young, even the outline of Borrow's life is attractive.
Like Byron, Ben Jonson, and Chaucer, he reminds us that an author is not
bound to be a nun with a beard. He depicts himself continually, at all
ages, and in all conditions of pathos or pride. Other human beings, with
few exceptions, he depicts only in relation to himself. He never follows
men and women here and there, but reveals them in one or two concentrated
hours; and either he admires or he dislikes, and there is no mistaking
it. Thus his humour is limited by his egoism, which leads him into
extravagance, either to his own advantage or to the disadvantage of his
en