dreams of adventure, in which he
figures in opaque forests, strangling wild beasts, or discovering and
plundering the hordes of dragons; and sometimes . . . other things far
more genuine--how he had tamed savage mares, wrestled with Satan, and had
dealings with ferocious publishers"?

He did not simplify the matter by his preface. There he announced that
the book was "a dream." He had, he said, endeavoured to describe a
dream, partly of adventure, in which will be found copious notices of
books and many descriptions of life and manners, some in a very unusual
form. A dream containing "copious notices of books"! A dream in three
volumes and over a thousand pages! A dream which he had "endeavoured to
describe"! From these three words it was necessary to suppose that it
was a real dream, not a narrative introduced by the machinery of a dream,
like "Pilgrim's Progress," and "The Dream of Fair Women." And so it was.
The book was not an autobiography but a representation of a man's life in
the backward dream of memory. He had refused to drag the events of his
life out of the spirit land, to turn them into a narrative on the same
plane as a newspaper, leaving readers to convert them back again into
reality or not, according to their choice or ability. His life seemed to
him a dream, not a newspaper obituary, not an equestrian statue on a
pedestal in Albemarle Street opposite John Murray's office.

The result was that "the long-talked-of autobiography" disappointed those
who expected more than a collection of bold picaresque sketches. "It is
not," complained the "Athenaeum," "an autobiography, even with the
licence of fiction;" "the interest of autobiography is lost," and as a
work of fiction it is a failure. "Fraser's Magazine" said that it was
"for ever hovering between Romance and Reality, and the whole tone of the
narrative inspires profound distrust. Nay, more, it will make us
disbelieve the tales in 'The Zincali' and 'The Bible in Spain.'" Another
critic found "a false dream in the place of reality, a shadowy nothing in
the place of that something all who had read 'The Bible in Spain' craved
and hoped for from his pen." His friend, William Bodham Donne, in
"Tait's Edinburgh Magazine," explained how "Lavengro" was "not exactly
what the public had been expecting." Another friend, Whitwell Elwin, in
the "Quarterly Review," reviewing "Lavengro" and its continuation, "The
Romany Rye," not only praised the truth