than he would have found it had he made his wife brew beer instead
of making tea. If he now and then gladdens his heart with the drugs of
the public-house, some quarrel, some accident, some illness is the
probable consequence; to the affray abroad succeeds an affray at home;
the mischievous example reaches the children, cramps them or scatters
them, and misery for life is the consequence." As Cobbett wrote against
tea so was Borrow to write against the Pope.

Being a reading and a writing man who had set down all his most
substantial adventures in earlier books, Borrow, says Mr. Thomas
Seccombe, had no choice but "to interpret autobiography as
'autobiographiction.'" {50} Parts of the autobiography, he says, are "as
accurate and veracious as John Wesley's 'Journal,' but the way in which
the dingle ingredients" [in the stories of Isopel Berners, the
postillion, and the Man in Black] "are mingled, and the extent to which
lies--damned lies--or facts predominate, will always be a fascinating
topic for literary conjecture." It must not be forgotten, however, that
Borrow never called the published book his autobiography. He did
something like what I believe young writers often do; he described events
in his own life with modifications for the purpose of concealment in some
cases and of embellishment in others. If he had never labelled it an
autobiography there would have been no mystery, and the conclusion of
readers would be that most of it could not have been invented, but that
the postillion's story, for example, is a short story written to embody
some facts and some opinions, without any appearance of being the whole
truth and nothing but the truth. If Borrow made a set of letters to the
Bible Society into a book like "Gil Blas," he could hardly do
less--especially when he had been reminded of the fact--with his remoter
adventures; and having taken out dates and names of persons and places he
felt free. He produced his view of himself, as De Quincey did in his
"Confessions of an English Opium Eater." This view was modified by his
public reputation, by his too potent memory and the need for selection,
by his artistic sense, and by his literary training. So far from
suffering by the two elements, if they are to be separated, of fiction
and autobiography, "Lavengro" and "The Romany Rye" gain immensely. The
autobiographical form--the use of the first person singular--is no mere
device to attract an interest and beli