the reader fairly.  If you are worthy to be his friend, by-and-by you will see his heart,—­look again, and yet again!  That passage in a former chapter was incomplete; but look ahead a hundred pages and consider a paragraph there:  by itself it seems to say little; but gradually you recognize in it a part of the inwoven strand which disappears in one part of the knot and emerges in another.  Though you cannot solve the genial riddle to-day, you may to-morrow.  The only clue is sympathy.  This man hides his heart for him who has the mate to it; and beneath the whimsical, indifferent, proud, and cold exterior, how it heaves and fears and loves and wonders!  This is a wild, unprecedented, eloquent, mysterious, artistic yet artless book; it is alive; it tells of an existence apart, yet in contact with the deep things of all human experience.  No other man ever lived as Borrow did, and yet his book is an epitome of life.  The magic of his personal quality beguiles us on every page; but deeper still lie the large, immutable traits that make all men men, and avouch the unity of mankind.

‘Romany Rye’ is the continuation of ‘Lavengro,’ but scarcely repeats its charm; its most remarkable feature is an ‘Appendix,’ in which Borrow expounds his views upon things in general, including critics and politics.  It is a marvelously trenchant piece of writing, and from the literary point of view delightful; but it must have hurt a good many people’s feelings at the time it was published, and even now shows the author on his harsh side only.  We may agree with all he says, and yet wish he had uttered it in a less rasping tone.

Like nearly all great writers, Borrow, in order to get his best effects, must have room for his imagination.  Mere fact would not rouse him fully, and abstract argument still less.  In ‘Lavengro’ he hit upon his right vein, and he worked it in the fresh maturity of his power.  The style is Borrow’s own, peculiar to him:  eloquent, rugged, full of liturgical repetitions, shunning all soft assonances and refinements, and yet with remote sea-like cadences, and unhackneyed felicities that rejoice the jaded soul.  Writing with him was spontaneous, but never heedless or unconsidered; it was always the outcome of deep thought and vehement feeling.  Other writers and their books may be twain, but Borrow and his books are one.  Perhaps they might be improved in art, or arrangement, or subject; but we should no longer care for them then, because they would cease to be Borrow.  Borrow may not have been a beauty or a saint; but a man he was; and good or bad, we would not alter a hair of him.