Nothing like an adequate biography of Borrow has ever been published:  a few dates, and some more or less intelligent opinions about his character and work, are the sum of what we know of him—­outside his own books.  Some of the dates are probably guess-work; most of the opinions are incompetent:  it is time that some adequate mind assembled all available materials and digested them into a satisfactory book.  It is hardly worth while to review the few meagre details.  Borrow was born in 1803 and died in 1881; his father, a soldier, failed to make a solicitor of him, and the youth, at his father’s death, came up to London to live or die by literature.  After much hardship (of which the chapters in ‘Lavengro’ describing the production of ‘Joseph Sell’ convey a hint), he set out on a wandering pilgrimage over England, Europe, and the East.  As agent for the British and Foreign Bible Society he traversed Spain and Portugal, sending to the Morning Herald letters descriptive of his adventures, which afterwards were made the substance of his books.  He married at thirty-seven, and lived at Outton Broad nearly all his life after.  His wife died a dozen years before him, in 1869.  She left no children.

His first book, a translation of Klinger’s ‘Faust,’ appeared in 1825; his last, ‘The Gipsy Dictionary,’ in 1874; a volume called ’Penquite and Pentyre,’ on Cornwall, was announced in 1857, but seems never to have been published, ‘Targum,’ a collection of translations from thirty languages and dialects, was a tour de force belonging to the year 1835.  On the whole, Borrow was not a voluminous writer; but what he wrote tells.

[Illustration:  Signature:  Julian Hawthorne]

AT THE HORSE-FAIR

From ‘Lavengro’

“What horse is that?” said I to a very old fellow, the counterpart of the old man on the pony, save that the last wore a faded suit of velveteen, and this one was dressed in a white frock.

“The best in mother England,” said the very old man, taking a knobbed stick from his mouth, and looking me in the face, at first carelessly, but presently with something like interest; “he is old like myself, but can still trot his twenty miles an hour.  You won’t live long, my swain; tall and overgrown ones like thee never do:  yet, if you should chance to reach my years, you may boast to thy great-grand-boys, thou hast seen Marshland Shales.”

Amain I did for the horse what I would neither do for earl or baron, doffed my hat; yes!  I doffed my hat to the wondrous horse, the fast trotter, the best in mother England; and I too drew a deep ah! and repeated the words of the old fellows around.  “Such a horse as this we shall never see again:  a pity that he is so old.”