{27a} The “splendid old corsair,” E. J. T., is best known perhaps as the grim and grizzled pilot in Millais’ great picture (now in the Tate) of the North-west Passage.  Trelawny and Borrow are linked together as men whose mental powers were strong but whose bodily powers were still stronger in the Memoirs of Gordon Hake (who knew both of them well).  Another rival of Borrow in respect to the Mens sana in corpore sano was the famous Dr. Whewell, Master of Trinity.  Mr. Murray tells a story of his concern at a dinner-party upon a prospect of an altercation between Borrow and Whewell.  With both omniscience was a foible.  Both were powerful men; and both of them, if report were true, had more than a superficial knowledge of the art of self-defence.

{27b} As a matter of fact there was nothing in the least degree squalid about Borrow’s subjects or treatment.  His tramps and vagabonds have nothing about them that is repulsive.  Borrow, it is true, was ready enough to condone the offences of those who sought dupes among the well-to-do public; but he preferred the honester members of the vagrant class; and it is plain that they reciprocated the preference, for they regarded the Romany Rye with an almost superstitious reverence on account of his truth, honour bright and fair speech.  Borrow had a passion for depicting the class that Hurtado de Mendoza had first caught for literature in his Lazarillo (1553)—­that, namely, of the old tricksters of the highway who still retained many traits, noble and ignoble, from the primeval savage.  For the characteristically mean and squalid one must go up higher in the scale of civilisation.

{30} Of all the reviews of Lavengro, extraordinary as many now appear, it was left for the month of July in the year of grace 1900 to produce the most delightfully amazing.  We subjoin it verbatim from the Catholic Times of July 27th, 1900.

“LAVENGRO:  THE SCHOLAR, THE GYPSY, THE PRIEST. By George Burrow.  With an introduction by Theodore Watts-Dunton. (London:  Ward, Lock, and Co., Ltd.) 2s.

“We suppose the publishers find that this sort of literary rubbish, suffused with antediluvian bigotry of the most benighted character, pays:  otherwise, no doubt, they would not have issued it as a volume of their ‘New Minerva Library.’  It consists of a twaddling introduction by Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton, who tells us he has been ’brought into personal relations with many men of genius,’ and so on ad nauseam, and of a sort of novel by Mr. Burrow, in a palpable imitation of the style of De Foe without a spark of De Foe’s ability.  The only thing for which this Mr. Burrow is distinguished is his crass anti-Catholic bigotry; and the terms in which, in one part of the book at least, he refers to the Blessed Virgin are an outrage not merely on the religious feelings of Catholics, but also on ordinary propriety.  Catholics, unless they deserve to