GEORGE BORROW.

SCHOLAR, GIPSY, PRIEST.

(1803-1881)

A ONCE very famous novel, though it has long been forgotten by the reading public, except perhaps by name, is "Lavengro; The Scholar, the Gipsy, the Priest." It first appeared in 1851, and then for a long time was out of print.

It has always been cherished, however, by a chosen few, lovers of good literature and good fighting, who like Thackeray took their fiction "strong with, and no mistake."

The book is full of epigrams, curious learning, wisdom, and humor, and has the indescribable flavor of genius.

The scene is laid in England between the period 1820 and 1830, the days of stage-coaching and of prize-fights, when everybody had time for everything, and when a halo of romance still shone around a gipsy camp.

The story is a succession of pictures of English

rural and city life, and relates the adventures of a youth who leads a respectable life on the coasts of scampdom, dependent entirely on himself for a livelihood. It is an autobiography based in fact on Borrow's own adventures, with enough fiction to conceal the identity of the characters. The hero has received a fair education and his literary ambitions, with an inherited instinct for vagrancy. In these days he would be a hobo. He took up with the gipsies and was initiated a blood brother in the tribe, learned their language, and became a past master of cant.

But, being an honest youth, he could neither beg nor poach nor steal. He went to London with some literary ventures in his pocket, though at first he met with little success. His London adventures are wonderfully interesting, and he makes some queer friendships.

One is an old applewoman on London bridge, whose patron saint was Moll Flanders, who, supposing Lavengro to be a pickpocket, gives him aid and counsel.

While in London he saw the funeral of Lord Byron, and no pen has described it more graphically. Standing one morning at the foot of Oxford Street occupied with rather mournful thoughts at his bad prospects, he is aware of a certain commo

tion among the people around him. The shops are closing and crowds are gathering. Then he hears voices cry, "There it comes!" and looking he saw a hearse and behind it three or four mourning coaches, and " behind these a long train of splendid carriages, all of which, without one exception, were empty."

"

"Whose body is in that hearse?" said I to a dapper-looking individual, seemingly a shopkeeper, who stood beside me on the pavement looking at the procession. The mortal relics of Lord Byron," said the dapper-looking individual, mouthing his words and smirking-"the illustrious poet, which have just been brought back from Greece and are being conveyed to the family vault." "An illustrious poet, was he?"

said I.

Beyond all criticism," said the dapper man. "All we of the rising generation are under incalculable obligations to Byron; I myself, in particular, have reason to say so; in all my correspondence my style is formed on the Byronic model." I looked at the individual for a moment, who smiled and smirked to himself, and then I turned my eyes upon the hearse proceeding slowly up the almost endless street. I thought of Milton, abandoned to poverty and blindness; of witty and ingenious Butler, consigned to the tender mercies of bailiffs, and starving Otway; they had lived neglected and despised, and when they died a few poor mourners only had followed them to the grave. Great poet, sir," said the dapper-looking man, "great poet, but unhappy." Unhappy? Yes, I had heard that he had been unhappy. I turned away. "Great poet, sir," said the dapper man, turning away, too, “but unhappy-fate of genius, sir. I, too, have been unhappy."

Lavengro turned sadly away, but being reduced to eighteen pence for his subsistence he stirrred himself more actively with the publishers and succeeding in selling a story for the sum of twenty pounds and once more sought the country and a gipsy life.

The real story of Borrow's life, however, is even more interesting than the novel, and few men have had careers more adventurous.

George Borrow was born in Norfolk, England, July 17, 1803, and was the son of a captain in the British military service. Born of a restless and combative race, even as a boy he was always in scrapes of one kind or another and in those days of the heroical application of birch had much knowledge and some deportment beaten into him. One of his instructors from whom he learned much was the celebrated William Taylor of Norwich, who taught him German and Danish, and whom Borrow has sketched in " Lavengro," with his philosophy, skepticism, and inveterate tobacco smoking.

One of his fellow-pupils was John Thurtell, also a native of Norfolk, who was hanged for the murder of William Weare, and another at the other extreme of life, was James Martineau, the celebrated Unitarian divine.

Borrow was the English Mezzofanti and had a wonderful facility in the acquisition of languages. He was not a philologist and knew no language critically but his own, but he could converse and write in thirty.

With a hereditary tendency to vagabondage, he associated when still a boy with the English gipsies, and was really initiated a blood brother in the tribe, as related in "Lavengro." In Borrow's biography, by Dr. Knapp, this is confirmed, but no light is thrown on the passage concerning Isobel Ferners, the stalwart girl who seconded him in his fight with the "Flaming Tinman." The fight was veritable enough, but one would like to know something more about the girl, but the biographer throws no light on the passage, nor even mentions the girl.

After the "Lavengro" episode in his life Borrow entered the employ of the British Bible society. That body wanted a man who had skill in languages to take up the Manchu-Tartar language and go to Russia to bring out a translation of the New Testament. Borrow offered himself, was accepted, and went to Russia. Inside of two years he learned the Manchu language and printed the four Gospels in it. The performance gave him a European reputation, and competent critics have