1 MARCH 1851, Page 14

BOOKS.

BORROW'S LAVENGRO.* WASRTICGTON IRVING; in one of his pleasant essays, writes—"I have seen a fine lady, remarkable for beauty, weary a philosopher with flimsy metaphysics ; while the philosopher put on an air of awk- ward gallantry, played with her fan, and prattled about the opera. I have heard a sentimental poet talk very stupidly with a states- man about the national debt; and on joining a knot of scientific old gentlemen conversing in a corner, expecting to hear the dis- cussion of some valuable discovery, I found they were only amusing themselves with a fat story." Instances of a similar want of judgment in discerning the true secret of their own power and fame have been frequent among men of letters. Petrarch rested his hope of immortality on his epic poem of" Africa," never dreaming that his sonnets alone possessed the antiseptic virtue through which his name was to "smell sweet and blossom in the dust." Salvator Rosa bitterly complained to Prince Francesco Ximenes of the fantastic humour of the public in supposing that he was a landscape and not an historical painter, and indignantly denied all knowledge of the former art. Through a similar mistake as to where his real strength lies, Mr. Borrow has just missed writing a book of striking and permanent interest. His blunder is in supposing that the interest excited by his former books was directed to himself; whereas it was mainly owing to the subjects of which he treated, to the natural curiosity people feel about the gipsies, tinkers, tramps, and pedlars, who are to be aid on the highways and byways of Spain, and more rarely and with less raciness of character in the land we live in, but whose thoughts, habits, and manners are less known to most Eng- lishmen than those of the Anthropophagi at the Antipodes. Of these wandering folk, the nomades of civilization, Mr. Borrow pro- bably knows more than any man alive who could write a clever book ; and when an autobiographical work was announced from his pen, it was naturally supposed that it would chiefly consist of his adventures among those brothers and sisters of ours, so near to us yet so far from us, whom he has before shown that he can por- tray with great graphic power. Knowing that he possesses both the materials for such a work and the skill to use them effectively, we confess to be sadly disappointed with Larengro. Instead of being an English Gil Bias, full of life and adventure, and abound- ing in novel and striking traits of character, social, democratic, and kleptocratic, two-thirds of the book are taken up with a wire- drawn narrative of Mr. Borrow's childhood, of the schools he at- tended, of the discourses of his parents concerning him ; of his feats in boyhood, which do not seem remarkably to differ from those of other pugnacious and courageous urchins ; of his marvel- lous acquirements in youth, his literary aspirations, his struggles after bread and laurels ; his opinions on Catholic Emancipation and Protestant Ascendancy, which are of the deepest Orange com- plexion; and his views generally on the virtues of the various classes of the country, which are anything but hopeful or compli- mentary. Only in his third volume does he get fairly out of the ale of respectability- and among the publicans and sinners : then he comes out in full force and shows us what a book he might have written had not vanity and crotchets made a goose of him. I

But, alas ! that little " if " is always coming in between the posse and the ease in human performance, and though a tiny word, stands for a most important factor in the total effective result of a man's life. What should we not all have done but for an " if" ? But for it, Mr. Borrow would have fulfilled his mission, have been the Claudian of the decadent empire of blackguardism, the Pinder of the prize ring, the Scald of the fast fading race of gipsies, thim

'had!-

bleriggers horse-chanters, and travelling tinkers. What a book

we should have a purely objective Greek epic, an Odyssey of the roadside and the heath, its charms heightened like that of its prototype by the melancholy sense that its scenes and its characters are passing away never to return,—that railroads, and policemen, and useful knowledge societies, are fast superseding the heroic ages of country fairs, pugilists, and fortune-tellers : for Mr. Borrow pos- sesses eminently two essential qualifications for such a work : he has a hearty admiration for the animalism, the strength, and courage, that predominated and gave the tone to the life he wit- nessed and shared, undisturbed, so far as we can see, by the slightest intrusion of reflection or moral disapprobation ; and he has the rare art of describing scenes and presenting cha- racters with that graphic force and clearness which arise from thorough knowledge of and interest in his subject. Not that . any case he would have been the Shakspere of rascaldom—his genius is too superficial, his heart not sufficiently affectionate, his humanity not profound enough for that; but he might, we think, have been its Defoe ; or if he had fallen far short of that great real- ist, he would undoubtedly have risen equally far above the stay-at- home painters of rural English blackguardism. But, not content with the part he might have played to perfection, he must needs be a philologist, a sage' and an apostle ; and he has such a good opinion of his performances in these characters, that he has written Laren- gro mainly., as appears to us, to inform the British public of the prophetic intimations that early marked him out for an extraordi- nary career, and of the providential discipline that has developed his almost superhuman faculties and character. On no other theory can we account for his carrying his history no further than about

• Lavengro; the Scholar, the Gipsey, the Priest. By George Borrow, Author of a The Bible in Spain," and The Gipsies of Spain." In three volumes. Pub- lished by Murray.

h's twenty-fifth year, just when it promises to become more than ever interesting from having seemingly settled down into confirmed vagabondage ; nor for the palpably mythical treatment of his early life. Had he been the coming man, and his ulission universally reec g- amed, his biographer could scarcely have recorded with more rom- pous solemnity the trivial occurrences of his childhood, or have collected stranger traditions of the suspension or alteration of nature's ordinary laws in his behoof and honour. When a child of three years old, he fearlessly handles a vire:, which though gentle as a dove to him, the repository of a mysterious power, resumes its usual venomous temp r towards his elder brother. He is changed from a weakly to a vigorous boy by poisoning himself with noxious wild berries. He learns the secret of that awful whisper by which the fiereest horse is tamed in an instant. Like Saul, as he grows up he has his dark hours, when his soul is bowed with inexplicable agony, and he wrestles breast to breast with the Arch-fiend, and dashes his head against trees and stones to subdue by physical pain the less endurable tortures of the spirit. Far be it from us to deride the temperament which gives a supernatural colouring to the facts on which these stories are probably founded. It is the tempera- ment of earth's noblest spirits, of her Paul, her Luther, and Ler Bunyan—the root of that profound belief in the supernatural, of that mastery over the body and its passions, of that heroism which has enabled them, nerved and tempered by solitary struggles with their own natures, to win battles in which their antagonists were only too real, and their victories rich in blessing to all after generations of men. We can even sympathize with the graceful self- consciousness of the Roman poet when he tells us— "Me fabulosaa Vulture in Appulo

Nutricis extra limen Apulue, Ludo fatigatumque somno, Fronde nova puerum palumbes Texere . . ..... : . .

Ut tato ab atris carpore viperis

Dormirem et ursis ; ut premerer sacra Lauroque collataque myrto, Non sine diis animosus infans."

The renown had already justified the augury-. But we must. hint to Mr. Borrow that vanity is a fruitful mother of fanaticism, and that this temperament, which belongs to heroic men, and in them is called faith, belongs also to the silliest and weakest of mankind, and receives the name of folly and superstition. Often the world can only distinguish the two by their results; and a couple of lively books will scarcely authenticate a new prophet, even though he speak all the languages of the known world, in- differently badly. We doubt not that Mr. Borrow may have qualifications which if properly cultivated may turn out a re- spectable modern magician ; a Cagliostro or an Alexis, if he has, as we fear, a taste for quackery—a Wizard of the North, if he choose to get an honest living by simple conjuring : but he may rest as- sured that his line is not that of a Mahomet or even of a Grimm. What a talent for bathos must a man have, to crowd his infancy with portents and auguries of a future big with importance to the destinies of his kind, and end the record of his own life with a desperate stand-up fight between himself and a gentleman whose awn de guerre is the Flaming Tinman in which the latter gets the worst of it, leaving Borrow in possession not only of the furzy dell which is the ground of quarrel-, but also of a gigantic virago, who might have been one of the female bull-dogs attendant on the Col- lege Proctors in Mr. Tennyson's Princess, and who was a Platonic friend of the aforesaid Tinman, in which capacity she henceforth lives with our polylingnal apostle in his rural tent, and may be doing so still for all the book tells us to the contrary—what a Hebe to crown the apotheosis of our Hercules ! Can this be the grand result of the life ushered in by a legend, whose solemn ab- surdity must excite the envy of that great descendant of Sheni who is at present employed like another Moses in leading the children of Protection through the dreary wilderness of Opposition ?

"One day a Jew—I have quite forgotten the circumstance, but I was long subsequently informed of it—one day a travelling Jew knocked at the door of a farm- house in which we had taken apartments : I was near at hand sit- ting in the bright sunshine, drawing strange lines on the dust with my fin- gers; an ape and dog were my companions. The Jew looked at me, and asked me some questions ; to which, though I was quite able to speak, I returned no answer. On the door being opened, the Jew, after a few words probably relating to pedlary, demanded who the child was sitting in the sun : the maid replied that I was her mistress's youngest son, a child weak here, pointing to her forehead. The Jew looked at me again, and then said, "Pon my conscience, my dear, I believe that you must be troubled there yourself to tell use any such thing. It is not my habit to speak to children, inasmuch as I hate them, because they often follow sue and fling stones after me ; but I no sooner looked at that child than I was forced to speak to it his not answering me shows his sense, for it has never been the custom of the wise to fling away their words in indifferent talk and conversation : the child is a sweet child, and has all the look of one of our people's children. Fool, in- deed ! did I not see his eyes sparkle just now when the monkey seized the dog by the ear? they shone like my own diamonds. Does your good lady want any—real and fine ? Were it not for what you tell me, I should say it was a prophet's child. Fool, indeed ! he can write already, or I'll forfeit the box which I carry on my back, and for which I should be loth to take two hundred pounds.' Ile then leaned forward to inspect the lines which I had traced. All of a sudden he started back, and grew white as a sheet; then, taking off his hat, he made some strange gestures to me, cringing, chattering, and showing his teeth ; and shortly departed, muttering some- thing about holy letters,' and talking to himself in a strange tongue. The words of the Jew were in due course of time reported to my mother; who treasured them in her heart, and from that moment began to entertain brighter hopes of her youngest-born than she had ever before ventured to foster."

Enough of Mr. Borrow's vanity. It has had its full pla and he has paid the penalty in the failure of his book. But tho viewed critically Lavengro must be pronounced a failure, and will scarcely escape the comment "In the name of the Prophet, figs !" wherever the author drops the philologist, politician and other un- warranted assumptions, and resumes genuine character as an observer of strange varieties of the human race, he at once chains and rewards the attention of the reader. The passages we quote are of necessity selected for shortness as much as for their striking character. They will, however, give a fair specimen of the more interesting portion of the book.

STONE FIGHTS IN EDINBURGH.

It was a beautiful Sunday evening; the rays of the descending sun were reflected redly from the grey walls of the Castle and from the black rocks on which it was founded. The bicker had long since commenced ; stones from sling and hand were flying; but the callants of the New Town were now carrying every thing before them. A full-grown baker's apprentice was at their head; he was foaming with rage, wahed taken the field, as I was told, in order to avenge his brother, whose eye had been knocked out in one of the late bickers. He was no slinger or flinger, but brandished in his right hand the spoke of a cart- wheel, like my countryman Tom Hickathrift of old in his encounter with the giant of the Lincolnshire fen. Protected by a piece of wicker-work at- tached to his left arm, he rushed on to the fray, disregarding the stones which were showered against him, and was ably seconded by his followers. Our own party was chased half-way up the hill ; where I was struck to the ground by the baker, after having been foiled man attempt which I had made to fling a handful of earth into his eyes. All now appeared lost ; the Auld Toon was in full retreat. I myself lay at the baker's feet, who had just raised his spoke, probably to give me the coup de grace,—it was an awful moment. Just then I heard a shout and a rushing sound : a wild-looking figure is descending the hill with terrible bounds ; it is a lad of some fift'e'en years ; he is bare-headed, and his red uncombed hair stands on end like hedgehogs' bristles ; his frame is lithy, like that of an antelope, but he has prodigious breadth of chest ; he wears a military undress, that of the regiment, even of a drummer, for it is wild Davy, whom a month before I had seen enlisted on Leith Links to serve King with drum and drumstick as long as his services might be required, and who, ere a week had elapsed, had smitten with his fist Drum-major Elzigood, who, incensed at his inaptitude, had threatened him vith his cane ; he has been in confinement for weeks, this is the first day o this liberation, and he is now descending the hill with horrid bounds and shoutings. He is now about five yards distant, and the baker, who ap- prehends that something dangerous is at hand, prepares himself for the en- counter. But what avails the strength of a baker, even full-grown ? what avails the defence of a wicker shield ? what avails the wheel-spoke, should there be an opportunity of using it, against the impetus of an avalanche or a cannon-ball ?—for to either of these might that wild figure be compared, which, at the distance of five yards, sprang at once with head, hands, feet, and body, all together, upon the champion of the New Town, tumbling him to the earth amain. And now it was the turn of the Old Town to triumph. Our late discomfited host, returning on its steps, overwhelmed the fallen champion with blows of every kind ; and then, led on by his vanquisher, who had assumed his arms,—namely, the wheel-spoke and wicker shield,—fairly cleared the brae of their adversaries, whom they drove down headlong into the morass.

GIPSY ENJOYMENT OF LIPS

" Wliat is your opinion of death, Mr. Petulengro ? ' said I, as I sat down beside him.

"My opinion of death, brother, is much the same as that in the old song of Pharaoh, which I have heard my grandam sing-

' Cana marel o mantis chivios and6 puv, Ta ravel pa leste o chavo ta romi.'

When a man dies he is cast into the earth, and his wife and child sorrow over him ; if' he has neither wife nor child, then his father and mother, I suppose ; and if he is quite alone in the world, why then he is cast into the earth, and there is an end of the matter." "And do you think that is the end of a man ? " "There's an end of him, brother, more's the pity."

" Whydo you say so ?"

i " Life s sweet, brother." "Do you think so ?" " Think so ! There's night and day, brother, both sweet things; sun, ' moon and stars, brother, all sweet things ; there's likewise a wind on the heath. Life is very sweet, brother : who would wish to die ? "

"I would wish to die SP

"You talk like a gorgio, which is the same as talking like a fool ; were you a Rommany Chal you would talk wiser. Wish to die, indeed ! a Rom- many Chal would wish to live for ever !" " In sickness, Jasper?" "There's the sun and stars, brother."

"In blindness, Jasper ? " "Tin re's the wind on the heath, brother ; if I could only feel that, I would gladly live for ever. Dosta, we'll now go to the tents and put on the gloves ; and I'll try to make you feel what a sweet thing it is to be alive, brother."

The Mrs. Hearne mentioned in our next extract is Mr. Petulen- gro's mother-in-law : she hanged herself in consequence of failing in an attempt to poison Borrow, to whom she had taken an extreme dislike--a genuine gipsy antipathy to a gorgio. Borrow meets Petulengro returning from the beldame's funeral. After riding side by side for some time, they come to a

- - - - " broad strip of grass beneath some lofty trees, on the left side of the road. It was a pleasant enough spot, and seemed to invite wavfaying people, such as we were, to rest from the fatigues of the road and the heat and vehemence of the sun. After examining it for a considerable time, Mr.

Petulengro said, say, brother, that would be a nice place for a tussle!' " dare say it would,' said I, 'if two people were inclined to fight.'

"'The ground is smooth,' said Mr. Petulengro; without holes or ruts, and the trees cast much shade. I don't think, brother, that we could find a better place,' said Mr. Petulengro, springing from his horse.

"'But you and I don't want to fight!

"'Speak for yourself, brother,' said Mr. Petulengro. 'However, I will tell you how the matter stands. There is a point at present between us. There can be no doubt that you are the cause of Mrs. Hearne's death,—inno- cently, you will say, but still the cause. Now, I shouldn't like it to be known that I went up and down the country with a pal who was the cause of my mother-in-law's death,—that's to say, unless he gave me satisfaction. Now, if I and my pal have a tussle, he gives me satisfaction; and, if he knocks ray eyes out, which I know you can't do, it makes no difference at all—he gives me satisfaction ; and he who says to the contrary knows nothing of gipsv law, and is a dinelo into the bargain.' "But we have no.gloves!' "'Gloves V said Mr. Petulengro, contemptuously ; 'gloves ! I tell you what, brother, I always thought you were a better hand at the gloves than

the naked fist; .and, to tell you the truth, besides taking satisfaction for Mr,:. Hetume's death, I wish to see what you can do with your mawleys : so now is your time, brother, and this is your place,—grass and shade, no ruts or holes ; come on, brother, or I shall think you what I should not like to call you.'

"And when I heard Mr. Petulengro talk in this manner, which I had never heard him do before and which I can only account for by his being fasting and ill-tempered, I had of course no other alternative than to accept his challenge : so I put myself into a posture which I deemed the best both for offence and defence, and the tussle commenced ; and when it had en- dured for about half an hour, Mr. Petulengro said, 'Brother, there is much blood on your face; you had better wipe it oft" : and when I had wiped it off, and again resumed my former attitude, Mr. Petulengro said, '1 think enough has been done, brother, in the affair of the old woman : I have, moreover, tried what you are able to do, and find you, as I thought, less apt with the naked mawleys than the stuffed glove gen', brother, put your hands down, I'm satisfied ; blood has been shed, which is all that can be reasonably expected for an old woman who carried so much brimstone about her as Mrs. Hearne.'" In taking leave of Mr. Borrow, we would fain hope to meet hini again; especially if in telling the story of his subsequent life and travels, he will bear in mind that it is what he has seen and heard that we want to know, and only in a secondary degree that which is purely personal to himself. lie can, if he will, make a valuable addition to our rather scanty picaresque literature ; and, we pro- mise to make all due allowance for a man who was born under Sagittarius, for we know that no one can resist the starry in- fluences.