NOTABLE BOOKS
THE large number of reprints of Borrow which this century has seen point to a great revival of interest in his works, especially when compared with the unpopularity into which he fell with the publication of Lavengro, and which lasted until after his death. The reason is not far to seek. The storm of rage and calumny raised by that outspoken book and stirred up again by the equally outspoken Romany Rye, with its opiniated, not to say furious, defence of Lavengro, died down gradually as the topical allusions grew stale and lost their sting, and fifteen years after his lonely death at Oulton, the publication of the definitive edition marked the beginning of a juster valuation. By the end of the eighteen- nineties England had had too many doses of the greenery- yallery narcotic, and Borrow was an obvious antidote. It was no longer necessary to defend a book which treated of " low life " as it had been in 1851, or, as Borrow's great master Defoe had wisely done with Moll Flanders, to excuse it ironically before the attack came. The Boer War gave our national pride a nasty shock, and we turned to anything which would show us where our strength and our weakness lay. Who wrote of Britain better than Borrow ? How well he knew her, how clearly he showed her in himself ! See his clear matter-of fact style with its sudden reserves and changes of subject, its sly humour, its irrationality, its rare outbursts of enthusiasm or irritation. It fits his crabbed, lion-hearted instinctive nature like a glove ; it is so individual, so genuine, and at times so irritatingly persistent. His works have little mechanical unity it is true ; but they are strung along the thread of his personality, and seem one in the strange glow of his inner fire. His is not a universal spirit, you complain. Granted ; just because it stands alone.
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