George Borrow | Page 3

ways; we speak of them as modes of inspiration; and even those who question the inspiration of prophets do not refuse the word in speaking of poets and musicians. Borrow did not question prophetic inspiration in the past, because he believed in it as a present fact. He believed that to the man who by prayer kept himself in touch with the Divine Spirit intimations were vouchsafed of the Divine will, which brought clear light into the dark places of life. He somewhat shocked the good but precise secretary of the Bible Society by declaring in a letter from Spain that he had been "very passionate in prayer during the last two or three days," and in consequence, as he thought, saw his way "with considerable clearness": on another occasion, by saying that he was "what the world calls exceedingly superstitious" because he had changed some plan in consequence of a dream; and again by saying, "My usual wonderful good fortune accompanied me." For the last expression he apologised; but, whatever the particular expression used, there can be no doubt that Borrow was a firm believer in what our fathers called "particular providences," "leadings of the Divine Spirit." He believed, for example, that he was doing the will of God in circulating the Bible, and he also believed that God made his way plain for so doing. We have known since Borrow another great Englishman who held a similar faith, Charles Gordon; and the lives of both supply so many instances of what look like acts of special protection, that the question will present itself to the student of their lives whether there may not be some such connexion between faith and miracle, as our Saviour asserted. At any rate, we shall never understand Borrow if we exclude from our notion of religion the idea of the miraculous, meaning by that word not the contravention of natural law, but the providential guidance of events.
There is one special side of this doctrine of Providence which must be referred to specially, because Borrow himself calls attention to it in the curious commentary which he annexed to "The Romany Rye"; the doctrine so familiar to the last generation in the poems of Browning, that trouble, to which "man is born, as the sparks fly upward," is ordained by the Creator as a stimulus to endeavour, because "where least man suffers, longest he remains." Some of you may remember that he argues in that appendix that the old man who had learnt Chinese to distract his mind would have played but a sluggard's part in life if no affliction had befallen him, since he had never taken the pains to learn how to tell the time from a clock. "Nothing but extreme agony," says Borrow, "could have induced such a man to do anything useful." And every one will recall the passage in "Lavengro" where he speaks of the fit of horrors that attacked his hero, may we not say himself, when recovering from an illness. "In the recollection and prospect of such woe," he asks, "Is it not lawful to exclaim, 'Better that I had never been born'"? And he replies, "Fool, for thyself thou wast not born, but to fulfil the inscrutable decrees of thy Creator; and how dost thou know that this dark principle is not, after all, thy best friend; that it is not that which tempers the whole mass of thy corruption? It may be, for what thou knowest, the mother of wisdom and of great works, it is the dread of the horror of the night that makes the pilgrim hasten on his way. When thou feelest it nigh, let thy safety word be 'Onward!' If thou tarry, thou art overwhelmed. Courage! Build great works; 'tis urging thee."
In the passage just quoted Borrow speaks of God's "inscrutable" decrees. After sitting as a young man at the feet of William Taylor and learning from him some philosophy and much scepticism, he had come back to the old Hebrew idea that in religion reverence was the beginning of wisdom. This did not mean that he had discarded Western science, or put a bridle upon his own insatiable curiosity. No man was more ready to learn what could anyhow or anywhere be learned. It meant that when all had been learned that science could teach, the really vital questions remained still without an answer, because natural science can throw no light on what nature itself really is. The only clue within our reach to that first and last problem lay, in his judgment, with the simple-hearted and lowly- minded, those in whom this wonderful world still aroused wonder. In thus calling to the soul of man not to lose its power of wonder, Borrow is in sympathy with the deepest thought