Isopel Berners | Page 6

his theories
of life were political manifestoes, that his dialects were gibberish, and
his defiance of the orthodox canons of autobiography scarcely less than
an outrage upon the public taste.
From the general public came a fusillade of requests to solve the
prevailing mystery of the book. Was it fact or fiction?--or, if fact and
fiction were blended, in what proportions? Borrow ought to have been
prepared for a question so natural in the mouths of literary busy-bodies
at any time, and especially at a time when partisan spirit was rampant,
and the vitality of the lampoon as a factor in politics so far from extinct.
To show his contempt alike for the critical verdict and the popular
curiosity, after a quarrel, or at least a sharp coolness with John Murray,
he published in two volumes, in May 1857, The Romany Rye, which
carries on the story of Lavengro for just about a month further, namely,
down towards the end of August 1825, and there again stops dead.
Whether we regard coherence or the rate of progress, no more attempt
at amendment is perceptible than can be discerned in the later as
compared with the earlier volumes of Tristram Shandy. The
peculiarities of the earlier volume are, indeed, here accentuated, while

the Author had evidently only been confirmed by the lapse of years in
the political philosophy to which he had already given expression. At
the end was printed an appendix (a sort of catalogue raisonne of
Borrovian prejudices), satirising with unmeasured bitterness the critics
of Lavengro.
The resumption of a story after an interval of over six years, with
appendages so extravagant, whether we regard their tenor or their
length, and with an indifference so sublime to the popular desire that he
should get along with his personal narrative, was hardly calculated to
conciliate critical opinion; but it had one capital effect. It drew from
Whitwell Elwin, himself a Norfolk man, and a literary critic of the
widest grasp and knowledge, this remarkable testimony: that far from
exaggerating such incidents as were drawn from his own experience
(not a few, as he himself could verify), Borrow's descriptions were
rather within the truth than beyond it. "However picturesquely they
may be drawn, the lines are invariably those of nature. . . . There can be
no doubt that the larger part, and possibly the whole of the work, is a
narrative of actual occurrences."
Here, then, is the heart of the mystery, or of the mystery that is apparent;
the phenomenon is due primarily to the fact that Borrow's book is so
abnormally true as regards the matter, while in manner of presentation
it is so strikingly original. There are superficial traces, no doubt, of not
a few writers of the eighteenth century. In some of his effects Borrow
reproduces Sterne: essentially Sternean, for instance, is the interview
between the youthful author and the experienced Mr. Taggart.
"Well, young gentleman," said Taggart to me one morning when we
chanced to be alone, a few days after the affair of cancelling, "how do
you like authorship?"
"I scarcely call authorship the drudgery I am engaged in," said I.
"What do you call authorship?" said Taggart.
"I scarcely know," said I; "that is, I can scarcely express what I think
it."

"Shall I help you out?" said Taggart, turning round his chair, and
looking at me.
"If you like," said I.
"To write something grand," said Taggart, taking snuff; "to be stared
at--lifted on people's shoulders."
"Well," said I, "that is something like it."
Taggart took snuff.
"Well," said he, "why don't you write something grand?"
"I have," said I.
"What?" said Taggart.
"Why," said I, "there are those ballads."
Taggart took snuff.
"And those wonderful versions from Ab Gwilym."
Taggart took snuff again.
"You seem to be very fond of snuff," said I, looking at him angrily.
Taggart tapped his box.
"Have you taken it long?"
"Three-and-twenty years."
"What snuff do you take?"
"Universal Mixture."
"And you find it of use?"

Taggart tapped his box.
"In what respect?" said I.
"In many--there is nothing like it to get a man through; but for snuff I
should scarcely be where I am now."
"Have you been long here?"
"Three-and-twenty years."
"Dear me," said I; "and snuff brought you through? Give me a
pinch--pah, I don't like it," and I sneezed.
"Take another pinch," said Taggart.
"No," said I; "I don't like snuff."
"Then you will never do for authorship; at least for this kind."
"So I begin to think. What shall I do?"
Taggart took snuff.
"You were talking of a great work. What shall it be?"
Taggart took snuff.
"Do you think I could write one?"
Taggart uplifted his two forefingers as if to tap; he did not, however.
"It would require time," said