The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1900-05-26

more tnat you 90 not KNOW.
/ have a strong suspicion that Borrow
first began to learn his gypsy patter
when he was a mere child urchin at
Dereham. His father, who was certain
ly very noble and high-mlnded man,
with vein of melancholy in him, used
to complain in those days about his
ugly duck of son as a mischieVous and
rather unaccountable boy, The gypsies
swarmed hereabouts in those days, and
there were portions of our common
land that still remained uncultiVated
The Green Lane in this parish, scarcely
a mile from Dereham church was IA
NOUS place of resort for them in the
memory of men still living; and in the
Green Lane the Ramanys used to hold
kind of fair and assemble in large en-
campments. Even during the last
twenty five years or so they were fire.
quently to be seen there, and have my
self come upon them, but seldom was
there more than a single family, a soil
tary tent an old horse feeding and a
few dirty children, looking as if they
would like to beg, but dreading to try 1t
on These We're but the ghosts OF the
old lawless days, and these have passed
away now.
1t is less easy to see how Borrow
learnt Welsh. | suspect his knowledge
of it was not very profound But to
say of Welsh that it is the most diff
cult language but one of modern Eu-
rope is ridiculous. The pronunciation
is the only difficulty about it, and that
is absurdly exaggerated by the average
Welshman, whose patriotic boast is that
none but a Celt can pronounce Llangol-
len, which is about as true as that only
German can say ''ich."
There can be no doubt, however, that
Borrow had a remarkable gift of ac-
quiring a certain command of odd IAN
guages-whether he was master of any
is another question, His method OF set
ting to work was not so peculiar as
might appear at first sight. He at
tackled new language by translatlhg
some of its songs or ballads into verse
Other men have pursued the same plan
and will do it again. But the curious
fact in Borrow's translations is that
they are so badly done. He never
sohed the least aptitude for verse COM
position. His ballads and songs are the
wretchedest doggerel. Give the man
credit for knowing something about
thirty languages, as he pretended to
know when he printed his ''Targum' in
1885, vet no one can turn over the pages
of the book without thinking of Dr..
Johnsons saying about a dog standing
on his hind legs-"He does not do it
well, but the wonder is he does it at all.
And yet, when all is said that needs
al hoI he
said, THE Romany Rye" and much
else that Borrow has left behind him,
will continue to exercise an irresistible
fascination over some minds, and over
most minds of any intellectual compass,
in certain stage of their development.
The personages in these inimitable
books are not merely snapshots; they
are living pictures; and, more than
that, the people are moving about
among futtering leaves and tlickerng
sunlight and waves of shadow and rip
ping brooks. One neither misses the
colors Of the landscapes nor the very
sounds of the voices. Moreover, the
characters though we feel that they
have never come within the range of
our experience, yet did actually live and
move and talk as they are represented;
and we know, too, that such characters
have passed away from our earth-im-
proved off the face of it. And we re-
greet, in spite of ourselves that these
gipsies are gone The rogues will never
come back A feeling of disappoint-
ment is apt to come over us as we read,
and we are ready to stop and ask an
grily, why can't we drop in among the
tents and see an Ursula or Pakonovna
and have our fortunes told as OF yore?
And we know that it cannot be- and
that the Romany Rye is being who
lived and moved in different age from
ours, as different as the age of Hesctor
and Achilles. when warriors fought in
their chariots round the walls of Troy
and the long-haired Achaians hurled
their spears and stole one anothers
horses in the darkness, and kings made
long speeches armed to the teeth, and
ran away with other kings wives or
multiplied their own
AS for George Borrow, he was much
more than bit of a brag. dc was con
sumed by vanity. He hurled himself
against all whom he thought proper to
differ from with a violence of unmeas-
ured language that yet never reaches
the point of cruelty, and is never vul-
gar, coarse or slangy. He hated Words
worth and Sir Walter Scott. He had
supreme contempt for gentleman
He could not bear the sight of a Scotch
man. The very name of the pope drove
him into fury A grim and morose
parsonage he was, with no sense of hui
NOR, and hardly any taste for harmless
fun. Did he ever make a joke? And
vet there is a quite irresistible attrac-
ton about the man, and we never can
help feeling that there was an atmos-
phere of mystery about him. Every
man, even the greatest, has his limita-
tions; but Borrow seems always to have
wanted to be- or to seem what he must
have known he was not and never could
be.
One thing is certain-that we would
fain have had more such volumes as
this about Romany Rye. For the rest,
he was not all lovely and estimable.
Why should we expect that of our great
artists? Almost all of them had some
weak spot and some of them exactly in
places where we should least have ex-
pected to find them. Beethoven was as
deaf as a post Was Raphael angelic?
Was Goethe Childlike and bland? Poor
Borrow! Poor Borrow! There Is a