_Lavengro; the Scholar_, _the Gypsy_, _the Priest_, eventually appeared
in three volumes on Feb. 7th, 1851. The autobiographical _Lavengro_
stopped short in July 1825, at the conclusion of the hundredth chapter,
with an abruptness worthy of the _Sentimental Journey_. The Author had
succeeded in extending the area of mystery, but not in satisfying the
public. Borrow's confidences were so very different in complexion from
those which the critics seemed to have expected, that they were taken
aback and declared to the public almost with one accord that the writer's
eccentricities had developed into mannerisms, that 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