heroic of the pugilistic encounters takes place, it is true, in the thick
of the dingle, but it is elsewhere that the reader will have to look for
the description of the memorable thrashing inflicted upon the bullying
stage-coachman by the "elderly individual" who followed the craft of
engraving, and learnt fisticuffs from Sergeant Broughton. In the same
neighbourhood he will find the admirable vignette of the old man who
could read the inscription on Chinese crockery pots, but could not tell
what's o'clock, and the life narratives of the jockey and of the inexpert
thimble-rigger, Murtagh, who was imprisoned three years for interrupting
the Pope's game at picquet, but finally won his way by card-sharping to
the very threshold of the Cardinalate. In the second half of the _Romany
Rye_, too, he will find the noble apostrophes to youth, and ale, and
England, "the true country for adventures," which he will compare, as
examples of Borrovian eloquence, with the stirring description of
embattled England in the third chapter of _Lavengro_, or the apostrophe
to the Irish cob and the Author's first ride in chapter thirteen.

Borrow's is a wonderful book for one to lose one's _way_ in, among the
dense undergrowth, but it is a still grander book for the reader to lose
_himself_ in. In the dingle, best of all, he can "forget his own
troublesome personality as completely as if he were in the depths of the
ancient forest along with Gurth and Wamba." Labyrinthine, however, as
the autobiography may at first sight appear, the true lover of Borrow
will soon have little difficulty in finding the patteran or gypsy trail
(for indeed the Romany element runs persistently as a chorus-thread
through the whole of the autobiographical writings), which serves as a
clue to the delights of which his work is so rich a storehouse. The
question that really exercises Borrovians most is the relative merit of
stories and sections of the narrative--the comparative excellence of the
early 'life' in _Lavengro_ and of the later detached episodes in the