can bring him to the gallows."

Isopel Berners, with Moses and David in her mind, expresses Borrow's
private opinion more soberly when she says:

"_Fear God_, and take your own part. There's Bible in that, young man;
see how Moses feared God, and how he took his own part against everybody
who meddled with him. And see how David feared God, and took his own
part against all the bloody enemies which surrounded him--so fear God,
young man, and never give in! The world can bully, and is fond, provided
it sees a man in a kind of difficulty, of getting about him, calling him
coarse names, and even going so far as to hustle him; but the world, like
all bullies, carries a white feather in its tail, and no sooner sees the
man taking off his coat, and offering to fight its best, than it scatters
here and there, and is always civil to him afterwards. So when folks are
disposed to ill-treat you, young man, say 'Lord, have mercy upon me!' and
then tip them Long Melford, to which, as the saying goes, there is
nothing comparable for shortness all the world over."

{picture: The Green, Long Melford, Suffolk. Photo: C. F. Emeny, Sudbury:
page261.jpg}

He had probably a natural inclination towards a liberal or eccentric
morality, but he was no thinker, and he gave way to a middle-class
phraseology--with exceptions, as when he gives it as the opinion of his
old master, the Norwich solicitor, that "all first-rate thieves were
sober, and of well-regulated morals, their bodily passions being kept in
abeyance by their love of gain." Sometimes Borrow allows these two sides
of him, his private and his social sides, to appear together
dramatically. For example, he more than half seriously advises Jasper to