general knowledge of the country or of what had been written of it, so
that he did not know how to spell Manorbier or recognise it as the
birthplace of Gerald of Wales. He remembered his youth, when he
translated the bards, with complacent melancholy. He sunned himself in
the admiration of his inferiors, talking at great length on subjects with
which he was acquainted and repeating his own execrable verse
translations. "Nice man"--"civil man"--"clever man . . . has been
everywhere," the people said. In the South, too, he had the supreme good
fortune to meet Captain Bosvile for the first time for thirty years, and
not being recognised, said, "I am the chap what certain folks calls the
Romany Rye." Bejiggered if the Captain had not been thinking it was he,
and goes on to ask after that "fine young woman and a vartuous" that he
used to keep company with, and Borrow in his turn asked after
Jasper--"Lord!" was the answer, "you can't think what grand folks he and
his wife have become of late years, and all along of a trumpery lil which
somebody has written about them." He also met an Italian whose friends
he had last seen at Norwich, one whom he had found at Corunna. It is no
wonder that it seemed to him he had always had "the health of an
elephant," and could walk thirty-four miles a day, and the last mile in
ten minutes. He took his chance for a night's lodging, content to have
someone else's bed, but going to the best inn where he had a choice, as
at Haverfordwest.

He was very much moved by the adventure. "I have a wonderful deal to say
if I once begin; I have been everywhere," he said to the old man at
Gutter Fawr. He gave the shepherd advice about his sheep. "I am in the
habit," he said to the landlord at Pont Erwyd, "of talking about
everything, being versed in all matters, do you see, or affecting to be
so, which comes much to the same thing." Even in the company of his
stepdaughter--as they were not in Hyde Park--he sang in Welsh at the top