of Europe; but he has left no record of his experiences in most of the countries which he visited. We next hear of him in Russia, in 1826; and we hear of him superintending the first translation of the English Bible into Manchutata. Returning to England in 1835 he published a book called "Targum"-translations in verse from thirty different languages. The English Bible society, delighted by his translation of the Bible into Tartar, commissioned him to act as their agent in Spain; and Borrow gladly undertook the work-not because he really cared very much either for the Bible Society or the Bible, but because he wanted to study the gipsies of Spain after a new fashion. He translated, or got translated, a good deal of the Bible into Gipsy; but this fact was nothing in comparison with the book which he produced on his return from Spain, entitled “The Zincali; or an Account of the Gipsies in Spain." It was not only a book of wonderful interest and value, by reason of the novelty of the subject; but it was itself quite a novelty as a mere piece of literary art. Everybody was delighted with it. But they were still more delighted with the book which he produced in 1843 called "The Bible in Spain." This was an account of his wanderings and adventures in Spain, during his work for the Bible Society; and it took the English public by storm. It was even mentioned in a speech made in the House of Lords. He next produced a book called "Lavengro," chiefly an account of his wanderings and friendships with gipsies during his youth in England. In 1857 he produced "The Romany Rye," a gipsy novel-afterwards dramatized for the English stage. In 1874 he published his "Romano Lavo-lif; or Wordbook of the Gipsy-Language." In 1881 he died.

There is perhaps no other man so widely known as Borrow, about whose private life so little is known. Living in the strangest fashion in different parts of Europe, wandering from place to place with bands of gipsies, hiding himself under a multitude of disguises, he actually remained during

the greater part of his life invisible to society. We know very little about what he did or where he went until he was already past middle age. We have reason to believe that he very nearly lost his life on one or two occasions by arousing the suspicion of the gipsies, who imagined him to be a police spy. But everything about him, even the stories which he tells us of his adventures, must be considered uncertain. When at last he married a rich English widow, and was introduced by his admirers into good society, he could not stay in it. His gipsy life had rendered him unfit for any other. He could not sit still in a room for half an hour, could not obey conventions, could not endure those little kindly hypocrisies by which alone society is made endurable. He fled from London into the country, and there passed the last years of his life, ready to show kindness to any wandering unconventional persons, especially gipsies, but obstinately refusing to meet men of culture-authors, clergymen, gentlemen or ladies of any rank. The habits of his boyhood had shaped his whole life and changed his whole character. By blood only he remained an Englishman; in thought, habit and feeling he became altogether a gipsy.

Into English literature, Borrow brought a new element, a new quality of romantic narration. None of his books is, in the strictest sense of the word, either a novel or a romance; they are all romantic narrative of things really felt and seen. He did not attempt any complete framework of story; there is no beginning and no end; there is no order; there is no sequence. I do not know how to explain his method better than by telling you that most of his works resemble note-books. Nevertheless, these books have a charm and a quality absolutely original, and still command a great deal of admiration and attention, especially from the young. He perceived that the most ordinary incident of everyday life could be made interesting, and the most ordinary emotions and impressions obtained value by proper literary treatment; and out of almost nothing he was able

to produce volumes, half fiction, half truth, such as had never been produced before. It is somewhat of a puzzle to determine where the true thing ends and where the fiction begins; but the best critics are inclined to think that the fiction lies chiefly in the combination of incidents, and the truth in the incidents themselves. This theory allows us to feel a great deal of respect for the author. It is not a case like Defoe's, who wrote out of his imagination. Borrow wrote fact; but he combined the facts of different years and different places in such a manner as to give you an idea that they belong to a particular, brief period of experience. He has had no imitators worth mentioning, because the particular skill with which he constructed his books depended upon a genius of the most original kind. Perhaps no Englishman could successfully imitate him. But I observe that some of the finest modern French work-sketches of travel in particular-is being constructed upon lines remarkably similar to the method of Borrow. I do not think this is an imitation; it is rather a spontaneous creation of the same sort; and it is the work of men who, like Borrow, have passed their lives in wandering about the world.

CHAPTER X

NOTE UPON ROSSETTI'S PROSE

As we are now studying Rossetti's poetry in other hours, you may be interested in some discussion of the merits of his prose for this is still, so far as the great public are concerned, almost an unknown topic. The best of the painters of his own school, and the most delicate poet of the Victorian period, Rossetti might also have become one of the greatest prose writers of the century if he had seriously turned to prose. But ill-health and other circumstances prevented him from doing much in this direction. What he did do, however, is so remarkable that it deserves to be very carefully studied. I do not refer to his critical essays. These are not very remarkable. I refer only to his stories; and his stories are great because they happen to have exactly the same kind of merit that distinguishes his poetry. They might be compared with the stories of Poe; and yet they are entirely different, with the difference distinguishing all Latin prose fiction from English fiction. But there is certainly no other story writer, except Poe, with whose work that of Rossetti can be at all classed. They are ghostly storiesone of them a fragment, the other complete. Only twoand the outline of the third. The fragment is not less worthy of attention because it happeens to be a fragment -like the poet's own "Bride's Prelude," or Coleridge's "Christabel," or Poe's "Silence." The trouble with all great fragments, and the proof of their greatness, is that we cannot imagine what the real ending would have been; and this puzzle only lends additional charm to the imaginative effect. Of the two consecutive stories, it is the fragment which has the greater merit.

The first story, called "Hand and Soul," has another in

-a

terest besides the interest of narrative. It contains the whole æsthetic creed of Rossetti's school of painting,little philosophy of art that is well worth studying. That is especially why I want to talk about it. The so-called Pre-Raphaelite school of English painting, whereof Rossetti was the recognized chief, were not altogether disciples of Ruskin. They did not believe that art must have a religious impulse in order to be great art; and they did not exactly support the antagonistic doctrine of "Art for Art's sake." They considered that absolute sincerity in one's own conception of the beautiful, and wide toleration of all æsthetic ideas, were axiomatic truths which it was necessary to accept without reserve. They had no detestation for any school of art; they practically banished prejudice from their little circle. I may add that they were not indifferent to Japanese art, even at a time when it found many enemies in London, and when the great Ruskin himself endeavoured to help the prejudice against it. In that very time Rossetti was making Japanese collections, and Burne-Jones and others were discovering new methods by the help of this Eastern

art.

Now the story of "Hand and Soul" is, in a small way, a history of man's experience with Painting. It is supposed to be the story of a real picture. The picture is only the figure of a woman in a grey and green dress, very beautiful. But whoever looks at that picture for a minute or two, suddenly becomes afraid-afraid in exactly the same way that he would be on seeing a ghost. The picture could not have been painted from imagination; that figure must have been seen by somebody; and yet it could not have been a living woman! Then what could have been the real story of that picture? Did the artist see a ghost; or did he see something supernatural?

The answer to these questions is the following story. The artist who painted that picture, four hundred years ago, was a young Italian of immense genius, so passionately