: Im Herzen von Asien. Zweiter Band. by Hedin Sven Anders - Tibet Autonomous Region (China) Description and travel; Asia Central Description and travel

@FreeBooksThu 08 Jun, 2023

Posted in: #FreeBooks #FreeBooksIndia #FreeBooksApp #gg

Vote Up Vote Down

GEORGE BORROW THE MAN AND HIS BOOKS

BY EDWARD THOMAS

"THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES," "LIGHT AND TWILIGHT," "REST AND UNREST," "MAURICE MAETERLINCK," ETC.

LONDON CHAPMAN & HALL, LTD. 1912

Printed by JAS. TRUSCOTT AND SON, LTD., London, E.C.

DEDICATION TO E. S. P. HAYNES

MY DEAR HAYNES,

Yours, EDWARD THOMAS.

The subject of this book was a man who was continually writing about himself, whether openly or in disguise. He was by nature inclined to thinking about himself and when he came to write he naturally wrote about himself; and his inclination was fortified by the obvious impression made upon other men by himself and by his writings. He has been dead thirty years; much has been written about him by those who knew him or knew those that did: yet the impression still made by him, and it is one of the most powerful, is due mainly to his own books. Nor has anything lately come to light to provide another writer on Borrow with an excuse. The impertinence of the task can be tempered only by its apparent hopelessness and by that necessity which Voltaire did not see.

I shall attempt only a re-arrangement of the myriad details accessible to all in the writings of Borrow and about Borrow. Such re-arrangement will sometimes heighten the old effects and sometimes modify them. The total impression will, I hope, not be a smaller one, though it must inevitably be softer, less clear, less isolated, less gigantic. I do not wish, and I shall not try, to deface Borrow's portrait of himself; I can only hope that I shall not do it by accident. There may be a sense in which that portrait can be called inaccurate. It may even be true that "lies--damned lies" helped to make it. But nobody else knows anything like as much about the truth, and a peddling biographer's mouldy fragment of plain fact may be far more dangerous than the manly lying of one who was in possession of all the facts. In most cases the fact--to use an equivocal term--is dead and blown away in dust while Borrow's impression is as green as grass. His "lies" are lies only in the same sense as all clothing is a lie.

For example, he knew a Gypsy named Ambrose Smith, and had sworn brotherhood with him as a boy. He wrote about this Gypsy, man and boy, and at first called him, as the manuscripts bear witness, by his real name, though Borrow thought of him in 1842 as Petulengro. In print he was given the name Jasper Petulengro--Petulengro being Gypsy for shoesmith--and as Jasper Petulengro he is now one of the most unforgetable of heroes; the name is the man, and for many Englishmen his form and character have probably created quite a new value for the name of Jasper. Well, Jasper Petulengro lives. Ambrose Smith died in 1878, at the age of seventy-four, after being visited by the late Queen Victoria at Knockenhair Park: he was buried in Dunbar Cemetery.

'Tis therefore I counsel each young Danish swain who may ride in the forest so dreary, Ne'er to lay down upon lone Elvir Hill though he chance to be ever so weary.

Free books android app tbrJar TBR JAR Read Free books online gutenberg

Login to post a comment!