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"Life, a Drama," was to have been published in 1849, and proof sheets with this name and date on the title page were lately in my hands: as far as page 168 the left hand page heading is "A Dramatic History," which is there crossed out and "Life, a Drama" thenceforward substituted. Borrow's corrections are worth the attention of anyone who cares for men and books.

The proof shows that Borrow preferred "a certain district of East Anglia" to "The western division of Norfolk." Here the added shade of indefiniteness can hardly seem valuable to any but the author himself. In another place he prefers the vague "one of the most glorious of Homer's rhapsodies" to "the enchantments of Canidia, the masterpiece of the prince of Roman poets."

In the second chapter he describes how, near Pett, in Sussex, as a child less than three years old, he took up a viper without being injured or even resisted, amid the alarms of his mother and elder brother. After this description he comments:

"It is my firm belief that certain individuals possess an inherent power, or fascination, over certain creatures, otherwise I should be unable to account for many feats which I have witnessed, and, indeed, borne a share in, connected with the taming of brutes and reptiles."

This was in the proof preceded by a passage at first modified and then cut out, reading thus:

"In some parts of the world and more particularly in India there are people who devote themselves to the pursuit and taming of serpents. Had I been born in those regions I perhaps should have been what is termed a snake charmer. That I had a genius for the profession, as probably all have who follow it, I gave decided proof of the above instance as in others which I shall have occasion subsequently to relate."

This he cut out presumably because it was too "informing" and too little "wild and strange."

A little later in the same chapter he describes how, before he was four years old, near Hythe, in Kent, he saw in a penthouse against an old village church, "skulls of the old Danes":

"'Long ago' , 'long ago they came pirating into these parts: and then there chanced a mighty shipwreck, for God was angry with them, and He sunk them; and their skulls, as they came ashore, were placed here as a memorial. There were many more when I was young, but now they are fast disappearing. Some of them must have belonged to strange fellows, madam. Only see that one; why, the two young gentry can scarcely lift it!' And, indeed, my brother and myself had entered the Golgotha, and commenced handling these grim relics of mortality. One enormous skull, lying in a corner, had fixed our attention, and we had drawn it forth. Spirit of eld, what a skull was yon!

Sometimes he modified a showy phrase, and "when I became ambitious of the title of Lavengro and strove to deserve it" was cut down to "when I became a student." When he wrote of Cowper in the third chapter he said, to justify Cowper's melancholy, that "Providence, whose ways are not our ways, interposed, and with the withering blasts of misery nipped that which otherwise might have terminated in fruit, noxious and lamentable"; but he substituted a mere "perhaps" for the words about Providence. In the description of young Jasper he changed his "short arms like" his father, into "long arms unlike."

In the fourteenth chapter Borrow describes his father's retirement from the army after Waterloo, and his settling down at Norwich, so poor as to be anxious for his children's future. He speaks of poor officers who "had slight influence with the great who gave themselves very little trouble either about them or their families." Originally he went on thus, but cut out the words from the proof:

"Yet I have reason for concluding that they were not altogether overlooked by a certain power still higher than even the aristocracy of England and with yet more extensive influence in the affairs of the world. I allude to Providence, which, it is said, never forsakes those who trust in it, as I suppose these old soldiers did, for I have known many instances in which their children have contrived to make their way gallantly in the world, unaided by the patronage of the great, whilst others who were possessed of it were most miserably shipwrecked, being suddenly overset by some unexpected squall, against which it could avail them nothing."

This change is a relief to the style. The next which I shall quote is something more than that. It shows Borrow constructing the conversation of his father and mother when they were considering his prospects at the age of twelve. His father was complaining of the boy's Gypsy look, and of his ways and manners, and of the strange company he kept in Ireland--"people of evil report, of whom terrible things were said--horse- witches and the like." His mother made the excuse: "But he thinks of other things now." "Other languages, you mean," said his father. But in the proof his mother adds to her speech, "He is no longer in Ireland," and the father takes her up with, "So much the better for him; yet should he ever fall into evil practices, I shall always lay it to the account of that melancholy sojourn in Ireland and the acquaintances he formed there."

Instead of putting into his friend, the Anglo-Germanist Williams Taylor's mouth, the opinion "that as we are aware that others frequently misinterpret us, we are equally liable to fall into the same error with respect to them," he alters it to the very different one, "That there is always some eye upon us; and that it is impossible to keep anything we do from the world, as it will assuredly be divulged by somebody as soon as it is his interest to do so."

In the twenty-fourth chapter Borrow makes Thurtell, the friend of bruisers, hint, with unconscious tragic irony, at his famous end--by dying upon the gallows for the murder of Mr. William Weare. He tells the magistrate whom he has asked to lend him a piece of land for a prize-fight that his own name is no matter.

"However," he continues, "a time may come--we are not yet buried--whensoever my hour arrives, I hope I shall prove myself equal to my destiny, however high--

"Like bird that's bred amongst the Helicons."

In the original Thurtell's quotation was:

"No poor unminded outlaw sneaking home."

These changes in the proof of what was afterwards called "Lavengro" were, it need hardly be said, made in order to bring the words nearer to a representation of the idea in Borrow's brain, and nearer to a perfect harmony with one another. Take the case of Jasper Petulengro's arm. Borrow knew the man Ambrose Smith well enough to know whether he had a long or a short arm: for did not Jasper say to him when he was dismal, "We'll now go to the tents and put on the gloves, and I'll try to make you feel what a sweet thing it is to be alive, brother!" Possibly he had a short arm like his father, but in reading the proof it must somehow have seemed to Borrow that his Jasper Petulengro--founded on Ambrose Smith and at many points resembling him--ought to have a long arm. The short arm was true to "the facts"; the long arm was more impressive and was truer to the created character, which was more important.

He saw himself as a man variously and mysteriously alive, very different from every other man and especially from certain kinds of man. When you look at a larch wood with a floor of fern in October at the end of twilight, you are not content to have that wood described as so many hundred poles growing on three acres of land, the property of a manufacturer of gin. Still less was Borrow content to sit down at Oulton, while the blast howled amid the pines which nearly surround his lonely dwelling, and answer the genial Ford's questions one by one: "What countries have you been in? What languages do you understand?" and so on. Ford probably divined a book as substantial and well-furnished with milestones as "The Bible in Spain," and he cheerfully told Borrow to make the broth "thick and slab."

Ford, in fact, doubled the difficulty. Not only did Borrow feel that his book must create a living soul, but the soul must be heroic to meet the expectations of Ford and the public. The equestrian group had been easy enough--himself mounted on Sidi Habismilk, with the swift Jew and the Gypsy at his side--but the life of a man was a different matter. Nor was the task eased by his exceptional memory. He claimed, as has been seen, to remember the look of the viper seen in his third year. Later, in "Lavengro," he meets a tinker and buys his stock-in-trade to set himself up with. The tinker tries to put him off by tales of the Blazing Tinman who has driven him from his beat. Borrow answers that he can manage the Tinman one way or other, saying, "I know all kinds of strange words and names, and, as I told you before, I sometimes hit people when they put me out." At last the tinker consents to sell his pony and things on one condition. "Tell me what's my name," he says; "if you can't, may I--." Borrow answers: "Don't swear, it's a bad habit, neither pleasant nor profitable. Your name is Slingsby--Jack Slingsby. There, don't stare, there's nothing in my telling you your name: I've been in these parts before, at least not very far from here. Ten years ago, when I was little more than a child, I was about twenty miles from here in a post chaise, at the door of an inn, and as I looked from the window of the chaise, I saw you standing by a gutter, with a big tin ladle in your hand, and somebody called you Jack Slingsby. I never forget anything I hear or see; I can't, I wish I could. So there's nothing strange in my knowing your name; indeed there's nothing strange in anything, provided you examine it to the bottom. Now what am I to give you for the things?"

Dr. Knapp has corroborated several details of "Lavengro" which confirm Borrow's opinion of his memory. Hearing the author whom he met on his walk beyond Salisbury, speak of the "wine of 1811, the comet year," Borrow said that he remembered being in the market-place of Dereham, looking at that comet. Dr Knapp first makes sure exactly when Borrow was at Dereham in 1811 and then that there was a comet visible during that time. He proves also from newspapers of 1820 that the fight, in the twenty sixth chapter of "Lavengro," ended in a thunderstorm like that described by Borrow and used by Petulengro to forecast the violent end of Thurtell.

Now a brute memory like that, which cannot be gainsaid, is not an entirely good servant to a man who will not put down everything he can, like a boy at an examination. The ordinary man probably recalls all that is of importance in his past life, though he may not like to think so, but a man with a memory like Borrow's or with a supply of diaries like Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff's may well ask, "What is truth?" as Borrow often did. The facts may convey a false impression which an omission or a positive "lie" may correct.

Just at first, as has been seen, a month after his Christmas wine with Mr Petulengro, Borrow saw his life as a drama, perhaps as a melodrama, full of Gypsies, jockeys and horses, wild men of many lands and several murderers. "Capital subject," he repeated. That was when he saw himself as an adventurer and Europe craning its neck to keep him in sight. But he knew well, and after the first flush he remembered, that he was not merely a robust walker, rider and philologist. When he was only eighteen he was continually asking himself "What is truth?" "I had," he says, "involved myself imperceptibly in a dreary labyrinth of doubt, and, whichever way I turned, no reasonable prospect of extricating myself appeared. The means by which I had brought myself into this situation may be very briefly told; I had inquired into many matters, in order that I might become wise, and I had read and pondered over the words of the wise, so called, till I had made myself master of the sum of human wisdom; namely, that everything is enigmatical and that man is an enigma to himself; thence the cry of 'What is truth?' I had ceased to believe in the truth of that in which I had hitherto trusted, and yet could find nothing in which I could put any fixed or deliberate belief. I was, indeed, in a labyrinth! In what did I not doubt? With respect to crime and virtue I was in doubt; I doubted that the one was blameable and the other praiseworthy. Are not all things subjected to the law of necessity? Assuredly; time and chance govern all things: yet how can this be? alas!

"Then there was myself; for what was I born? Are not all things born to be forgotten? That's incomprehensible: yet is it not so? Those butterflies fall and are forgotten. In what is man better than a butterfly? All then is born to be forgotten. Ah! that was a pang indeed; 'tis at such a moment that a man wishes to die. The wise king of Jerusalem, who sat in his shady arbours beside his sunny fishpools, saying so many fine things, wished to die, when he saw that not only all was vanity, but that he himself was vanity. Will a time come when all will be forgotten that now is beneath the sun? If so, of what profit is life? . . .

"'Would I had never been born!' I said to myself; and a thought would occasionally intrude. But was I ever born? Is not all that I see a lie--a deceitful phantom? Is there a world, and earth, and sky? . . ."

If he no longer articulated these doubts he was still not as sure of himself as Ford imagined. He was, by the way, seldom sure of his own age, and Dr. Knapp gives four instances of his underestimating it by two and even five years. Whatever may be the explanation of this, after three years' work at "Lavengro" he "will not be hurried for anyone." He was probably finding that, with no notebooks or letters to help, the work was very different from the writing of "The Bible in Spain," which was pieced together out of long letters to the Bible Society, and, moreover, was written within a few years of the events described. The events of his childhood and youth had retired into a perspective that was beyond his control: he would often be tempted to change their perspective, to bring forward some things, to set back others. In any case these things were no longer mere solid material facts. They were living a silent life of spirits within his brain. He took to calling the book his "life" or "autobiography," not "Life: a Drama." It was advertised as such; but he would not have it. At the last moment he refused to label it an autobiography, because he knew that it was inadequate, and that in any case other men would not understand or would misunderstand it. He must have felt certain that the fair figure of "Don Jorge," created in "The Bible of Spain," had been poisoned for most readers by many a passage in "Lavengro," like that where he doubted the existence of self and sky and stars, or where he told of the breakdown in his health when he was sixteen and of the gloom that followed:

"But how much more quickly does strength desert the human frame than return to it! I had become convalescent, it is true, but my state of feebleness was truly pitiable. I believe it is in that state that the most remarkable feature of human physiology frequently exhibits itself. Oh, how dare I mention the dark feeling of mysterious dread which comes over the mind, and which the lamp of reason, though burning bright the while, is unable to dispel! Art thou, as leeches say, the concomitant of disease--the result of shattered nerves? Nay, rather the principle of woe itself, the fountain head of all sorrow co-existent with man, whose influence he feels when yet unborn, and whose workings he testifies with his earliest cries, when, 'drowned in tears,' he first beholds the light; for, as the sparks fly upward, so is man born to trouble, and woe doth he bring with him into the world, even thyself, dark one, terrible one, causeless, unbegotten, without a father. Oh, how frequently dost thou break down the barriers which divide thee from the poor soul of man, and overcast its sunshine with thy gloomy shadow. In the brightest days of prosperity--in the midst of health and wealth--how sentient is the poor human creature of thy neighbourhood! how instinctively aware that the floodgates of horror may be cast open, and the dark stream engulf him for ever and ever! Then is it not lawful for man to exclaim, 'Better that I had never been born!' Fool, for thyself thou wast not born, but to fulfil the inscrutable decrees of thy Creator; and how dost thou know that this dark principle is not, after all, thy best friend; that it is not that which tempers the whole mass of thy corruption? It may be, for what thou knowest, the mother of wisdom, and of the great works: it is the dread of the horror of the night that makes the pilgrim hasten on his way. When thou feelest it nigh, let thy safety word be 'Onward'; if thou tarry, thou art overwhelmed. Courage! build great works--'tis urging thee--it is ever nearest the favourites of God--the fool knows little of it. Thou wouldst be joyous, wouldst thou? then be a fool. What great work was ever the result of joy, the puny one? Who have been the wise ones, the mighty ones, the conquering ones of this earth? the joyous? I believe not. The fool is happy, or comparatively so--certainly the least sorrowful, but he is still a fool; and whose notes are sweetest, those of the nightingale, or of the silly lark?

"'What ails you, my child?' said a mother to her son, as he lay on a couch under the influence of the dreadful one; 'what ails you? you seem afraid!'

"And then there was a burst of 'gemiti, sospiri ed alti guai.' Alas, alas, poor child of clay! as the sparks fly upward, so wast thou born to sorrow--Onward!"

And if men passed over this as a youthful distemper, rather often recurring, what would they make of his saying that "Fame after death is better than the top of fashion in life"? Would they not accuse him of entertaining them, as he did his companion and half-sweetheart of the dingle, Isopel Berners, "with strange dreams of adventure, in which he figures in opaque forests, strangling wild beasts, or discovering and plundering the hordes of dragons; and sometimes . . . other things far more genuine--how he had tamed savage mares, wrestled with Satan, and had dealings with ferocious publishers"?

He did not simplify the matter by his preface. There he announced that the book was "a dream." He had, he said, endeavoured to describe a dream, partly of adventure, in which will be found copious notices of books and many descriptions of life and manners, some in a very unusual form. A dream containing "copious notices of books"! A dream in three volumes and over a thousand pages! A dream which he had "endeavoured to describe"! From these three words it was necessary to suppose that it was a real dream, not a narrative introduced by the machinery of a dream, like "Pilgrim's Progress," and "The Dream of Fair Women." And so it was. The book was not an autobiography but a representation of a man's life in the backward dream of memory. He had refused to drag the events of his life out of the spirit land, to turn them into a narrative on the same plane as a newspaper, leaving readers to convert them back again into reality or not, according to their choice or ability. His life seemed to him a dream, not a newspaper obituary, not an equestrian statue on a pedestal in Albemarle Street opposite John Murray's office.

The result was that "the long-talked-of autobiography" disappointed those who expected more than a collection of bold picaresque sketches. "It is not," complained the "Athenaeum," "an autobiography, even with the licence of fiction;" "the interest of autobiography is lost," and as a work of fiction it is a failure. "Fraser's Magazine" said that it was "for ever hovering between Romance and Reality, and the whole tone of the narrative inspires profound distrust. Nay, more, it will make us disbelieve the tales in 'The Zincali' and 'The Bible in Spain.'" Another critic found "a false dream in the place of reality, a shadowy nothing in the place of that something all who had read 'The Bible in Spain' craved and hoped for from his pen." His friend, William Bodham Donne, in "Tait's Edinburgh Magazine," explained how "Lavengro" was "not exactly what the public had been expecting." Another friend, Whitwell Elwin, in the "Quarterly Review," reviewing "Lavengro" and its continuation, "The Romany Rye," not only praised the truth and vividness of the descriptions, but said that "various portions of the history are known to be a faithful narrative of Mr. Borrow's career, while we ourselves can testify, as to many other parts of his volumes, that nothing can excel the fidelity with which he has described both men and things," and "why under these circumstances he should envelop the question in mystery is more than we can divine. There can be no doubt that the larger part, and possibly the whole, of the work is a narrative of actual occurrences, and just as little that it would gain immensely by a plain avowal of the fact." I have suggested that there were good reasons for not calling the work an autobiography. Dr. Knapp has shown in his fortieth chapter that the narrative was interrupted to admit lengthy references to much later events for purposes of "occult vengeance"; and that these interruptions helped to cause the delay and to change the title there can be little doubt.

Borrow was angry at the failure of "Lavengro," and in the appendix to "The Romany Rye" he actually said that he had never called "Lavengro" an autobiography and never authorised anyone to call it such. This was not a lie but a somewhat frantic assertion that his critics were mistaken about his "dream." In later years he quietly admitted that "Lavengro" gave an account of his early life.

Yet Dr. Knapp was not strictly and completely accurate in saying that the first volume of "Lavengro" is "strictly autobiographical and authentic as the whole was at first intended to be." He could give no proof that Borrow's memory went back to his third year or that he first handled a viper at that time. He could only show that Borrow's accounts do not conflict with other accounts of the same matters. When they did conflict, Dr. Knapp was unduly elated by the discovery.

Take, for example, the sixteenth chapter of "Lavengro," where he describes the horse fair at Norwich when he was a boy:

"The reader is already aware that I had long since conceived a passion for the equine race, a passion in which circumstances had of late not permitted me to indulge. I had no horses to ride, but I took pleasure in looking at them; and I had already attended more than one of these fairs: the present was lively enough, indeed horse fairs are seldom dull. There was shouting and whooping, neighing and braying; there was galloping and trotting; fellows with highlows and white stockings, and with many a string dangling from the knees of their tight breeches, were running desperately, holding horses by the halter, and in some cases dragging them along; there were long-tailed steeds, and dock-tailed steeds of every degree and breed; there were droves of wild ponies, and long rows of sober cart horses; there were donkeys and even mules: the last rare things to be seen in damp, misty England, for the mule pines in mud and rain, and thrives best with a hot sun above and a burning sand below. There were--oh, the gallant creatures! I hear their neigh upon the wind; there were--goodliest sight of all--certain enormous quadrupeds only seen to perfection in our native isle, led about by dapper grooms, their manes ribanded and their tails curiously clubbed and balled. Ha! ha!--how distinctly do they say, ha! ha!

"'What horse is that?' said I to a very old fellow, the counterpart of the old man on the pony, save that the last wore a faded suit of velveteen, and this one was dressed in a white frock.

"'The best in mother England,' said the very old man, taking a knobbed stick from his mouth, and looking me in the face, at first carelessly, but presently with something like interest; 'he is old like myself, but can still trot his twenty miles an hour. You won't live long, my swain; tall and overgrown ones like thee never does; yet, if you should chance to reach my years, you may boast to thy great grand boys, thou hast seen Marshland Shales.'

"Amain I did for the horse what I would neither do for earl or baron, doffed my hat; yes! I doffed my hat to the wondrous horse, the fast trotter, the best in mother England; and I, too, drew a deep ah! and repeated the words of the old fellows around. 'Such a horse as this we shall never see again, a pity that he is so old.'"

But Dr. Knapp informs us that the well-known trotting stallion, Marshland Shales, was not offered for sale by auction until 1827, when he was twenty-five years old, and ten years after the date implied in "Lavengro." And what is more, Dr. Knapp concludes that Borrow must have been in Norwich in 1827, on the fair day, April 12.

I do not wish to make Borrow out a suffering innocent in the hands of that learned heavy-weight and wag, Dr. Knapp. Borrow was a writing man; he was sometimes a friend of jockeys, of Gypsies and of pugilists, but he was always a writing man; and the writer who is delighted to have his travels in Spain compared with the rogue romance, "Gil Blas," is no innocent. Photography, it must be remembered, was not invented. It was not in those days thought possible to get life on to the paper by copying it with ink. Words could not be the equivalents of acts. Life itself is fleeting, but words remain and are put to our account. Every action, it is true, is as old as man and never perishes without an heir. But so are words as old as man, and they are conservative and stern in their treatment of transitory life. Every action seems new and unique to the doer, but how rarely does it seem so when it is recorded in words, how rarely perhaps it is possible for it to seem so. A new form of literature cannot be invented to match the most grand or most lovely life. And fortunately; for if it could, one more proof of the ancient lineage of our life would have been lost. Borrow did not sacrifice the proof. He had read many books in many languages, and he had a strong taste. He liked "Gil Blas," which is a simple chain of various and surprising adventures. He liked the lives of criminals in the "Newgate Lives and Trials" , which he compiled for a publisher in his youth.

"What struck me most," he said, "with respect to these lives was the art which the writers, whoever they were, possessed of telling a plain story. It is no easy thing to tell a story plainly and distinctly by mouth; but to tell one on paper is difficult indeed, so many snares lie in the way. People are afraid to put down what is common on paper, they seek to embellish their narrative, as they think, by philosophic speculations and reflections; they are anxious to shine, and people who are anxious to shine, can never tell a plain story. 'So I went with them to a music booth, where they made me almost drunk with gin, and began to talk their flash language, which I did not understand,' says, or is made to say, Henry Simms, executed at Tyburn some seventy years before the time of which I am speaking. I have always looked upon this sentence as a masterpiece of the narrative style, it is so concise and yet so very clear."

Borrow read Bunyan, Sterne and Smollett: he liked Byron's "Childe Harold" and his "Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte";--he liked that portrait with all Europe and all history for a background. Above all, he read Defoe, and in the third chapter of "Lavengro" he has described his first sight of "Robinson Crusoe" as a little child:

"The first object on which my eyes rested was a picture; it was exceedingly well executed, at least the scene which it represented made a vivid impression upon me, which would hardly have been the case had the artist not been faithful to nature. A wild scene it was--a heavy sea and rocky shore, with mountains in the background, above which the moon was peering. Not far from the shore, upon the water, was a boat with two figures in it, one of which stood at the bow, pointing with what I knew to be a gun at a dreadful shape in the water; fire was flashing from the muzzle of the gun, and the monster appeared to be transfixed. I almost thought I heard its cry. I remained motionless, gazing upon the picture, scarcely daring to draw my breath, lest the new and wondrous world should vanish of which I had now obtained a glimpse. 'Who are those people, and what could have brought them into that strange situation?' I asked myself; and now the seed of curiosity, which had so long lain dormant, began to expand, and I vowed to myself to become speedily acquainted with the whole history of the people in the boat. After looking on the picture till every mark and line in it were familiar to me, I turned over various leaves till I came to another engraving; a new source of wonder--a low sandy beach on which the furious sea was breaking in mountain-like billows; cloud and rack deformed the firmament, which wore a dull and leaden-like hue; gulls and other aquatic fowls were toppling upon the blast, or skimming over the tops of the maddening waves--'Mercy upon him! he must be drowned!' I exclaimed, as my eyes fell upon a poor wretch who appeared to be striving to reach the shore; he was upon his legs, but was evidently half smothered with the brine; high above his head curled a horrible billow, as if to engulf him for ever. 'He must be drowned! he must be drowned!' I almost shrieked, and dropped the book. I soon snatched it up again, and now my eye lighted on a third picture; again a shore, but what a sweet and lovely one, and how I wished to be treading it; there were beautiful shells lying on the smooth white sand, some were empty like those I had occasionally seen on marble mantelpieces, but out of others peered the heads and bodies of wondrous crayfish; a wood of thick green trees skirted the beach and partly shaded it from the rays of the sun, which shone hot above, while blue waves slightly crested with foam were gently curling against it; there was a human figure upon the beach, wild and uncouth, clad in the skins of animals, with a huge cap on his head, a hatchet at his girdle, and in his hand a gun; his feet and legs were bare; he stood in an attitude of horror and surprise; his body was bent far back, and his eyes, which seemed starting out of his head, were fixed upon a mark on the sand--a large distinct mark--a human footprint!

"Reader, is it necessary to name the book which now stood open in my hand, and whose very prints, feeble expounders of its wondrous lines, had produced within me emotions strange and novel? Scarcely, for it was a book which has exerted over the minds of Englishmen an influence certainly greater than any other of modern times, which has been in most people's hands, and with the contents of which even those who cannot read are to a certain extent acquainted; a book from which the most luxuriant and fertile of our modern prose writers have drunk inspiration; a book, moreover, to which, from the hardy deeds which it narrates, and the spirit of strange and romantic enterprise which it tends to awaken, England owes many of her astonishing discoveries both by sea and land, and no inconsiderable part of her naval glory.

"Hail to thee, spirit of De Foe! What does not my own poor self owe to thee? England has better bards than either Greece or Rome, yet I could spare them easier far than De Foe, 'unabashed De Foe,' as the hunchbacked rhymer styled him."

"There are perhaps no people so completely happy as they are, or enjoy so great a share of liberty. The king is elective by the whole people, but none are allowed to stand as candidates for that honour but such as have been long in their society, and perfectly studied the nature and institution of it; they must likewise have given repeated proofs of their personal wisdom, courage and capacity; this is better known as they always keep a public record or register of all remarkable actions performed by any of their society, and they can have no temptation to make choice of any but the most worthy, as their king has no titles or legislative employments to bestow, which might influence or corrupt their judgments.

"The laws of these people are few and simple, but most exactly and punctually observed; the fundamental of which is that strong love and mutual regard for each member in particular and for the whole community in general, which is inculcated into them from the earliest infancy. . . . Experience has shown them that, by keeping up their nice sense of honour and shame, they are always enabled to keep their community in better order than the most severe corporal punishments have been able to effect in other governments.

"But what has still more tended to preserve their happiness is that they know no other use of riches than the enjoyment of them. They know no other use of it than that of promoting mirth and good humour; for which end they generously bring their gains into a common stock, whereby they whose gains are small have an equal enjoyment with those whose profits are larger, excepting only that a mark or ignominy is affixed on those who do not contribute to the common stock proportionately to their abilities and the opportunities they have of gain, and this is the source of their uninterrupted happiness; fully this means they have no griping usurer to grind them, no lordly possessor to trample on them, nor any envyings to torment them; they have no settled habitations, but, like the Scythian of old, remove from place to place, as often as their convenience or pleasure requires it, which render their life a perpetual source of the greatest variety.

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