to adopt.  Then comes the word-master’s detection in his new sphere of life by the malignant gipsy godmother, Mrs. Herne, from whose remorseless attempt to poison him he is rescued by the kindly hearted Welsh preacher Peter Williams and his wife Winifred.  In requital he manages to relieve the good man of a portion of the load of superstitious terror by which he is burdened.  This section of the narrative is terminated by a graphic description of his renewal of associateship with his old friend Jasper Petulengro, the satisfaction he gives that worthy for having been the innocent cause of Mrs. Herne’s death, and his decision to pitch his tent in the dingle.  Chapters lviii. to lxxxii. are taken up with the foregoing incidents, which lead up to the central episode of the autobiography, the settlement in the dingle, with which the reader is here presented.  This episode, forming the second panel in the detailed scheme, occupies chapters lxxxiii. to cxvi., but it is bisected near the middle by the termination of Lavengro at chapter c.  The two parts are united now for the first time, and are given a prominent setting in relief from the rest of the narrative.  The third compartment of the triptych, which occupies chapters cxvii. to cxlvii. (that is, chapters xvii. to xlvii. of the Romany Rye), is devoted to what we may call the horse-dealing episode.  After the loss of Isopel Berners, the Romany Rye, as the author-hero is now termed, consoles himself by the purchase of a splendid horse, to obtain which he consents, much against his will, to accept a loan of 50 pounds from Jasper Petulengro, the product of that worthy’s labours in the prize ring.  He travels across England with the horse, meeting with adventures by the way, narrating them to others, and obtaining some curious autobiographical narratives in return.  Finally he reaches Horncastle, and sells the animal at the horse fair there for 150 pounds.  Here, in August 1825, the narrative of his life abruptly ends. {43}

It must not be supposed by any means that the interest of Borrow’s two autobiographical volumes is concentrated in the last eighteen chapters of Lavengro and the first sixteen chapters of the Romany Rye.  The quality of continuity is, it is true, best preserved in the dingle episode.  Artistically the Brynhildic figure of Isopel serves as the best relief that could be found for Borrow’s own “Titanic self.”  There is undoubtedly a feeling of unity here which is hardly to be felt in any other part of the Borrovian “Odyssey.”

It is nevertheless true that, taken as a whole, a marked characteristic of the two volumes is the evenness with which the charms are scattered hither and thither betwixt the four covers.  Attractive, therefore, as the Isopel Berners episode unquestionably is, and convenient as it is to the reader to have it detached for him in its unity, its perusal must not be taken for a moment to absolve the lover of good literature