Yours,
EDWARD THOMAS.

LAUGHARNE,
CAERMARTHENSHIRE,
_December_, 1911.




CHAPTER I--BORROW'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY


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