admiration for the reigning monarch," George III.; but there is no reason
to believe this, and certainly Borrow himself made of the combination
which he finally adopted--George Borrow--something that retains not the
slightest flavour of any other George. Such changes are common enough.
John Richard Jefferies becomes Richard Jefferies; Robert Lewis Balfour
Stevenson becomes Robert Louis Stevenson. But Borrow could touch nothing
without transmuting it. For example, in his Byronic period, when he was
about twenty years of age, he was translating "romantic ballads" from the
Danish. In the last verse of one of these, called "Elvir Hill," he takes
the liberty of using the Byronic "lay":

'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.

Twenty years later he used this ballad romantically in writing about his
early childhood. He was travelling with his father's regiment from town
to town and from school to school, and they came to Berwick-upon-Tweed:
{3}

"And it came to pass that, one morning, I found myself extended on the
bank of a river. It was a beautiful morning of early spring; small white
clouds were floating in the heaven, occasionally veiling the countenance
of the sun, whose light, as they retired, would again burst forth,
coursing like a racehorse over the scene--and a goodly scene it was!
Before me, across the water, on an eminence, stood a white old city,
surrounded with lofty walls, above which rose the tops of tall houses,
with here and there a church or steeple. To my right hand was a long and
massive bridge, with many arches and of antique architecture, which