should convey to his readers the intellectual impressions which the
execution of his task has produced on his mind. He confesses that
they are mournful." Sir Richard was either a master of irony, or a
man of singular obtuseness.

One effect of this delving into criminal records had been to raise in
Borrow's mind strange doubts about virtue and crime. When a boy, he
had written an essay in which he strove to prove that crime and
virtue were mere terms, and that we were the creatures of necessity
or circumstance. These broodings in turn reawakened the theory that
everything is a lie, and that nothing really exists except in our
imaginations. The world was "a maze of doubt." These indications of
an overtaxed brain increased, and eventually forced Borrow to leave
London. His work was thoroughly uncongenial. He disliked reviewing;
he had failed in his endeavours to render Proximate Causes into
intelligible German; and it had taken him some time to overcome his
dislike of the sordid stories of crime and criminals that he had to
read and edit. He became gloomy and depressed, and prone to compare
the real conditions of authorship with those that his imagination had
conjured up.

The most important result of his labours in connection with
Celebrated Trials was that upon his literary style. There is a
tremendous significance in the following passage. It tells of the
transition of the actual vagabond into the literary vagabond, with
power to express in words what proved so congenial to Borrow's
vagabond temperament:


"Of all my occupations at this period I am free to confess I liked