that of compiling the Newgate Lives and Trials [Celebrated Trials]
the best; that is, after I had surmounted a kind of prejudice which I
originally entertained. The trials were entertaining enough; but the
lives--how full were they of wild and racy adventures, and in what
racy, genuine language were they told. What struck me most 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 narratives, 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,' {52a} 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 clear." {52b}


By the time the work was published and Borrow had been paid his fee,
all relations between editor and publisher had ceased, and there was
"a poor author, or rather philologist, upon the streets of London,
possessed of many tongues," which he found "of no use in the world."
{52c} A month after the appearance of Celebrated Trials (18th
April), and a little more than a year after his arrival in London,
Borrow published a translation of Klinger's Faustus. {53a} He
himself gives no particulars as to whether it was commissioned or no.
It may even have been "the Romance in the German style" from the