relates them. He never hesitated to change a date if it served his
purpose, much as an artist will change the position of a tree in a
landscape to suit the exigencies of composition. His five volumes of
autobiography bristle with coincidences so amazing that, if they were
actually true, he must have been the most remarkable genius on record
for attracting to himself strange adventures. He met the sailor son
of the old Apple-Woman returning from his enforced exile; Murtagh
tells him of how the postilion frightened the Pope at Rome by his
denunciation, a story Borrow had already heard from the postilion
himself; the Hungarian at Horncastle narrates how an Armenian once
silenced a Moldavian, the same Moldavian whom Borrow had encountered
in London; the postilion meets the man in black again. There are
scores of such coincidences, which must be accepted as dramatic
embellishments.



CHAPTER IV: MAY-SEPTEMBER 1825



Fourteen months in London had shown Borrow how hard was the road of
authorship. He confessed that he was not "formed by nature to be a
pallid indoor student." "The peculiar atmosphere of the big city"
did not agree with him, and this fact, together with the anxiety and
hard work of the past twelve months, caused him to flag, and his
first thought was how to recover his health. He was disillusioned as
to the busy world, and the opportunities it offered to a young man
fired with ambition to make a stir in it. He determined to leave
London, which he did towards the end of May, {60a} first despatching