incidents, however varied and delightful, unless lit up by the occasional
lightning-flash of true eloquence, must after a while lose their
freshness. Borrow was not afraid to be eloquent, nor were other writers
of his time. The first Lord Lytton is now a somewhat disparaged author,
nor had Borrow any affection for him, considering him to belong to the
kid-glove school; but Lytton's eloquence, though often playing him shabby
tricks, now dashing his head against the rocks of bathos, now casting him
to sprawl unbecomingly amongst the oozy weeds of sentiment, will keep him
alive for many a long day. As I write, a passage in _The Caxtons_ comes
to my mind, and as it illustrates my meaning, I will take down _The
Caxtons_ and transcribe the passage, and let those laugh who may. I will
likewise christen it 'By the Fireside':--

O young reader, whoever thou art, or reader at least who has been
young, canst thou not remember some time when, with thy wild troubles
and sorrows as yet borne in secret, thou hast come back from that
hard, stern world, which opens on thee when thou puttest thy foot out
of the threshold of home, come back to the four quiet walls, wherein
thine elders sit in peace, and seen with a sort of sad amaze how calm
and undisturbed all is there? That generation which has gone before
thee in the path of passion, the generation of thy parents (not so
many years, perchance, remote from thine own), how immovably far off,
in its still repose, it seems from thy turbulent youth. It has in it
a stillness as of a classic age, antique as the statues of the Greeks,
that tranquil monotony of routine into which those lives that preceded
thee have merged, the occupations that they have found sufficing for
their happiness by the fireside--in the arm-chair and corner
appropriated to each--how strangely they contrast thy own feverish
excitement! And they make room for thee, and bid thee welcome, and
then resettle to their hushed pursuits as if nothing had happened!