The author of _Lavengro_, _the Scholar_, _the Gypsy_, _and the Priest_
has after his fitful hour come into his own, and there abides securely.
Borrow's books,--carelessly written, impatient, petulant, in parts
repellant,--have been found so full of the elixir of life, of the charm
of existence, of the glory of motion, so instinct with character, and
mood, and wayward fancy, that their very names are sounds of enchantment,
whilst the fleeting scenes they depict and the deeds they describe have
become the properties and the pastimes for all the years that are still
to be of a considerable fraction of the English-speaking race.

And yet I suppose it would be considered ridiculous in these fine days to
call Borrow a great artist. His fascination, his hold upon his reader,
is not the fascination or the hold of the lords of human smiles and
tears. They enthrall us; Borrow only bewitches. Isopel Berners, hastily
limned though she be, need fear comparison with no damsel that ever lent
sweetness to the stage, relish to rhyme, or life to novel. She can hold
up her head and take her own part amidst all the Rosalinds, Beatrices,
and Lucys that genius has created and memory can muster. But how she
came into existence puzzles us not a little. Was she summoned out of
nothingness by the creative fancy of Lavengro, or did he really first set
eyes upon her in the dingle whither she came with the Flaming Tinman,
whose look Lavengro did not like at all? Reality and romance, though
Borrow made them wear double harness, are not meant to be driven
together. It is hard to weep aright over Isopel Berners. The reader is
tortured by a sense of duty towards her. This distraction prevents our
giving ourselves away to Borrow. Perhaps after all he did meet the tall
girl in the dingle, in which case he was a fool for all his pains, losing
a gift the gods could not restore.

Quite apart from this particular doubt, the reader of Borrow feels that