He began to write his autobiography to fulfil the expectations of Ford and his own public. It was not until 1844, exactly four years after his return from Spain, that he set out again on foreign travel. He made stops at Paris, Vienna, Constantinople, Venice, and Rome, but spent most of his time in Hungary and Roumania, visiting the Gypsies and compiling a "vocabulary of the Gypsy language as spoken in Hungary and Transylvania," which still exists in manuscript. He was seven months away altogether. Knapp possessed documents proving that Borrow was at this and that place, and the Gypsy vocabulary is in the British Museum, but little other record of these seven months remains. Knapp, indeed, takes it for granted that the historical conversation between Borrow and the Magyar in "The Romany Rye" was drawn from his experiences in Hungary and Transylvania in the year 1844; but that is absurd, as the chapter might have been written by a man born and bred in the reading room of the British Museum who had never met any but similar unfortunates. It is very likely that the journey was a failure, and if it had been a success, an account of it would have interrupted the progress of the autobiography, as Ford expected it to do. But the thing was too deliberate to succeed. Borrow's right instinct was to get work which would take him abroad; he failed, and so he travelled because travel offered him relief from his melancholy and unrest. Whether or no he "satisfied his roving demon for a time," as Mr. Walling puts it, is unknown. What is known is that he did not make this journey a subject of mystery or boasting, and that he stayed in England thereafter. He had tasted comfort and celebrity; he had a wife; he was an older man, looking weak in the eyes by the time he was fifty; and he had no motive for travel except discontent with staying at home. He tried to get away again on a mission to the Convent of St. Catherine, on Mount Sinai, to acquire manuscripts for the British Museum; but he failed, and the manuscripts went to St. Petersburg instead of Bloomsbury. In 1843 Henry Wyndham Phillips, R.A., painted his portrait. He was a restless sitter until the painter remarked: "I have always heard, Mr. Borrow, that the Persian is a very fine language; is it so?" "It is, Phillips; it is." "Perhaps you will not mind reciting me something in the Persian tongue?" said Phillips. "Dear me, no; certainly not." And then "Mr. Borrow's face lit up with the light that Phillips longed for, and he kept declaiming at the top of his voice, while the painter made the most of his opportunity." {205} According to the story, Phillips had the like success with Turkish and Armenian, and successfully stilled Borrow's desire "to get out into the fresh air and sunlight."