In the same way, writing and literary ambition kept Borrow from travel. He stayed at home and he wrote "Lavengro," where, speaking of the rapid flow of time in the years of his youth, he says: "Since then it has flagged often enough; sometimes it has seemed to stand entirely still: and the reader may easily judge how it fares at the present, from the circumstance of my taking pen in hand, and endeavouring to write down the passages of my life--a last resource with most people." At one moment he got satisfaction from professing scorn of authorship, at another, speaking of Byron, he reflected: "Well, perhaps after all it was better to have been mighty Milton in his poverty and blindness--witty and ingenious Butler consigned to the tender mercies of bailiffs, and starving Otway; they might enjoy more real pleasure than this lordling; they must have been aware that the world would one day do them justice--fame after death is better than the top of fashion in life. They have left a fame behind them which shall never die, whilst this lordling--a time will come when he will be out of fashion and forgotten. And yet I don't know; didn't he write Childe Harold and that ode? Yes, he wrote Childe Harold and that ode. Then a time will scarcely come when he will be forgotten. Lords, squires, and cockneys may pass away, but a time will scarcely come when Childe Harold and that ode will be forgotten. He was a poet, after all--and he must have known it; a real poet, equal to--to--what a destiny!" It is said that in actual life Borrow refused to be introduced to a Russian scholar "simply because he moved in the literary world." {206} Yet again he made the glorious Gypsy say that he would rather be a book- writer than a fighting-man, because the book-writers "have so much to say for themselves even when dead and gone": "'When they are laid in the churchyard, it is their own fault if people a'n't talking of them. Who will know, after I am dead, or bitchadey pawdel, that I was once the beauty of the world, or that you, Jasper, were--' "'The best man in England of my inches. That's true, Tawno--however, here's our brother will perhaps let the world know something about us.'" I should think, too, that Borrow was both questioner and answerer in the conversation with the literary man who had the touching mania: "'With respect to your present troubles and anxieties, would it not be wise, seeing that authorship causes you so much trouble and anxiety, to give it up altogether?'