"'Were you an author yourself,' replied my host, 'you would not talk in this manner; once an author, ever an author--besides, what could I do? return to my former state of vegetation? no, much as I endure, I do not wish that; besides, every now and then my reason tells me that these troubles and anxieties of mine are utterly without foundation; that whatever I write is the legitimate growth of my own mind, and that it is the height of folly to afflict myself at any chance resemblance between my own thoughts and those of other writers, such resemblance being inevitable from the fact of our common human origin. . . ." Knapp gives at length a story showing what an author Borrow was, and how little his travels had sweetened him. He had long promised to review Ford's "Handbook for Spain," when it should appear. In 1845 he wrote an article and sent it in to the "Quarterly" as a review of the Handbook. It had nothing to do with the book and very little to do with the subject of the book, and Lockhart, the "Quarterly" editor, suggested turning it into a review by a few interpolations and extracts. Borrow would not have the article touched. Both Lockhart and Ford advised him to send it to "Fraser's" or another magazine where it was certain to be welcomed as a Spanish essay by the author of "The Bible in Spain." But no: and the article was never printed anywhere. Yet Borrow was not settling down to authorship pure and simple. He flew into a passion because a new railway line, in 1846, ran through his estate. He flew into a passion, did nothing, and remained on his estates until 1853, when he and his family went into lodgings at Yarmouth. I have not discovered how much he profited by the intrusion of the railway, except when he pilloried the contractor, his neighbour, Mr. Peto, as Flamson, in the Appendix to "The Romany Rye." Then he tried again to be put on the Commission of the Peace, with no success. He probably spent much of his time in being either suspicious, or ambitious, or indignant. In 1847, for example, he suspected his friend Dr. Bowring--his "only friend" in 1842--of using his work to get for himself the consulship at Canton, which he was professing to obtain for Borrow. The result was the foaming abuse of "The Romany Rye," where Bowring is the old Radical. The affair of the Sinai manuscripts followed close on this. All that he saw of foreign lands was at the Exhibition of 1851, where he frequently accosted foreigners in their own tongue, so that it began to be whispered about that he was "uncanny": he excited so much remark that his daughter thought it better to drag him away.