"Lavengro" and "The Romany Rye" describe the author's early adventures and, at the same time, his later opinions and mature character. In some places he turns openly aside to express his feeling or opinion at the time of writing, as, for example, in his praise of the Orangemen, or, on the very first page, where he claims to spring from a family of gentlemen, though "not very wealthy," that the reader may see at once he is "not altogether of low and plebeian origin." But by far more important is the indirect self-revelation when he is recalling that other distant self, the child of three or of ten, the youth of twenty. Ford had asked Borrow for a book of his adventures and travels, something "thick and slab," to follow "The Bible in Spain." The result shows that Borrow had almost done with outward adventure. "The Bible in Spain" had an atmosphere composed at best of as much Spain as Borrow. But the autobiography is pure inward Borrow: except a few detachable incidents there is nothing in it which is not Borrow's creation, nothing which would have any value apart from his own treatment of it. A man might have used "The Bible in Spain" as a kind of guide to men and places in 1843, and it is possible he would not have been wholly disappointed. The autobiography does not depend on anything outside itself, but creates its own atmosphere and dwells in it without admitting that of the outer world--no: not even by references to events like the campaign of Waterloo or the funeral of Byron; and, as if conscious that this other atmosphere must be excluded, Borrow has hardly mentioned a name which could act upon the reader as a temporary check to the charm. When he does recall contemporary events, and speaks as a Briton to Britons, the rant is of a brave degree that is almost as much his own, and it makes more intense than ever the solitude and inwardness of the individual life going on side by side with war and with politics.