"Life, a Drama," was to have been published in 1849, and proof sheets with this name and date on the title page were lately in my hands: as far as page 168 the left hand page heading is "A Dramatic History," which is there crossed out and "Life, a Drama" thenceforward substituted. Borrow's corrections are worth the attention of anyone who cares for men and books. "Lavengro" now opens with the sentence: "On an evening of July, in the year 18--, at East D---, a beautiful little town in a certain district of East Anglia, I first saw the light." The proof shows that Borrow preferred "a certain district of East Anglia" to "The western division of Norfolk." Here the added shade of indefiniteness can hardly seem valuable to any but the author himself. In another place he prefers (chapter XIII.) the vague "one of the most glorious of Homer's rhapsodies" to "the enchantments of Canidia, the masterpiece of the prince of Roman poets." In the second chapter he describes how, near Pett, in Sussex, as a child less than three years old, he took up a viper without being injured or even resisted, amid the alarms of his mother and elder brother. After this description he comments: "It is my firm belief that certain individuals possess an inherent power, or fascination, over certain creatures, otherwise I should be unable to account for many feats which I have witnessed, and, indeed, borne a share in, connected with the taming of brutes and reptiles." This was in the proof preceded by a passage at first modified and then cut out, reading thus: "In some parts of the world and more particularly in India there are people who devote themselves to the pursuit and taming of serpents. Had I been born in those regions I perhaps should have been what is termed a snake charmer. That I had a genius for the profession, as probably all have who follow it, I gave decided proof of the above instance as in others which I shall have occasion subsequently to relate." This he cut out presumably because it was too "informing" and too little "wild and strange." A little later in the same chapter he describes how, before he was four years old, near Hythe, in Kent, he saw in a penthouse against an old village church, "skulls of the old Danes": "'Long ago' (said the sexton, with Borrow's aid), 'long ago they came pirating into these parts: and then there chanced a mighty shipwreck, for God was angry with them, and He sunk them; and their skulls, as they came ashore, were placed here as a memorial. There were many more when I was young, but now they are fast disappearing. Some of them must have belonged to strange fellows, madam. Only see that one; why, the two young gentry can scarcely lift it!' And, indeed, my brother and myself had entered the Golgotha, and commenced handling these grim relics of mortality. One enormous skull, lying in a corner, had fixed our attention, and we had drawn it forth. Spirit of eld, what a skull was yon!