"'So I do, sir, when I am disposed to indulge; but I cannot often afford it--it is very expensive to dine on bread and cheese, especially when one is fond of cheese, as I am. My last bread and cheese dinner cost me fourteen pence. There is drink, sir; with bread and cheese one must drink porter, sir.' "'Then, sir, eat bread--bread alone. As good men as yourself have eaten bread alone; they have been glad to get it, sir. If with bread and cheese you must drink porter, sir, with bread alone you can, perhaps, drink water, sir.' "However, I got paid at last for my writings in the review, not, it is true, in the current coin of the realm, but in certain bills; there were two of them, one payable at twelve, and the other at eighteen months after date." The incident serves to diversify the narrative, and may be taken from his own London experiences, while the particular merriment of the rhyme is Borrow's; but it is not of the essence of the book, and fits only indifferently into the mysterious "Arabian Nights" London, the city of the gallant Ardry and the old apple-woman who called him "dear" and called Moll Flanders "blessed Mary Flanders." Sir Richard will not mysteriously re-appear, nor will Captain and Mrs. Borrow. I should say, in fact, that characters of this class have scarcely at all the power of motion. What is more, they take us not only a little way out of Borrow's world sometimes, but away from Borrow himself. Apart from these characters, the men and women of "Lavengro" and "The Romany Rye" are all in harmony with one another, with Borrow, and with Borrow's world. Jasper Petulengro and his wife, his sister Ursula, the gigantic Tawno Chikno, the witch Mrs. Herne, and the evil sprite Leonora, Thurtell, the fighting men, the Irish outlaw Jerry Grant, who was suspected of raising a storm by "something Irish and supernatural" to win a fight, Murtagh, that wicked innocent, the old apple-woman, Blazing Bosville, Isopel Berners, the jockey who drove one hundred and ten miles in eleven hours to see "the only friend he ever had in the world," John Thurtell, and say, "God Almighty bless you, Jack!" before the drop fell, the old gentleman who had learned "Sergeant Broughton's guard" and knocked out the bullying coachman, the Welsh preacher and his wife, the Arcadian old bee-keeper, the rat-catcher--all these and their companions are woven into one piece by the genius of their creator, Borrow. I can imagine them all greeting him together as the Gypsies did, and much as the jockey did afterwards: "Here the Gipsy gemman see, With his Roman jib and his rome and dree-- Rome and dree, rum and dry Rally round the Rommany Rye." He waves his wand and they disappear. He made them as Jerry Grant made the storm and beat Sergeant Bagg. In "Lavengro" he actually does raise such a storm, though Knapp affected to discover it in a newspaper of the period. Sampson and Martin are fighting at North Walsham, and a storm comes on: