Nor, apart from the word-book and Gypsy specimens, is the book a good example of Borrow's writing. The accounts of visits to Gypsies at Kirk Yetholm, Wandsworth, Pottery Lane (Notting Hill), and Friar's Mount (Shore-ditch), are interesting as much for what they tell us of Borrow's recreations in London as for anything else. The portrait of the "dark, mysterious, beautiful, terrible" Mrs. Cooper, the story of Clara Bosvil, the life of Ryley Bosvil--"a thorough Gypsy, versed in all the arts of the old race, had two wives, never went to church, and considered that when a man died he was cast into the earth, and there was an end of him"--and his death and burial ceremony, and some of Borrow's own opinions, for example, in favour of Pontius Pilate and George IV.--these are simple and vigorous in the old style. They show that with a sufficient impulse he could have written another book at least equal to "Wild Wales." But these uneven fragments were not worthy of the living man. They were the sort of thing that his friends might have been expected to gather up after he was dead. Scraps like this from "Wisdom of the Egyptians," are well enough: "'My father, why were worms made?' 'My son, that moles might live by eating them.' 'My father, why were moles made?' 'My son, that you and I might live by catching them.' 'My father, why were you and I made?' 'My son, that worms might live by eating us.'" Related to Borrow, and to a living Gypsy, by Borrow's pen, how much better! It is a book that can be browsed on again and again, but hardly ever without this thought. It was the result of ambition, and might have been equal to its predecessors, but competition destroyed the impulse of ambition and spoilt the book. "Romano Lavo-Lil" was his last book. For posthumous publication he left only "The Turkish Jester; or, The Pleasantries of Cogia Nasr Eddin Effendi, translated from the Turkish by G. B." (Ipswich, 1884). This was a string of the sayings and adventures of one Cogia, in this style: "One day Cogia Nasr Eddin Effendi said: 'O Mussulmen, give thanks to God Most High that He did not give the camel wings; for had He given them, they would have perched upon your houses and chimneys, and have caused them to tumble down upon your heads.'" This may have been the translation from the Turkish that Fitzgerald read in 1857 and could not admire. It is a diverting book and illustrates Borrow's taste. CHAPTER XXXIII--LAST YEARS