"Amain I did for the horse what I would neither do for earl or baron, doffed my hat; yes! I doffed my hat to the wondrous horse, the fast trotter, the best in mother England; and I, too, drew a deep ah! and repeated the words of the old fellows around. 'Such a horse as this we shall never see again, a pity that he is so old.'" But Dr. Knapp informs us that the well-known trotting stallion, Marshland Shales, was not offered for sale by auction until 1827, when he was twenty-five years old, and ten years after the date implied in "Lavengro." And what is more, Dr. Knapp concludes that Borrow must have been in Norwich in 1827, on the fair day, April 12. CHAPTER V--HIS PREDECESSORS I do not wish to make Borrow out a suffering innocent in the hands of that learned heavy-weight and wag, Dr. Knapp. Borrow was a writing man; he was sometimes a friend of jockeys, of Gypsies and of pugilists, but he was always a writing man; and the writer who is delighted to have his travels in Spain compared with the rogue romance, "Gil Blas," is no innocent. Photography, it must be remembered, was not invented. It was not in those days thought possible to get life on to the paper by copying it with ink. Words could not be the equivalents of acts. Life itself is fleeting, but words remain and are put to our account. Every action, it is true, is as old as man and never perishes without an heir. But so are words as old as man, and they are conservative and stern in their treatment of transitory life. Every action seems new and unique to the doer, but how rarely does it seem so when it is recorded in words, how rarely perhaps it is possible for it to seem so. A new form of literature cannot be invented to match the most grand or most lovely life. And fortunately; for if it could, one more proof of the ancient lineage of our life would have been lost. Borrow did not sacrifice the proof. He had read many books in many languages, and he had a strong taste. He liked "Gil Blas," which is a simple chain of various and surprising adventures. He liked the lives of criminals in the "Newgate Lives and Trials" (or rather "Celebrated Trials," 1825), which he compiled for a publisher in his youth.