If it be true, as it is likely, that Borrow suffered in a more extended manner than he showed in his accounts of the horrors, the time of the suffering is still uncertain. Was it before his first escape from London, as he says in "Lavengro"? Was it during his second long stay in London or after his second escape? Or was it really not long before the actual narrative was written in the 'forties? There is some reason for thinking so. The most vivid description of "the horrors," and the account of the touching gentleman and of Peter Williams, together with a second reference to "the horrors" or the "evil one," all occur in a section of "Lavengro" equal to hardly more than a sixth of the whole. And further, when Borrow was writing "Wild Wales," or when he met the sickly young man at the "Castle Inn" of Caernarvon, he thought of himself as always having had "the health of an elephant." I should be inclined to conclude at least that when he was forty great mental suffering was still fresh in his mind, something worse than the heavy melancholy which returned now and then when he was past fifty. CHAPTER XVII--THE BIBLE SOCIETY: RUSSIA From the phrase, "He said in '32," which Borrow uses of himself in Chapter X. of the Appendix to "The Romany Rye," it was to be concluded that he was writing political articles in 1832; and Dr. Knapp was able to quote a manuscript of the time where he says that "there is no Radical who would not rejoice to see his native land invaded by the bitterest of her foreign enemies," etc., and also a letter, printed in the "Norfolk Chronicle," on August 18, 1832, on the origin of the word "Tory."