The two books _Lavengro_ and _Romany Rye_ are in reality one work, an unfinished autobiography, commenced upon a moderate and quite feasible scale; but after about a third of the ground is covered the scale is enormously increased, the narrative, encumbered by a vast amount of detail, makes less and less progress, and finally stops short, without any obvious, but rather a lame and impotent conclusion, at chapter xlvii. of the _Romany Rye_, or chapter cxlvii. of the work considered as one whole. The disproportion of the scale will be sufficiently indicated when we point out that the first twenty-two years of the author's life are treated pretty equally in fifty-seven chapters (i. to lvii.). The remaining ninety chapters (lviii. to cxlvii.) are wholly taken up by the incidents of less than four months, the four summer months of 1825. The first twenty-two years of the author's life are far from commonplace. The interest is well sustained, but is seldom intense,--at no point is the author's memory sufficiently teeming to cause an overflow; but with the conclusion of his sojourn in London, May 22nd, 1825, commences an itinerant life, the novelty of which graves every incident in the most vivid possible manner upon the writer's recollection. With his emancipation from town life a new graphic impulse is developed. Borrow seizes a new palette and sets to work with fresher colours upon a stupendous canvas. This canvas may be described as taking the form of a triptych. In the first compartment we have the first sensations of the roadfarer's life and some minor adventures: a visit to Stonehenge; the strange meeting with a returned convict, who turns out to be the old applewoman's son; the vignette of the hostelry, with the figures of the huge fat landlord and the handmaid Jenny; the visit to the stranger gentleman who protects himself by "touching" against evil chance; the interview with the Rev. Mr. Platitude, and the bargain struck with the travelling tinker, Jack Slingsby, whose stock-in-trade and profession the writer determines to adopt. Then comes the word-master's detection in his new sphere of life by the malignant gipsy godmother, Mrs. Herne, from whose remorseless attempt to poison him he is rescued by the kindly hearted Welsh preacher Peter Williams and his wife Winifred. In requital he manages to relieve the good man of a portion of the load of superstitious terror by which he is burdened. This section of the narrative is terminated by a graphic description of his renewal of associateship with his old friend Jasper Petulengro, the satisfaction he gives that worthy for having been the innocent cause of Mrs. Herne's death, and his decision to pitch his tent in the dingle. Chapters lviii. to lxxxii. are taken up with the foregoing incidents, which lead up to the central episode of the autobiography, the settlement in the dingle, with which the reader is here presented. This episode, forming the