These were Borrow's chief predecessors, but the list could be largely extended by making it include such names as those of Sir John Popham (1531-1607), Lord Chief-Justice of England; Sir William Sinclair, Lord Justice-General of Scotland from 1559; Mr. William Sympsoune, a great Scottish doctor of medicine towards the close of the sixteenth century; the Countess of Cassillis (1643), who did _not_ elope with Johnnie Faa; Richard Head (_c._ 1637-86), the author of _The English Rogue_; William Marsden (1754-1836), the Orientalist; John Wilson ("Christopher North," 1785-1854); the Rev. John Baird, minister of Yetholm 1829-61; G. P. R. James (1801-60), the novelist; and Sam Bough (1822-78), the landscape- painter. And after Borrow come many; the following are but a few of them:--John Phillip, R.A., Tom Taylor, the Rev. T. W. Norwood, George S. Phillips ("January Searle"), Charles Kingsley, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Mr. Charles Godfrey Leland ("Hans Breitmann"), Prof. Edward Henry Palmer, Sir Richard Burton, Bath C. Smart, M.D., of Manchester, Mr. H. T. Crofton, Major Whyte-Melville, Mr. Joseph Lucas, the Rev. R. N. Sanderson, Dr. D. Fearon Ranking, Mr. David MacRitchie, Mr. G. R. Sims, Mr. George Meredith, Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton, "F. W. Carew, M.D," and Mr. John Sampson. Thus, leaving aside all the foreign Romany Ryes, from the great engraver Jacques Callot to the present Polish novelist Sienkiewicz, we see that Borrow was not quite so _sui generis_ as he claimed for himself, and as others have often claimed for him. The meagreness of his knowledge of the Anglo-Gypsy dialect came out in his _Word-Book of the Romany_ (1874); there must have been over a dozen Englishmen who have known it far better than he. For his Spanish-Gypsy vocabulary in _The Zincali_ he certainly drew largely either on Richard Bright's _Travels through Lower Hungary_ or on Bright's Spanish authority, whatever that may have been. His knowledge of the strange history of the Gypsies was very elementary, of their manners almost more so, and of their folk-lore practically _nil_. And yet I would put George Borrow above every other writer on the Gypsies. In _Lavengro_ and, to a less degree, in its sequel, _The Romany Rye_, he communicates a subtle insight into Gypsydom that is totally wanting in the works--mainly philological--of Pott, Liebich, Paspati, Miklosich, and their confreres. Take his first meeting with Gypsies in the green lane near Norman Cross. There are flaws in it: he never would have spoken of the Gypsy beldame as "my mother there," nor could he possibly have guessed that the Romany _sap_ means "snake." Yet compare it with Maggie Tulliver's Gypsy adventure in _The Mill on the Floss_: how vivid and vigorous the one, how tame and commonplace the other. I am not going to dilate on the beauties of _Lavengro_; they seem to me sufficiently self-evident. But there is one point about the book that deserves some considering, its credibility as autobiography.