Passing by Borrow's meetings with the Armenian merchant, we come to the time when, as he says, he found himself reduced to his last half-crown, and set about writing the "Life and Adventures of Joseph Sell, the Great Traveller," an entirely fictitious personage. This was completed within a week, towards the end of May, 1825, and the story brought the author a welcome twenty pounds. Such is the record. Dr. Knapp believes that there was such a story, probably part of a series, but Mr. Jenkins gives good reasons for thinking that "Joseph Sell" was not written till 1829, when Borrow would more probably be in want of money than just after payment for his "Trials" (in every sense trials) from Phillips. Anyway, on May 24th, 1825, Borrow left London. At starting he encountered Arden driving a cabriolet, who asked him whither he was bound. "I don't know," replied Borrow, "all I can say is that I am about to leave London." Being out of condition, he tired of walking, mounted a coach, "tipped the blunt" to the driver, and alighted at Amesbury, near Stonehenge, whence he began a ramble which became a perfect Iliad of strange happenings. His health improved, his spirits rose, as he tramped on, his journeyings varying from twenty to twenty-five miles a day. On the fifth day of his tramp he met at an inn the mysterious stranger who "touched," as Borrow himself did, against the evil eye; Dr. Johnson was an habitual toucher, and even Macaulay owned to a kindred feeling. While a guest of the "touching" gentleman, Borrow was introduced to the Rev. Mr. Platitude, a notable character in his literary portrait gallery--"he did not go to college a gentleman; he went an ass and returned a prig," writes Borrow fiercely. No biographer, so far as I know, has identified Platitude, but Mr. Donne evidently knew him, for he calls Borrow's account a "gross and unfair caricature." I believe I have identified "the rascally Unitarian minister who went over to the High Church," with the Rev. Theophilus Browne, Fellow and Tutor of Peterhouse, Cambridge, who quitted the Church for conscience sake, obtained an appointment at the York Unitarian College, and was minister at the Octagon Chapel in 1809, but was paid to resign the following year. He died at Bath in May, 1835. The historian of the Octagon applies Milton's line to him: "New Presbyter is but old Priest writ large."