It will be seen that the dates thus arrived at differ from those of Borrow's biographer. According to Professor Knapp, {0i} Borrow visits Greenwich Fair on May 12, 1825, writes 'Joseph Sell' May 13 to 18, and disposes of the MS. on the 20th; leaves London on the 22nd, reaches Amesbury on the 23rd; leaves Salisbury May 26, and meets author (man who touches) May 30. On May 31 he buys Slingsby's pony, is in dingle June 1, visited by Leonora on the 5th, and drugged by Mrs. Herne on the 8th. He passes Sunday, June 12, and the following week with Peter Williams and his wife, on the 21st he sees them to the border, turns back with Petulengro and settles in Mumpers' Dingle. His fight with the Flaming Tinman, Professor Knapp tells us, must have occurred about the end of June. The Professor's chronology, however, seems to me derived from a calculation--not in itself over-exact {0j}--based upon the erroneous idea that the fair took place on May 12. {0k} This is traceable to a statement in Thorpe {0l} that 'the fair lasted as a "hog" and pleasure fair, and was held on May 12 and October 11, till 1872'; but Thorpe here refers to a later period, and there is no doubt that in 1825 the Greenwich Fair was held on Whit-Monday, May 23. Not the least interesting corollary from this correction is the discovery that 'that extraordinary work,' the 'Life of Joseph Sell,' was never written. To me Borrow's insistent iteration of the bare statement that he wrote such a book is in itself suspicious, and it _is _not a little strange that a work for which 'during the last few months (before August, 1825) there has been a prodigious demand'{0m} should have entirely disappeared from the face of the earth. The name 'Sell,' which in some curious fashion seems to carry conviction to Professor Knapp's mind, {0n} seems to me a singularly inauspicious one, especially when coming from a writer who, like Pakomovna, was 'born not far from the sign of the gammon,' and who boasts in his appendix of having inserted deliberate misstatements in his books in order to deceive and mislead his critics. {0o} But why should Borrow pretend to have written this book? Chiefly, I think, to emphasize that independence of character of which he so frequently boasts, and which, after his marriage fifteen years later to a well-to-do widow, he is perhaps a little apt to antedate. {0p} However Borrow obtained the money which enabled him to leave London, it is plain that it was not by writing 'Joseph Sell' at the time and in the manner described. If he were in as desperate circumstances as he represents, he probably accepted Mr. Petulengro's offer, {0q} unless we are to suppose that he imitated the methods of Jerry Abershaw, Galloping Dick, or some of the 'fraternity of vagabonds' whose lives Borrow had chronicled in his 'Celebrated Trials.'