Although Borrow always acknowledged Defoe as his master, he had, of course, qualities of his own that were as unlike Defoe’s qualities as they were unlike those of any other writer. And as this speciality of his has, so far as I know, never been discussed, I should have liked, had space permitted, to give interest to my remarks upon “Wild Wales” by a thorough comparison between Borrow’s imaginative works and Defoe’s “Robinson Crusoe.” This is impossible in the space at my command. And yet a few words upon the subject I cannot resist indulging in, for it relates to the very core and central light of Borrow’s genius; and I may now never have another opportunity of touching upon it. I remember a long talk I once had with him upon the method of Defoe as contrasted and compared with his own method in “Lavengro,” “The Romany Rye,” and “Wild Wales,” and the method of other writers who adopt the autobiographic form of fiction. He agreed with me that the most successful of all stories in the autobiographic form is “Robinson Crusoe,” although “Jane Eyre,” “David Copperfield” and “Great Expectations” among English novels, and “Gil Blas” and “Manon Lescaut” among French novels, are also autobiographic in form. It is of all forms the most difficult. But its advantages, if they can be secured without making too many artistic sacrifices, are enormous. Flexibility is, of course, the one quality it lacks, but, lacking that, it cannot secure the variety of picture and the breadth of movement which is the special strength of the historic form. The great pupils of Defoe—and by pupils I mean those writers who try to give as much commonplace ἀπάτη as possible to new and striking incidents—Edgar Poe, Wilkie Collins, Gaboriau and others, recognize the immense aid given to illusion by adopting the autobiographic form. The conversation upon this subject occurred in one of my rambles with Borrow and Dr. Gordon Hake in Richmond Park, when I had been pointing out to the former certain passages in “Robinson Crusoe” where Defoe adds richness and piquancy to the incidents by making the reader believe that these incidents will in the end have some deep influence, spiritual or physical, upon the narrator himself.