Lavengro by George Borrow (read me a book txt) 📕

and began to talk their flash language, which I did not understand,” says, or is made to say, Henry Simms, executed at Tyburn some seventy years before the time of which I am speaking. I have always looked upon this sentence as a masterpiece of the narrative style, it is so concise and yet so very clear. As I gazed on passages like this, and there were many nearly as good in the Newgate Lives, I often sighed that it was not my fortune to have to render these lives into German rather than the publisher’s philosophy⁠—his tale of an apple and pear.

Mine was an ill-regulated mind at this period. As I read over the lives of these robbers and pickpockets, strange doubts began to arise in my mind about virtue and crime. Years before, when quite a boy, as in one of the early chapters I have hinted, I had been a necessitarian; I had even written an essay on crime (I have it now before me, penned in a round, boyish hand), in which I attempted to prove that there is no such thing as crime or virtue, all our actions being the result of circumstances or necessity. These doubts were now again reviving in my mind; I could not for the life of me imagine how, taking all circumstances into consideration, these highwaymen, these pickpockets, should have been anything else than highwaymen and pickpockets; any more than how, taking all circumstances into consideration, Bishop Latimer (the reader is aware that I had read Fox’s Book of Martyrs) should have been anything else than Bishop Latimer. I had a very ill-regulated mind at that period.

My own peculiar ideas with respect to everything being a lying dream began also to revive. Sometimes at midnight, after having toiled for hours at my occupations, I would fling myself back on my chair, look about the poor apartment, dimly lighted by an unsnuffed candle, or upon the heaps of books and papers before me, and exclaim: “Do I exist? Do these things, which I think I see about me, exist, or do they not? Is not everything a dream⁠—a deceitful dream? Is not this apartment a dream⁠—the furniture a dream? The publisher a dream⁠—his philosophy a dream? Am I not myself a dream⁠—dreaming about translating a dream? I can’t see why all should not be a dream; what’s the use of the reality?” And then I would pinch myself, and snuff the burdened smoky light. “I can’t see, for the life of me, the use of all this; therefore, why should I think that it exists? If there was a chance, a probability of all this tending to anything, I might believe; but⁠—” and then I would stare and think, and after some time shake my head and return again to my occupations for an hour or two; and then I would perhaps shake, and shiver, and yawn, and look wistfully in the direction of my sleeping apartment; and then, but not wistfully, at the papers and books before me; and sometimes I would return to my papers and books; but oftener I would arise, and, after another yawn and shiver, take my light, and proceed to my sleeping chamber.

They say that light fare begets light dreams; my fare at that time was light enough, but I had anything but light dreams, for at that period I had all kind of strange and extravagant dreams, and amongst other things I dreamt that the whole world had taken to dog-fighting; and that I, myself, had taken to dog-fighting, and that in a vast circus I backed an English bulldog against the bloodhound of the Pope of Rome.

XXXVII

One morning I arose somewhat later that usual, having been occupied during the greater part of the night with my literary toil. On descending from my chamber into the sitting-room I found a person seated by the fire, whose glance was directed sideways to the table, on which were the usual preparations for my morning’s meal. Forthwith I gave a cry, and sprang forward to embrace the person; for the person by the fire, whose glance was directed to the table, was no one else than my brother.

“And how are things going on at home?” said I to my brother, after we had kissed and embraced. “How is my mother, and how is the dog?”

“My mother, thank God, is tolerably well,” said my brother, “but very much given to fits of crying. As for the dog, he is not so well; but we will talk more of these matters anon,” said my brother, again glancing at the breakfast things: “I am very hungry, as you may suppose, after having travelled all night.”

Thereupon I exerted myself to the best of my ability to perform the duties of hospitality, and I made my brother welcome⁠—I may say more than welcome; and, when the rage of my brother’s hunger was somewhat abated, we recommenced talking about the matters of our little family, and my brother told me much about my mother; he spoke of her fits of crying, but said that of late the said fits of crying had much diminished, and she appeared to be taking comfort; and if I am not much mistaken, my brother told me that my mother had of late the prayerbook frequently in her hand, and yet oftener the Bible.

We were silent for a time; at last I opened my mouth and mentioned the dog.

“The dog,” said my brother, “is, I am afraid, in a very poor way; ever since the death he has done nothing but pine and take on. A few months ago, you remember, he was as plump and fine as any dog in the town; but at present he is little more than skin and bone. Once we lost him for two days, and never expected to see him again, imagining that some mischance had befallen him; at length I found him⁠—where do