That George Borrow should have become an agent for the Bible Society, then in the third decade of its flourishing career, has naturally excited doubts as to his moral honesty.  The position was truly a contrast to an earlier ideal contained in the letter to his Norwich friend, Roger Kerrison, that we have already given, in which, with all the zest¹ of a Shelley, he declares that he intends to live in London, “write plays, poetry, etc., abuse religion, and get myself prosecuted².”  But that was in 1824, and Borrow had suffered great tribulation³ in the intervening eight years.  He had acquired many languages, wandered far and written much, all too little of which had found a publisher.  There was plenty of time for his religious outlook to have changed in the interval⁴, and in any case Borrow was no theologian.  The negative outlook of “Godless Billy Taylor,” and the positive outlook of certain Evangelical friends with whom he was now on visiting terms, were of small account compared with the imperative⁵ need of making a living—and then there was the passionate⁶ longing⁷ of his nature for a wider sphere—for travelling activity which should not be dependent alone upon the vagabond’s crust.  What matter if, as Harriet Martineau—most generous and also most malicious⁸ of women, with much kinship with Borrow in temperament—said, that his appearance before the public as a devout⁹ agent of the Bible Society excited a “burst of laughter from all who remembered the old Norwich days”; what matter if another “scribbling woman,” as Carlyle called such strident female writers as were in

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