[209] I am indebted to Mr. Edward Heron-Allen for the information that this is the original of the last verse but one in FitzGerald's first version of the _Rubáiyát_:
r 74. Ah Moon of my Delight, who knowest no wane, The Moon of Heaven is rising once again, How oft, hereafter rising, shall she look Through this same Garden after me--in vain.
[Persian] Since no one will guarantee thee a to-morrow, [Persian] Make thou happy now this lovesick heart; [Persian] Drink wine in the moonlight, O Moon, for the Moon [Persian] Shall seek us long and shall not find us.
[210] _The Works of Edward FitzGerald_, vol. ii. p. 74 (Macmillan).
[211] _Letters of Edward FitzGerald_, vol. ii. p. 15.
[212] _Ibid._, vol. iv. p. 85 (Macmillan).
[213] First published in _The Sphere_, October 31, 1903. The letter was written to Mr. James Hooper of Norwich.
[214] _Works of Edward FitzGerald_, vol. ii. p. 135 (Macmillan).
[215] Published by Dr. Knapp in _Borrow's Life_, vol. ii. p. 348 (Murray).
[216] We learn from FitzGerald that Borrow's eyesight gave way about this time, and his wife had to keep all books from him.
[217] There are two or three references to Borrow in _William Bodham Donne and his Friends_, edited by Catharine B. Johnson (Methuen). The most important of these is in a letter from Donne to Bernard Barton, dated from Bury St. Edmunds, September 12th, 1848:
'We have had a great man here, and I have been walking with him and aiding him to eat salmon and mutton and drink port--George Borrow; and what is more, we fell in with some gypsies and I heard the speech of Egypt, which sounded wonderously like a medley of broken Spanish and dog Latin. Borrow's face lighted by the red turf fire of the tent was worth looking at. He is ashy white now, but twenty years ago, when his hair was like a raven's wing, he must have been hard to discriminate from a born Bohemian. Borrow is best on the tramp, if you can walk four and a half miles per hour--as I can with ease and do by choice--and can walk fifteen of them at a stretch--which I can compass also--then he will talk Iliads of adventures even better than his printed ones. He cannot abide those amateur pedestrians who saunter, and in his chair he is given to groan and be contradictory. But on Newmarket Heath, in Rougham Woods, he is at home, and specially when he meets with a thorough vagabond like your present correspondent.'