“Why,” said I, “this is the very language of Mr. Petulengro.”
“Tawno Chik—? I say, young fellow, I don’t like your way of speaking; no, nor your way of looking. You are mad, sir; you are mad; and what’s this? Why your hair is grey! You won’t do for the Honourable Company—they like red. I’m glad I didn’t give you the shilling. Good-day to you.”
“I shouldn’t wonder,” said I as I proceeded rapidly along a broad causeway, in the direction of the east, “if Mr. Petulengro and Tawno Chikno came originally from India. I think I’ll go there.”
[_End of Vol. II._, _and of the fifth and last of the Autobiography_.]
[Shortly after the publication of the first three volumes of the present work, the author received various letters from individuals, in which he was requested to state what might be the drift and tendency of _Lavengro_. The author cannot help thinking it somewhat extraordinary, that, after a preface in which he was particularly careful to tell the public what the book was, and the object with which it was written, any fresh information with respect to it should be required of him. As, however, all the letters which he has received have been written in a friendly spirit, he will now endeavour to be a little more explicit than on a former occasion.]
_Lavengro_ is the history up to a certain period of one of rather a peculiar mind and system of nerves, with an exterior shy and cold, under which lurk much curiosity, especially with regard to what is wild and extraordinary, a considerable quantity of energy and industry, and an unconquerable love of independence. It narrates his earliest dreams and feelings, dwells with minuteness on the ways, words and characters of his father, mother and brother, lingers on the occasional resting-places of his wandering half-military childhood, describes the gradual hardening of his bodily frame by robust exercises, his successive struggles, after his family and himself have settled down in a small local capital, to obtain knowledge of every kind, but more particularly philological lore; his visits to the tent of the Romany chal, and the parlour of the Anglo-German philosopher; the effect produced upon his character by his flinging himself into contact with people all widely differing from each other, but all extraordinary; his reluctance to settle down to the ordinary pursuits of life; his struggles after moral truth; his glimpses of God and the obscuration of the Divine Being, to his mind’s eye; and his being cast upon the world of London by the death of his father, at the age of nineteen. In the world within a world, the world of London, it shows him playing his part for some time as he best can, in the capacity of a writer for reviews and magazines, and describes what he saw and underwent whilst labouring in that capacity; it represents him, however, as never forgetting that he is the son of a brave but poor gentleman, and that if he is a hack author, he is likewise a scholar. It shows him doing no dishonourable jobs, and proves that if he occasionally associates with low characters, he does so chiefly to gratify the curiosity of a scholar. In his conversations with the apple-woman of London Bridge, the scholar is ever apparent, so again in his acquaintance with the man of the table; for the book is no raker up of the uncleanness of London, and if it gives what at first sight appears refuse, it invariably shows that a pearl of some kind, generally a philological one, is contained amongst it; it shows its hero always accompanied by his love of independence, scorning in the greatest poverty to receive favours from anybody, and describes him finally rescuing himself from peculiarly miserable circumstances by writing a book, an original book, within a week, even as Johnson is said to have written his _Rasselas_, and Beckford his _Vathek_, and tells how, leaving London, he betakes himself to the roads and fields.