39
Scholars,
George
Borrow,
Gypsies,
Matthew
Poets,
Arnold,
and Priests:
and the romance
of the margins
George
M. Hyde
this strange disease of modern life
With its sick hurry, its divided aims
If
(Matthew Arnold, The Scholar-Gypsy)
It is a curious fact of literary
history
Matthew Arnold was contemplating
a poem that (whatever
has served ever since as a "touchstone"
The Scholar-Gypsy
and published
that at about the same time that
its intrinsic
of Victorian world-weariness,
merits)
entitled
in 1853, but conceived as early as 1848',
George Borrow, if we may believe the Advertisement
(1851), was likewise contemplating
he prefixes to Lavengro
that great autobiographical
work in which
gypsies play a crucial part as agents of another way of life and an
"alternative" vision of the nation and the universe . He tells us there that the
m/s of Lavengro dates from 1842/3,
of informants
and although he is not the most reliable
in such matters, especially
has never conclusively
where dates are concerned, his claim
been disproved.
We might of course just leave the
matter at that, with a note to the effect that Romanticism had (as Sir Angus
Fraser
tells us) "led to an interest
later phases"
invented
studies
it stimulated
in primitive
"the collection
only in 1846)"—including
like
Paul Bataillard's
that
in France
folk culture"
and that in "its
and imitation of folklore (a word
of the gypsies2.
and August
Seminal
Friedrich
Romany
Pott's
in
Germany3 paved the way leading from the Romantic Romany of legend and
fantasy
to the more realistic
Carmens
of Merimee4 and Bizet, and thence to
40
GeorgeM. Hyde
the serious ethnographic
studies of modern times.
It may not be altogether
from the establishment
from the margins
should
both of letters
of the world
simultaneously
sensibility
surprising,
then, that two eminent writers,
and of public administration,
of "professional,"
discover
the
gypsies,
the
consensus
when
succeeded
what
we could
call the
to the aristocratic
But it is nevertheless
Victorian
and gentry
a matter of some interest
century.
Their
drawn
other, now in altogether
sources
contrary
are no "real" gypsies
and objectives,
directions;
some sense "about" a seventeenth
now identifying
each
closely with the
Of course,
His poem, The Scholar-Gypsy,
century
and
in the seventeenth
back in wonder or dismay.
in Arnold.
who
of life" 5 with the aid
may be said to run now alongside
Romany as a folk hero, now standing
there
of the Regency.
should have shared (in
from the same source
Romany narratives
cultural
that these two writers,
charted their ambitious (but utterly different) "criticisms
of a Romany paradigm
in the
at precisely
bourgeois
culture
did not impinge on each other at all in their careers,
the matter of Romanies) some common literary
writing,
changes
of the age which gave them so much more prominence
the moment
and one
market-driven,
given
one
is in
scholar (or student) who became a
gypsy (there is a powerful sort of empathy in the topic) in order to preserve
his
sense
of authenticity,
undergraduate
Borrow's
life
sagas
seventeenth
and
which
perhaps
of gypsydom
century
was
also
almost
Protestant
threatened
by the
shows, but they are supplemented
the
"high"
certainly
writer
by
culture
"originate"
as Arnold's,
wantonness
as
of
of Oxford.
with the same
internal
by a multitude of experiences
evidence
on the road,
and much serious research.
Borrow's
autobiography,
the first
volume
of which
is subtitled
The
Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest, is about the outcast and largely unrecognized
writer
(as he was before the considerable
success
of The Bible in Spain in
1843)
who took up with the gypsies,
and learned
their language to quite a
Scholars,Gypsies,Poets,and Priests
high standard,
alternative
in order to study their ways and find for himself a tentative.
to the establishment
of letters
Arnold, the future Oxford Professor
extension
he turns
the
into a vehicle for serious
repressiveness
of
the loss of the youthful
him so often.
of the long vacation pastoral,
(though very diffuse) critical
Victorian
of his age. Arnold's
which had rejected
of Poetry, finds in gypsydom a Romantic
of the freedom and Wanderlust
materialism
41
institutional
poem is further
companionship
culture
and
which
comment on
the
growing
motivated by a sense of loss,
of a dead poet, Arthur
Hugh Clough,
whom Arnold felt had not fulfilled his potential and yet had done well to
"flee" the agonising compromises of Victorian public life . There is a deep
ambivalence
about Arnold's
He praises
the
characterised
thinks,
Glanvill's
who
imperatives
"fresh"
censuring
powers,
of Clough's
"undiverted
original protagonist;
"fluctuates,"
as
of professional
he
to the
figure,
melancholy
synthesis
classical
admits,
driven
Unsurprisingly,
of cultures,
perhaps,
Clough's death in 1861,
Arnold's
without"
that
by
the
contradictory
and personal life.
that of Goethe, the least
and romantic,
world
personality.
and it is now Arnold himself, he
Situated in a pivotal position in Arnold's
recognizable
"fluctuating"
which
text is another
anonymous but
"fluctuating"
of men, whose
could subsume
exotic and homely, was Arnold's
another
poem, entitled
finds a correlative
dead friend in a certain
Thyrsis,
past
and present,
unattainable
ideal.
a "monody"
for the "scholar-gypsy"
for
and for
"bright elm" tree, now felled, but living on
in the mind's eye. "That lonely tree" proves the lasting reality of "our GipsyScholar" who haunts these same slopes "outliving thee" and represents the
"fugitive and gracious light" praised in the poem which the Oxford editors
suggest also attaches to Joubert, whom Arnold was working on at the time. It
is perhaps a light which inevitably
The successful
extension
fades as life goes by.
author of The Bible in Spain finds among the gypsies
of a more robust
spirit
of protest
than Arnold
an
would have cared
42
GeorgeM. Hyde
for, strangely
Protestant
akin in its resolution
and independence
world view, which had very effectively
his best-seller.
gypsies
Writing
of his righteous
obscurantism,
him into close contact
whom he wrote
a remarkable
and puzzled his reviewers
even mysticism.
amount of ethnographical
ways and practices
secrets.
Borrow's familiarity
writers
philosopher,
and general
and linguistic
obscure
But both
begin,
academician,
of this exotic folk without
as
I have
said,
and Protestant
The Vanity of Dogmatising
thirteen
century
they did on Borrow, who found Glanvill's
eminent
Norwich
philosopher,
and piety, the curiosity
(he believed firmly that witchcraft
the scientific urge to explicate the irrational,
in 1844,
years later, when he
combination
the
century
divine Joseph Glanvi116.
have noted) the seventeenth
it via Hume (a favourite
at the time.
seventeenth
that God's gift of reason
Taylor,
the
giving away their
his mind and his certainty
as encountering
a substantial
to illuminate
and unusual
from the
Glanvill's mixture of skepticism
of superstition
act of empathy
with the Romany language may not have been as
and divine was still in his thoughts
Thyrsis.
designed
but still it was considerable,
and (as Allott and Super
published
The
with what looked like
antinomianism
research
Arnold 7 bought a copy of Glanvill's
scientist,
with the
book entitled
He builds upon this imaginative
self-sufficiency
great as he pretends,
of
gypsies in the way he does, in Lavengro, he lost some
followers,
with the gypsies'
propelled the narrative
this had brought
of Spain, about
Zincali. By introducing
to his own fiercely
will prevail,
of
his odd
existed) and
all left their mark on Arnold, as
work in Norwich Library.
as well
of his teacher and sponsor William
Germanist).
The Scholar - Gypsy
was
not
published
until 1853,
though (cf. Allott and Super) the idea for it was in
place
1848,
probably
by
(published
excerpts
rather
and
in 1853
Glanvill's
with the
earlier.
Arnold's
poem) is misleading
own
note
on
to the extent
text in such a way as to make the gypsy narrative
Glanvill
that
he
into a
cosy (if melancholy) anecdote, instead of what it really is, the popular
Scholars,Gypsies,Poets,and Priests
face of a complex Protestant
culture.
writer
who left a serious
imprint
43
on English
Up to a point we may agree with the Oxford editors when they say
rather disparagingly that the note Arnold supplied for The Scholar-Gypsy is
"pieced together from passages in Glanvill
," but we should not suppose that a
degree of arbitrariness
diminishes
Glanvill's
significance
Glanvill
indicates
the extent of his identification
the way he appropriates
for Arnold.
Indeed,
with him.
The Glanvill passages
skeptical
preoccupation
of Victorian
one
short
made integral to Arnold's
with "the vanity of dogmatising"
and the institutions
high culture that promote the dogma he detests.
section
transcribing
in question are actually
of the
scholar-gypsy
story
is
cited
Although only
by
Arnold,
in
it he does in fact pick up on Glanvill's larger intention, in telling
this tale, more comprehensively
than at first meets the eye. The gypsies
(according to Glanvill, cited by Arnold) "extravagant
are
people," which seems to
mean not that they are not bound by the codes of polite society (or spend too
freely) as that they "wander outside" (the root meaning of the word
"extravagant
," they are above all "vagrants"). Their most salient feature is
therefore
their
freedom,
but the Gypsies
themselves on account of the "insinuating
This odd phrase,
accept
subtilty"
the alien scholar
among
of "his carriage."
and the snake-y word "insinuating,"
might at first be
taken to mean that he made illicit use of his charm to enter their company,
but in fact it seems to mean that he is interested,
bye-ways
of thought and feeling, "insinuating"
and "carriage"
suggesting
Lavengro, sharing
66
sapengros,"
Arnold
the subtlest
implying a degree of secrecy,
reserve, or holding back. One thinks of Borrow, in
his snake-wisdom
handler" — the meaning
as they are, in the obscure
with his gypsies, and becoming a "word-
of "lavengro" — as they
of insinuating
about the need the scholar
arts8.
are
"snake-handlers,"
A basic
point
or
is made by
has to "slip into" alien codes and styles
(Borrow was very adept at this) if he wants to understand
what is going on.
44
GeorgeM. Hyde
It is also what a translator
modern
fascination
disguises
does. This is consonant
with roles and identities
with Arnold's
and the kinds
own quite
of masks
and
people wear in order to survive, or to utter unwelcome truths.
this, "scholars"
and "gypsies"
and "translators"
perhaps
In
have something
in
common, the subtlety of the serpent.
The reward for the intimacy
of the renegade
scholar's
Romanies is that the gypsies (again quoting Arnold's
to him their mystery."
dealings with the
paraphrase)
The copious Romantic tales of gypsydom
"discovered
had always
attributed to the travelling people magical powers (especially of prediction, or
"dukkerin")9
, based on the gypsies' special relationship with nature, to which
they are peculiarly
and respect.
Many authentic
above all, whether
weather
exposed, and whose ways they are obliged to understand
accounts
it is a matter
of Romanies stress
of appraising
a horse
this characteristic
or forecasting
or leaving, or reading, a trail of signs in the hedgerows
passim). The gypsy lore or wisdom was rarely
as to call it "a traditional
even scientific,
cultivating
(cf. Borrow,
shared with gorgiosm, or non-
gypsies, which only served to make it all the more fascinating
and even confirmed its "supernatural"
the
to the latter,
status in their eyes. Arnold goes so far
kind of learning," which lends it a quasi-academic,
dignity, and gives an indication
of his own hidden agenda in
gypsydom, which seems to be the discovery
among wise but misjudged outsiders
of a kind of solidarity
who bear a secret wisdom, "the tradition"
in its pure form.
The
word
suggesting
"learning"
is carefully
silent depth, and continuity
chosen
of tradition,
does to a sense of the gypsies' place in British
an issue (the making of Britishness)
keenest
interest
for its cultural
resonance,
thus contributing
cultural
life, broadly
which we know both writers
in. Borrow, too, communicates
chains
of command and communication
shared
archaic
culture, and this secrecy,
as it
defined,
took the
a vivid sense of the hidden
in gypsy
tribes",
deriving
from a
while lying at the root of the real
Scholars,Gypsies,Poets,and Priests
reason
why uncanny
them, demands
thimble
kinds
serious
in Borrow's
of intuited
study.
Gypsies
pointed,
(and very lucrative)
knowledge
seem to be available
are rather
like the peas under the
quasi-allegorical
Romany fairground
move around in secret, appearing
45
narrative
sideshow,
to
of this traditional
of thimble-rigging12.
now here, now somewhere
They
else, and if an
officer of the law shows up the whole seductive sideshow is whisked away as
if by magic, or by the intervention
of the gods.
Glanvill, then, as I have suggested, judging by internal
larger part in both Arnold's
inspiration
Borrow
provided
and Borrow's
by the famous
makes no explicit
reference
Royal Society, and master
would certainly
century
thinking and writing than just the
gypsy
anecdote
to Glanvill
of Restoration
writing
and
religion, being thence transmitted
sturdy
Protestant
teaching,
sense
shared.
by Hume13,
via the route of the eighteenth
to Borrow.
good
they
much admired
particularly
Glanvill's
oddities and byways of God's creation often strikes
Glanvill's
which
at all; but this pillar of the
prose,
have reached William Taylor
philosopher's
evidence, played a
critique
fascination
a Borrovian
strongly
religion," and his touching awe (so like Borrow's)
his
tinged
of
with the
note, as does
with
"natural
at the wonder of the natural
world and the mystery of God's ways and the signs he gives us. It was almost
certainly
William Taylor,
Borrow,
regarded
interest
in languages,
Glanvill's
him as his star pupil, and encouraged
who directed
Vanity of Dogmatising
so freely, thereby
supplying
which shaped Borrow's
Above
who made such a deep impression
Borrow's
attention
in the Norwich Library
another
on the young
most actively
his
to the volume
of
which Borrow used
key element of the Protestant
life and writings.
all, Glanvill
represented
a firm advocacy
method, as his title suggests, learning through experience,
of the experimental
a stance dear to the
hearts of the Royal Society at the time of the Society's foundation,
a pursuit
tradition
of the byways
of sensory
and cognitive
experience
advocating
in order
to
46
GeorgeM. Hyde
discover
their
Aristotle,
hidden
texts.
the "schoolmen,"
schoolmen
especially),
Glanvill
knowledge.
and was quite
through
the interaction
that
landscapes
between the contingencies
guise of
for oneself,
was not essentially
altogether
through
which sometimes
narratives
of
could be properly
at first hand and experienced
The "plot" of Glanvill's
process we call experience.
the Maker.
nothing
in the course of his journey
of allegorized
Progress.
that
his dislike
(in their
of God was (like Borrow's)
experientially
a series
Pilgrim's
sure
was no valid knowledge
His knowledge
and unfolded
about
dogma, and Roman Catholics
known that had not been observed
and that there
is very explicit
personal
personal,
life and
remind
us of
is always located in
of the world and the moral learning
And the world is full of "signs" of the presence
Reading these signs is an activity
of
that links the man of letters
with the gypsies and makes both these categories of humanity "extravagant."
"Dogmatising" was a word that Glanvill used for all a priori general
truth,
and it was "vain" because
journey
primarily
journey
Glanvill's
existential
quest or
on which we must test the evidence of our senses (with the help of
the Humean
process,
life is a permanent
faculties
though
of imagination
Glanvill
as scientific,
and memory)"
would certainly
is at the same time religious,
is in some sense a pilgrimage.
natural
descriptions,
Society pragmatism
in Borrow's
stage.
Newton's odd combination
shines through
him from his admirer
gypsies, and communicated
a keen belief in witchcraft,
of scientific
stringency
of
and so the scientific
We know, too, that in the midst of Glanvill's
there lurked
This
it to be thought
A kind of reverence
and this distinguishes
Hume. This quality is reproduced
them to non-gypsies.
have wished
at every
by
Royal
reminiscent
and superstition.
of
But even
that may be seen as part of his effort to find a comprehensive
representation
of the world
The irrational
of experience,
irrational
as well as rational.
(magic) was so powerful that it demanded
Glanvill
that one might call psychological,
interpretation.
yet in reading
There is nothing in
him one feels the
Scholars,Gypsies,Poets,and Priests
47
powerful presence of an unconscious.
To give an example of what I take to be the Glanvill spirit in Borrow,
and what looks like a deep affinity linking the two men, we might adduce the
part of Chapter
skirts
Twenty-Five
of Lavengro where the eighteen-year-old
(as he often does) the depression
("the horrors").
himself
Telling
skeptically
translation,"
he equates
what
he says.
comprehensive
himself
skepticism.
their
means:
Berkeley
"All this
is mere
and Spinoza
are
him low
he then
asks
learning
and
voicing
a more
But George has not read either of them, so when
philosophy
phantom," he presents
brought
how much he has learned,
it all
Maybe
which frequently
George
with the belief that
this view (the deceitfulness
"all is a lie; a deceitful
of things) as one for which
he has scant respect; these are
"old cries; they come naturally from the mouths of those , who, casting aside
that choicest shield against madness, simplicity, would fain be as wise as
God, and can only know that they are naked. This doubting in the "universal
all" is almost coeval with the human race: wisdom, so called, was early sought
after. All is a lie—a deceitful phantom—was said when the world was yet
young; its surface, save a scanty portion, yet untrodden by human foot, and
when the great tortoise yet crawled about." (Lavengro 160)
This leads with characteristic
Borrovian
naturalness
to "One day, whilst I
bent my way to the heath of which I have spoken on a former occasion...
,"
the prologue to a new encounter with God's world.
The sentiment
degree
of
against
ignorance,
Aristoteleanism
is
Spinoza here, although it may be based on a fair
wholly
and of philosophy
comparable
to
Glanvill's
itself in its pure ratiocinative
censure
of
form. "Most
of our Rarities have been found out by casual emergency, and have been the
works
of Time, and Chance,
Scientifica
altogether
132).
This
compatible
sense
rather
than of Philosophy,"
of the revelatory
with the scientific
power
spirit, according
he says (Scepsis
of contingency
is
to Glanvill, which
48
GeorgeM. Hyde
must operate
upon
mental
and affective
phenomena—human
behaviour—as
well as upon the physical
world.
He is (like Borrow) especially
how it is that "the spirit
of one man hath sometimes a power over that of
another" (ibid. 146). There are "immaterial
intercourses
interested
between our spirits"
and some "secret influences may be advanc'd to so strange an operation
Imagination
of one upon another"
these kinds of obscure, intuitive
(ibid. 147).
relationships
receiving secret messages as if by empathetic
These subtle and sinuous connections
open to enquiry
like all natural
in
in the
Gypsies seem to demonstrate
one with another,
sending and
powers.
between things are, or should be,
phenomena.
"According
to the notion of the
Dogmatist," he says, "we know nothing, except we know all things; and he that
pretends
to Science affects
contingency,
or chance discovery,
experimental
method,
lending it consistency.
vivid, apparently
Nature
an Omnipotence."
But this omits the reality
which, paradoxically,
as well as the presence
Glanvill's
verging
is a book written
in creation
sense of the natural
on animism,
is what validates
of
the
of its creator,
world is exceptionally
like Borrow's,
but this
is because
by a divine hand, to be read always anew as the
senses permit
All our Science comes in at our Senses.... Thus objects have a different
Appearance when the eye is violently any way distorted, from that they have,
when our Organs are in their proper site and figure, and some extraordinary
alteration in the Brain duplicates that which is but a single object to our
undistemper'd Sentient. Thus, that's of one colour to us standing in one place
which hath a contrary aspect in another as in those versatile representations
in the neck of a Dove, and folds of Scarlet... (161) 15
Here, perhaps,
Lavengro),
experimental
lies the deepest
to verify
root of George's
the "real" existence
"touching" (in
of an object in the world
method by means of a repeated,
testing, followed by a renewed, reformulated
obsessive
perhaps
confirmation
even a rather
by an
guilty,
of God's plan as it
Scholars,Gypsies,Poets,and Priests
is, after all, revealed to all men in the rich diversity
This kind of scepticism
Restoration
or empiricism
was "Pyrrhonism")16,
curiously
49
of things.
(a favourite
term for it in the
linked to faith, is bound to cast
doubt not only upon certain kinds of philosophical method, but also upon the
"enlightening" functions of education and the culture which it represents and
which reproduces
it. Arnold,
recognized everywhere
of course,
(but especially
reference
of Anglo-Saxon
contained
elements from non-Anglo-Saxon
should) work against the excessive
national
culture and safeguard
by maintaining
indigenous,
he wished
to create a larger
sources
pragmatism
(Arnold's
that played
national
the range of
culture
which
of the Anglo-Saxon part of the
Only in this way, and
word) of epic, both classical
could we combat the overpowering
Victorianism'
to extend
which might (and perhaps
fancy and imagination.
the "nobility"
but
in his poetry) that the world of feeling
may not coincide with it. Like Borrow,
culture
stood by the light of reason,
"machinery"
such a key role in Arnold's
and
of middle-class
paranoid
theory
of
culture.
That
is why Glanvill's
famous anecdote, which so much took Arnold's
fancy, is much more than a passing
whim. The young man who fled to the
gypsies was escaping from the centre to the margins, from the tyranny of a
"dogmatising" kind of enlightenment to the light of experience
, to a kind of
experimental
method wherein
was, in your own person.
the illusion")
approached
you could "touch" reality
Just as Arnold shunned "dogma"'
in the name
with reverence
what he calls "the prejudices
of the truth,
or reality,
yet in an experimental
and opiniative
the
which
generous
Freedom"
was
("philosophy
of poetry
(is)
(which he
spirit), so Glanvill attacks
of education and customary
of "striking at the root of Pedantry
"more
for what it "really"
belief" in the name
Assurance"
absolutely
for the sake of
central
to
his
Protestantism.
In Arnold's
poem, the nature
of the critique
of Victorian
values is made
50
George
M. Hyde
clear and the author
declares himself.
touchstones,
personal,
of The Study of Poetry (written
Here is the skepticism
and in Arnold's
historical,
real, arrived
that took shape in the theory of the
differentiation
and real, the greatest
at by dint of arduous
teaching and learning
of three
(and hardest
personal
must be tested.
much later , in 1880)
kinds
of judgment ,
to attain) of which is
experience , against
Evidently
which all
much more is at stake here
than just a Romantic bid for freedom, or a fantasy of escape , or the rejection
of authority
existential
which
anxiety
is inevitably
which pervades
enacted
by every
Borrow's
new generation . The
work as it pervades
Arnold's
strikes very deep into the roots of modern culture at their growth point in the
divided
allegiances
of Victorianism
to material
and spiritual
values . It was
Arnold, not Borrow, who (for good reason) became the forerunner
literary
criticism,
and the theorist
of modern humanist
of modern
education . Yet when
we read Borrow again alongside him, we may find that the man whom Robert
Bridges
called "Mr. Kidglove Cocksure ," by virtue
and spiritual
crucial
refinement,
to the great
of his intellectual
has lost touch with a broader
English
Protestant
spirit
of enquiry , so
tradition . This is the spirit
links Bunyan and Defoe and Blake with Lawrence,
poise,
which
and runs through Borrow
into the modern age.
Notes
1
My references are to the text in Miriam Allott and Robert H . Super
Arnold (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1986 . The Oxford Standard Authors) 208-15
2 Cf. Michael Collie and Sir Angus Fraser in their George Borrow: A
Study (London: St. Paul's Bibliographies , 1984), where citations from
(eds.), Matthew
and 545-47.
Bibliographical
letters to John
Murray of 1842 and 1843 refer to both Lavengro and gypsies , though suggesting that
little enough of his text has been written as yet .
3 Cf. Sir Angus Fraser, The Gypsies (Oxford: Blackwell , 1997) 197.
4
5
Prosper
Merimee, Carmen (1845).
In a much-quoted phrase from The Function of Criticism
Arnold says that poetry is a "criticism of life ."
at the Present
Time (1864)
Scholars, Gypsies, Poets, and Priests
6
Joseph Glanvill
(1636-1680)
was (like Borrow)
a fascinating
compendium
51
of contra-
dictions which complemented and even ,illuminated one another. Britannica notes that he
"defended the Royal Society's experimental
method as religious in nature because it
revealed
the workings
appealed
teacher
of God" (CD-rom, 1999).
to Hume, who was an influential
and mentor William Taylor.
7
8
figure
Glanvill's
provided ample matter for the critical
his work.
His scepticism
enquiry
and anti-authoritarianism
in the thinking
interest
of George Borrow's
in witchcraft
into the irrational
and the miraculous
which runs through all
Cf. Matthew Arnold (Oxford Standard Authors) 545.
George Borrow, in Lavengro, explains that the Romany ending "engro" means "maker"
or "master," as in the proper name "Petulengro,"
the "petulo" or horse-shoe).
so "Lavengro" (word-master)
9 The glossary of Gypsy
"Sapengro"
which means (literally)
was a proper
"Smith" (maker of
Gypsy designation
was derived naturally from it.
words appended to Lavengro
(Knapp
(snake-master),
ed. 568)
gives
the
following for "dukkerin": "The in is Eng. ing, any one's fortune, or fortunes, fate, fortunetelling." The word is clearly cognate with the Russian word "duch," "mind, spirit, ghost,
or spectre."
10
The word "gorgio" (Romany "gorjo," also found in the form "gadjo," and in other
variant spellings) basically means "person of non-Romany origins," but the Anglicised
spelling "gorgio" suggest the English word "gorgeous," i.e. rich and powerful.
11 Cf. my analysis of Lavengro elsewhere. The Romany Rye contains some comments on
the secret signs, or "patterans,"
left in hedgerows,
which only a Romany could decode. Cf.
p.391 of the Knapp edition, where the word "patteran"
trail."
is glossed as "leaf of a tree, Gypsy
12
Cf. Lavengro 294, where a clear connection is established between "cant" (the special
secret language of the underworld, thieves' jargon) and Romany. This thimble-rigger, who
is not a gypsy, knows that the jargon
of thimble-rigging
is full of Romany, though
he
professes (rather surprisingly) not to know why.
There have been numerous studies of the relationship between Hume and Glanvill. One
of the most interesting is Richard H. Popkin's Joseph Glanvill: A Precursor of David
Hume in the Journal of the History of Ideas XIV (1953), 292-303.55.
Glanvill's belief
13
that "a science of the laws of regularities
rather than of necessary
connections is
adequate for understanding
Nature" falls short of Hume's analysis of causality, which
dispenses
necessary.
"empirical
altogether
with the "ground" of knowledge which Glanvill still considers
Popkin concludes that it is hard to discover Glanvill's influence on the British
tradition
," but he does not consider literary influences, which surely include
Swift as well as Borrow and Arnold.
14 "The knowledge we have comes from our Senses, and the Dogmatist can go no higher
for the original of his certainty." (Joseph Glanvill, cited by Popkin 295.)
15 It goes without saying that much of Glanvill's distinction consists in his refusal
dissociate poetry and prose, analysis and belief.
to
16
to
Pyrrhonism,
a philosophy
attributed
to (among others) John Dryden, was appropriate
52
George
M. Hyde
a historical moment which had witnessed such a violent clash of ideologies and sought
reconciliation.
1"yrrho (c.365-c.275 BC) believed that we must suspend judgment because
we can never find certainty.
17
"Machinery"
is a powerful
paranoid
construct
in Arnold's
Anarchy (1867). He uses the term to mean not so much
bureaucratic machinery (displacing personal knowledge) .
18
Literature
and Dogma (1873)
which "poetry"
far behind.
Works
is promoted
continues
to a truth-telling
Arnold's
extended
seminal
industrial
Culture
and
machinery
as
critique
of religion , in
role which leaves philosophy and theology
Cited
Arnold, Matthew. Culture and Anarchy. 1869. The Complete Prose Works of Matthew
Arnold. Ed. Robert H. Super. Vol. 5. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P . 1960-77.
. Literature and Dogma. 1873. The Complete Prose
Robert H. Super. Vol. 6. Dissent and Dogma . 139-407.
. The Scholar-Gypsy.
Arnold . Ed.
Ed . Miriam Allott and Robert H. Super.
Oxford: Oxford UP, 1986. (The Oxford Standard Authors)
Borrow, George. Lavengro. Ed. W. I. Knapp. London; John Murray , 1914.
. The Zincali: or, an account of the gypsies of Spain . With an original collection of
their songs and poetry, and a copious dictionary of their language . London: John Murray.
1841.
Collie, Michael and Sir Angus Fraser. George Borrow: A Bibliographical Study . London: St.
Paul's Bibliographies, 1997.
Fraser,
Matthew
Works of Matthew
Arnold.
Sir Angus.
Glanvill, Jospeh.
text of 1665).
The Gypsies. Oxford: Blackwell, 1997 .
Scepsis Scientifica. Hildersheim: Georg Olms Verlag,
Popkin, Richard H. "Joseph Glanvill: A Precurser
Ideas 14 (1953): 292-303.
1985
of David Hume ." Journal
(reprint
of the
of the History
of