Note 81 — Chapter XIII

I quote this letter in another chapter. Mr. Herbert Jenkins thinks (Life, ch. v. p. 88) that Borrow was in Paris during the revolution of 1830, because of a picturesque reference to the war correspondents there in The Bible in Spain. But Borrow never hesitated to weave little touches of romance from extraneous writers into his narratives, and may have done so here. I have visited most of the principal capitals of the world, he says in The Bible in Spain. This we would call a palpable lie were not so much of The Bible in Spain sheer invention.