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possessed only by the masters, humble heart, was Defoe. If a writer was ever made by a single book, Borrow was made by Moll Flanders.' He never approached the artistic perfection of his chosen model. His art, indeed, was always the art of hazard. But 'Moll Flanders' was the mark which he set up for himself, and if he did not attain so high, that is because the mark is beyond the reach of all save the greatest.

of setting a scene before you in a couple of lines. You may find examples of this faculty wherever you chance to open his books. The following passage I will show what we mean as well as another: "The kitchen of the public-house was a large one," thus opens a chapter of 'Lavengro'-"and many people were drinking in it; there was a confused hubbub of voices." Who that has gone thus far can forbear to read on? And who that reads on will suffer disappointment? Are not the landlord, who hit Tom of Hopton in the mark, and the Radical who praised America, and the man in black, worth knowing? This direct style, This direct style, the style of a man of action, was Borrow's by right of inheritance, but it was cultivated by a series of happy chances. No writer ever had a better stroke of luck than fell to Borrow when he was bidden to edit a collection of Celebrated Trials. To many a man the task would have been a waste of force and time. It was precisely the discipline that Borrow wanted. He found in the 'Life of Harry Simms,' for instance, the true example of plain, direct narrative. But he followed other models also. He was not without an epic touch here and there. "He strikes his foe on the forehead, and the report of the blow is like the sound of the hammer against the rock." There is an echo of Homeric simplicity. But the master whom he rightly called his own, and reverenced with a

In one sense no writer was ever less a man of letters than Borrow. He had no love of literature. Books were far further from his heart than men and the free air of heaven. His wanton attack upon Sir Walter Scott proves that he had but a rudimentary understanding of fiction. He detested the poetry of Wordsworth, was ignorant of Keats, and called Tennyson "a duncie man.' These facts are recorded not in praise or blame, but as essential clues to the estimating of Borrow's talent and character. Pedantry apart, he was a man of action, who stumbled upon writing as by accident, and achieved by the very freshness of his hand and mind a separate triumph of his own. The happiest years of his life were those in which he was forcing the Bible upon unwilling Spain. He recognised the combat in every step that he took, in every device of of sale that he invented. There, in truth, was a fair chance for one who loved battle like his soul. When he returned home there was no

thing for him to do but to quarrel with his neighbours, his critics, his friends, and his foes, and he did this with a thoroughness which must have satisfied even his martial spirit. He was never a very dark mystery to the world, for the truth of 'Lavengro' and 'Romany Rye' is unquestioned and unquestionable. We do not suppose that Borrow said and did all that he records in these two fragments of autobiography. That he could

have said and done it all, had he been set in these circumstances, there is no doubt, and his books, we are sure, are perfectly true in spirit, if not in fact. But it is well that his own portrait should be compared with the portrait of an impartial painter, and Mr Jenkins' workmanlike 'Life will be found a far more valuable appendix to his works than that offered by himself in 'The Romany Rye.'

THE MYSTERY OF THE TOBERMORY GALLEON REVEALED.

BY ANDREW LANG.

FEW readers need a description of the Sound of Mull, and few tourists, as their steamer passes Duart, and Mingarry, and Ardtornish castles

"Each on its own dark cape reclined,

And listening to its own wild wind,"

think of the strange tragedies which these crumbling keeps have witnessed. To my fancy the Sound is peopled with ghosts of galleys flying through tempest, or clashing in battle, or crowding into the strait entrance of Loch Aline at the fatal call of the Lord of the Isles. "They went to the wars but they always fell." Galleys of Clan Gilzean, Clan Donald, Clan Diarmaid! the Sound has been your Salamis, and nowhere should wrecks and bones and weapons of dead men lie thicker than in that still and quiet harbour to which a victory of Angus Og of the Isles gave the name of "Bloody Bay."

As readers of the newspapers know, within a long stone's cast of Tobermory pier, and even closer to the northern horn of the harbour, sleep the soldiers and crew of a Spanish galleon, a lost ship of the Armada,—

were brought to upper air in 1906 to 1910 by gentlemen adventurers styled "The Pieces of Eight Company." But they could not find "the King's treasure," with which the galleon is naturally endowed by legends based on the hopes of kings and chiefs, princes, earls, and the one Marquis of Argyll, in times long enough agone. A new company has been formed, to succeed, if it can, where so many bold adventurers have failed.

A most lively and readable pamphlet, well illustrated, written by Colonel Foss for "The Tobermory Galleon Salvage," came lately into my hands. It is not a stockjobbing affair, it appeals to the love of romance, to curiosity concerning an old secret of the sea, to the hope of finding works of Renaissance art,-and there is the off-chance of treasure. Treasure or no treasure, I owe to Colonel Foss the joys of the chase, the search for the secret of that galleon,-for a galleon it is, through the English, Scottish, French, Irish, and Spanish papers on the Armada. No treasure-hunter by sea or land has had more exciting moments than myself, more

"Out of sight she passed, out of hear- alternations of hope and deing,"

like Odysseus the Wanderer. She was rediscovered, and many strange and pleasing relics of "that great fleet invincible "

spair. Luckier than they who seek for diamonds and rubies, gold and plate, I have found what I wanted, THE SECRET OF THE GALLEON. The reader, if

he will, may now share at ease in what to me were the toils of "the longest and sorest chase." I must give my references, "as a proof of bona fides." Some papers were deciphered by the skill of Miss E. M. Thompson from the charred fragments of Sir Robert Cotton's manuscripts.

To begin with,-What is the name of the galleon? Here I am constrained to differ in opinion from the Duke of Argyll, the owner of the vessel and of most important manuscripts; and from Colonel Foss, who has also studied the subject, and has most kindly supplied me with references to old printed books.

Perhaps the earliest printed English reference to the nationality of the ship is that given by Archbishop Spottiswoode, writ ing about 1636.1 He speaks of "a ship of Florence burned by certain Highlanders." This is vague indeed. Tuscany had more than one ship in the Armada. On August 2 (Spanish style, which I shall follow), "The Florentine galleon San Medel greatly distinguished herself," says Pedro Coco Calderon (chief accountant on the Armada, and a most entertaining character), writing at Havre de Grâce on September 24.2 But it is not the San Medel, it is another Tuscan ship, the Florencia, or "the Great Galleon of the Duke of Tuscany,"

that is recognised by the Duke of Argyll and by Colonel Foss as the ship of Tobermory Bay. At Lisbon, where the Armada dallied long, the Florencia (961 tons, 52 guns, 400 soldiers) was (May 9) in the squadron of the Commander-General, the Duke of Medina Sidonia. On July 13, at Corunna, she was with the Levantine or Italian squadron, and had but 294 soldiers.3 The Duke of Medina Sidonia, commander-in-chief, reports the gallantry of the Florencia on August 1, and on August 2 she and the San Juan Bautista (a vessel contributed by Sicily) pursued the English flagship "with sails and oars," but, says Purser Coco, she "left them as if they were standing still." They wanted to grapple and board; she had the heels of them and riddled them with her guns from afar.

After that, silence about the Florencia till September 11. Then the sole survivor of the Nuestra Señora de la Rosa of the Guipuzcoan squadron, wrecked on the Irish coast on September 9, gives his information to English officials. saith the Florentine ship is gone with the Duke" (of Medina Sidonia). "He saith where he left the Duke he knoweth not, but it was in the North Seas."

"He

As we all know, the mass of the Spanish ships fled north round the Orkneys, and down

1 Spottiswoode, History, vol. ii. p. 388. Also Grimston, circ. 1620.

2 Calendar of Spanish State Papers,' 1587-1603, p. 441. Edited by Major

Hume. 1899.

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the west coast, smitten by Atlantic storms, and losing many a vessel on the shores of Argyll and Ireland and the Faroes.

This witness was John Antonio of Padua, the son of the pilot of the Nuestra Señora de la Rosa. A Spanish officer shot the pilot for treachery, when the vessel ran on the rock; the boy alone escaped on broken pieces of the shipwhich, by the way, had four shots clean through her.1

After that, no more about the Florencia! She is not in a Spanish list of vessels lost, of which Captain Fernandez Duro, the historian of the Armada, publishes a copy. She is not in a list, more copious, of the losses on the Irish coast, examined by Major Hume.2 Sir John Knox Laughton has found nothing about her loss. In a Spanish manuscript list (Duro, vol. ii. p. 392) she is reported as having reached a Spanish port.

In support of the Florencia the Duke of Argyll adduces the long beautiful bronze gun, with the salamanders and "F's" of François I., which is now at Inveraray Castle, having been salved from the wreck" in 1670."

The gun was among those lost by François I. at Pavia in 1525, and the Duke quotes

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"the records" (Tuscan ?) for the fact that some of the French King's guns were put on a vessel contributed to the Armada by the State of Tuscany." Also from "the records," the ship was the Florencia, and at Vigo took on board a Portuguese captain, Pereira, and crew.4

No doubt all this of the Portuguese crew is correct as regards the Florencia. But "on board" the Florencia, and in command, were Gaspar de Sousa, Colonel of a regiment, and Manuel de la Vega. As to As to Pereira and Sousa, what the Spanish records say is that they were to levy Portuguese soldiers, 2000 if possible, and Gaspar de Sousa commanded in the Florencia.® The recognition of the Pereira shield on a plate recovered from the galleon in 1906 is of no avail. The bearing is a saltire, which the noble family of Pereira bore -but were not alone in bearing.

Meanwhile there is no hint to be found of the loss of the Florencia.

Nobody suggests that two Armada vessels were burned in two Scottish harbours. Therefore if I can show on good evidence that a famous Armada

Also

1 'State Papers,' Ireland, Elizabeth MS., vol. 136, No. 41, V. "Certeine Advertisements out of Ireland." London, 1588. A Government publication.

2 'Spanish Calendar,' pp. 343, 344.

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3 State Papers relating to the Spanish Armada,' vol. ii. p. 384. No. 5. 3, 4,

5, 6, 8.

'Passages from the Past,' vol. i. p. 139; vol. ii. p. 571.

56 Spanish Calendar,' pp. 138, 284, 397 note.

Ibid., pp. 284, 397 note. Duro, ‘La Armada Invencibile,' vol. i. pp. 44,

493, 500, 503, 514; vol. ii. p. 81.

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