The quality of continuity is, it is true, best preserved in the dingle episode.

Artistically the Brynhildic figure of Isopel serves as the best relief that could be found for Borrow's own "Titanic self." There is undoubtedly a feeling of unity here which is hardly to be felt in any other part of the Borrovian "Odyssey." It is nevertheless true that, taken as a whole, a marked characteristic of the two volumes is the evenness with which the charms are scattered hither and thither betwixt the four covers.

Attractive, therefore, as the Isopel Berners episode unquestionably is, and convenient as it is to the reader to have it detached for him in its unity, its perusal must not be taken for a moment to absolve the lover of good literature from traversing chapter by chapter, canto by canto, the whole of the Borrevian epic.

It is outside the dingle that he will have to look for the faithfully described bewilderment of the old applewoman after the loss of her book, and for the compassionate delineation of the old man with the bees and the donkey who gave the young Rye to drink of mead at his cottage, and was unashamed at having shed tears on the road.

The most heroic of the pugilistic encounters takes place, it is true, in the thick of the dingle, but it is elsewhere that the reader will have to look for the description of the memorable thrashing inflicted upon the bullying stage-coachman by the "elderly individual" who followed the craft of engraving, and learnt fisticuffs from Sergeant Broughton.