wondered (the good pious English folk to whom _Luck_ is a scandal, as the
Bible Society's secretary wrote to Borrow),--what manner of man is this,
this muleteer-missionary, this natural man with a pen in the hand of a
prize-fighter, but of a prize-fighter who is afflicted with the fads of a
philologer--and a pedant at that? The surprise may be compared to what
that of a previous generation would have been, had it seen Johnson and
Boswell and Baretti all fused into one man. The incongruity is
heightened by familiarity with Borrow's tall, blonde, Scandinavian
figure, and the reader is reminded of those roving Northmen of the days
of simple mediaeval devotion, who were wont to signalise their conversion
from heathen darkness by a Mediterranean venture, combining the
characters of a piratical cruise and a pious pilgrimage.

That Curiosity exaggerated and was a marvel-monger we shall attempt to
demonstrate. But, in the meantime, it was there, and it was very strong.
As for Borrow, he was prepared to derive stimulus from it just as long as
it maintained the unquestioning attitude of Jasper Petulengro when he
expressed the sentiments of gipsydom in the well-worn "Lor', brother, how
learned you are!"

In February 1843 Borrow wrote to Murray that he had begun his _Life_--a
"kind of biography in the Robinson Crusoe style,"--and was determined
that it should surpass anything that he had already written. It had been
contemplated, he added, for some months already, as a possible sequel to
the _Bible in Spain_ if that proved successful. Hitherto, he wrote, the
public had said "Good" (to his _Gypsies of Spain_, 1841), "Better" (to
the _Bible in Spain_), and he wanted it, when No. 3 appeared, to say
"Best." Five years rapidly passed away, until, in the summer of 1848,
the book was announced as about to appear shortly, under the title of
_Lavengro: An Autobiography_, which was soon changed to _Life: a Drama_.
The difficulty of writing a book which should have "no humbug in it,"
proved, as may well be supposed, immense, and would in any case be quite
sufficient to account for the long period of gestation. His perplexities
may have often been very near akin to those ascribed to the superstitious
author in the sixty-fifth chapter of _Lavengro_; his desire to be
original sadly cramping the powers of his mind, his fastidiousness being
so great that he invariably rejected whatever ideas he did not consider
to be legitimately his own.