issionary work, but for which it was
manifest, as the surprised and delighted reader proceeded, that not
Bishop Heber or the good Schwartz, but Mendoza and Lesage had been taken
as models. May not people well have wondered (the good, pious English
folk, to whom "luck" was a scandal, as the Bible Society's secretary
wrote to Borrow) what manner of man this muleteer-missionary might be?
The incongruity was only heightened by familiarity with Borrow's
Pharaoh-like visage, abundant grey hair, and tall blonde Scandinavian
figure, which reminded those who came under his spell of those roving
Northmen of the days of simple medieval devotion, who were wont to
signalize their conversion from heathen darkness by a Mediterranean
venture, combining the characters of a piratical cruise and a pious
pilgrimage. But if publisher and client were justified in believing that
they had discovered an autobiographical El Dorado, they were, none the
less, to be sadly undeceived.

To whatever cause the disappointment may be attributed, it was certainly
not due to any lack of pains on the part of Don Jorge. The labour which
he bestowed upon his Life was immense, quite disproportionate to his
previous efforts. "The Gypsies in Spain," for instance, was built up
upon already existing jottings, extracts, and notes, very loosely thrown
together; while "The Bible in Spain" itself was, in regard to its
composition, nothing more than an _olla podrida_ of journalized letters.
But he wrote "Lavengro," as it were, with his life's blood. It cost him
the same agony that parts of "David Copperfield" cost Dickens, while he
had none of Dickens's trained fluency or descriptive power. His lack of
ease in writing often gives a wrong impression of insincerity or
artificiality. Most of his apostrophes, even the most strained, are
expressions of genuine feeling, which he was simply incapable of
assimilating to the prevailing tone of the book, that of a _novela
picaresca_. His determination to be original and to tell the truth, to
avoid all padding and second-hand ideas, kept him on the rack; yet he
persevered, working hard at the Life with intervals of discouragement for
no less than six years. "Lavengro" eventually appeared, in three
volumes, in February, 1851, and was received not merely with coldness and
unconcern, but with hostile carping and even derision. The critics and
Borrow pronounced themselves mutually disillusioned. It was natural that
a man l