t or as wise as that of the dinner at Dilly's: what is
distinctive of genius is the power to convey the general feeling of the
interlocutors, to suggest a dramatic effect, an artistic whole, as
Boswell does, by the cumulative effect of infinitesimal factors. The
triumph in each case is one not of opportunities but of the subtlest
literary sense.

Similarly, Borrow's fixed ideas had little that was really exceptional or
peculiar about them. His hatred of mumbo-jumbo and priestcraft was but a
part of his steady love of freedom and sincerity. His linguistic mania
had less of a philological basis than he would have us believe.
Impatience that Babel should act as a barrier between kindred souls, an
insatiable curiosity, prompted by the knowledge that the language of
minorities was in nine cases out of ten the direct route to the heart of
the secret of folks that puzzled him--such were the motives that
stimulated a hunger for strange vocabularies, not in itself abnormal. The
colloquial faculty which he undoubtedly possessed--for we are told by
Taylor that when barely eighteen he already knew English, Welsh, Irish,
Latin, Greek, Hebrew, German, Danish, French, Italian, and
Portuguese--rarely goes with philological depth any more than with
idiomatic purity. Borrow learnt some languages to translate, many to
speak imperfectly. {22}

But as a comparative philologist, with claims to scientific equipment,
his _Targum_, with its boasted versions from thirty languages or
dialects, pales considerably before the almost contemporary _Philological
Grammar_, based upon a comparison of over sixty tongues, by the Dorset
poet William Barnes, who, like Borrow himself, was a self-taught man. To
mention but two more English contemporaries of Borrow, there was Thomas
Watts, of the British Museum, who could read nearly fifty languages,
including Chinese; and Canon Cook, the editor of the _Speaker's
Commentary_, who claimed acquaintance with fifty-four. It is commonly
said of Cardinal Mezzofanti that he could speak thirty and understand
sixty. It is quite plain from the pages of _Lavengro_ itself that Borrow
did not share Gregory XVI.'s high estimate of the Cardinal's mental
qualifications, unrivalled linguist though he was. That a "word-master"
so abnormal is apt to be deficient in logical sense seems to have been
Borrow's deliberate opinion (with a saving clause as to exceptions), and
I have often thought that it must have been Shakesp