ow had never before written a continuous
original work of any length. He had formed no clear idea of himself, his
public, or his purpose. Personality was strong in him and it had to be
expressed. He was full also of extraordinary observation, and this he
could not afford to conceal. It was not easy to satisfy the two needs in
one coherent book; he hardly tried, and he certainly did not succeed.
Ford described it well in his review of "The Bible in Spain": {148}

"'The Gypsies of Spain' was a Spanish olla--a hotchpotch of the jockey
tramper, philologist, and missionary. It was a thing of shreds and
patches--a true book of Spain; the chapters, like her bundle of
unamalgamating provinces, were just held together, and no more, by the
common tie of religion; yet it was strange and richly flavoured with
genuine _borracha_. It was the first work of a diffident, inexperienced
man, who, mistrusting his own powers, hoped to conciliate critics by
leaning on Spanish historians and Gypsy poets."

Nevertheless, "The Zincali" is a book that is still valuable for these
two separate elements of personality and extraordinary observation.
Probably Borrow, his publisher, and the public, regarded it chiefly as a
work of information, picturesquely diversified, and this it still is,
though the increase and systematization of Gypsy studies are said to have
superseded it. A book of spirit cannot be superseded. But pure
information does not live long, and the fact that its information is
inaccurate or incomplete does not rot a book like "The Compleat Angler"
or the "Georgics." Thus it may happen that the first book on a subject
is the best, and its successors mere treatises destined to pave the way
for other treatises. "The Gypsies of Spain" is still read as no other
book on the Gypsy is read. It is still read, not only by those just
infected with Gypsy fever, but by men as men. It does not, indeed,
survive as a whole, because it never was a whole, but there is a spirit
in the best parts sufficiently strong to carry the reader on over the
rest.

To-day very few will do more than smile when Borrow says of the Gypsies,
that there can be no doubt "they are human beings and have immortal
souls," and that the chief object of his book is to "draw the attention
of the Christian philanthropist towards them, especially that degraded
and unhappy portion of them, the Gitanos of Spain." In 1841 many of the
Christian public probably felt a sli